From the Tribune:

“”He said his toughest work comes in communities where people “feel most cynical about government” and are distrustful of campaign promises.

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” he said in comments first reported Friday by the Huffington Post, an online newspaper.

“So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama added.””

I heard the quote it in its original when it first came out, that was when I developed my impression of the statement. The gist seems the same as Nano’s, in my opinion. It may be pop-psychology by Obama, but it is inaccurate pop-psychology.

First jobs don’t leave and then people hang around getting more and more frustrated for twenty-five years. How could the majority survive without jobs for that long? I’ll grant that plenty of small towns aren’t what the use to be and are floundering, but plenty of towns aren’t what they use to be also because they are prospering. Economies, both on micro and macro levels, are fluid and dynamic. They reward those who can adapt and punishes those who can’t. If the demand for a product dries up or a product can be more efficiently produced and brought to market somewhere else, then it is unfortunate for those who are left out in the cold, but that’s the way the free market works. It is them who need to adapt. What would they have done if the job was never there in the first place?

Secondly, folks don’t cling to guns in small town America because things aren’t going so good. Guns are a tool that most households in small towns have just like suburbanites have a lawn mower. They are used for hunting and protection from animals and vermin. To imply they are clinging to there guns is ignorant in its own rite as it conjures up a notion of folks sleeping with a shot gun at their side or a forty-five under their pillow and this because they are frustrated for not having a job for twenty-five years, ridiculous.

Same with religion. Sure folks might devote a little more time to religion if they are broke and have nothing else to fill the time with. Heck some might even be receiving financial help in some form or food from their church, but there is nothing wrong with that and I wouldn’t call that clinging. I doubt they would be much less involved with their churches if times got better. If church going is a way of life, it’s a way of life in good times as well as bad.

I realize that Obama was just trying to say something intelligent and connect with whoever it was he was addressing at the time but he missed the mark with these comments and it actually shows he is somewhat disconnected with the folks he was talking about. It was meant to convey an understanding of small town folk’s predicament but actually revealed a lack of understanding of the problems they face, or, was merely pandering gone awry. What Obama said is actually a more apropos to the inner city black community, although not completely accurate, but one wonders if his experience with them isn’t the inspiration of the statement in an attempt to relate the black rational to the small town America experience.

G