The cultural differences between left and right may be stronger than the political.
When Sen. Ted Cruz answered a question about his musical taste posed by a CBS news correspondent, and he announced that his preference switched after 2001, 9/11, the leftosphere fell of its rocker and into convulsions.
Why?
He said he switched from listening to classic rock to country, and did so because the country music culture responded to the 9/11 atrocity so much better than did rock-and-roll culture.
Confession: my musical tastes lean toward classic rock. But there’s no way I would get upset about a politician’s musical choices — unless he started listening to Wagner while reviving an interest in National Socialism.
But boy, on the left there was a lot of outrage and indignation. At least, Matt Welch of Reason quoted a good spattering of it, and I found more on Twitter and elsewhere. On Slate? Snark. A YouTuber tubed Cruz’s change as “pandering.” And in New York magazine, Jonathan Chait identified Cruz’s professed change-of-taste “an incredible testament to his personal willpower.”
Huh?
You may or may not like country music, or appreciate the last 30 years of it, or its origins, or its commercialization, or the twang, but that stuff’s really not that important.
A conservative found political reasons to change his listening habits. Wow. A matter of self-definition? Whatever. It neither builds up nor undermines his philosophy or program.
Though certainly Conway Twitty’s “It’s Only Make Believe” provides more than a cultural context for understanding much of what happens in Washington.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Cruz Country”
Cruz has several fatal positions as far as any libertarian would note.
Anti immigration, parrots all the silly fallacies such as , “get in line, seal the borders, taking welfare, etc. “, wants to continue foreign aid and involvement and military presence in foreign countries„ agrees with the typical Republican view that most governmental entities just need to be “reformed” or made “efficient”
Hopefully more thinking people will realize that Republicans are simply Democrat “lites“and not worthy of all the adulation and support they receive..
Though seemingly oversimplified, the only difference between an R or a D is that the R does not“get” personal liberty, and the D does not “get” economic liberty.
Plus Cruz appears to buy the woefully ignorant take on 9/11, i.e. the official conspiracy theory. Antidote in progress: https:// a911t.pubslush.com.
Yes. Look forward to read link later. Thanks. !
It astonishes me that none of the leading political figures left or right declares an affection for classical music. As for popular music, contrast the garbage of today with Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart, Irving Berlin of our grandparents’ time. Intelligence, wit, beauty, complexity of adult feeling — there’s not much of that anymore. The language and sentiment of rock and country songs are for the most part just adolescent and dumb, and the music with few exceptions tedious and often painful to listen to. I like Paul Ryan, but when he identified his taste as AC/DC etc., he almost lost me. Americans brought up listening to this crude noisy crap develop a taste for it, and effortlessly disconnect from the greatness of western civilization such as classical music. Another sign of the decline of our culture.