Trouble In Whitetopia

October 26, 2017 9:11 AM

“And like so many others currently involved in North Idaho politics, Regan’s a California transplant: one of thousands of ex–LAPD officers, doomsday preppers, “traditionalist” Catholics, and far-right evangelicals who’ve flocked to the white, conservative utopia of North Idaho over the last 20 years, working to remake the Republican Party in their own image. Before, they were called libertarians and constitutionalists, or called nothing at all, because there was no political group conservative enough to represent their beliefs.” - Welcome To Idaho, Now Go Home - Anne Helen Petersen tracks how an ultra right wing faction of the GOP look over the state’s politics, and why they’re at war with each other.
posted by The Whelk (66 comments total)

> So why is the local Republican party tearing itself apart

Before I RTFA, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that it's because anyone who would move to a place referred to as "whitetopia" because they don't want to get along with people who aren't exactly like them will always find a way to create and justify hatred and conflict between themselves and others.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:20 AM on October 26, 2017 [48 favorites]

At least once a week, I chuckle at the fact that these jackasses flocked to a state governed by a man who chooses to call himself Butch Otter.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:21 AM on October 26, 2017 [21 favorites]

Everything I needed to know about Northern Idaho I learned in Iris Dement's song, "Easy's gettin' harder every day".
posted by notsnot at 9:25 AM on October 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

The Card Cheat: The best thing about the "People's Front of Judea" bit in Life of Brian is that it can apply to left-wing and right-wing groups equally.

"SPLITTER!"
posted by SansPoint at 9:28 AM on October 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

And how is it that so many middle aged white male Californians can actually afford to move to northern Idaho, buy a house, and live their version of paradise--y'know...hunting, fishing, fomenting hate? Well maybe because of this:

Over 500 California police officers, including the infamous O.J. Simpson detective Mark Fuhrman, moved here by the end of the ’90s. Today, that number has multiplied to the point that some call it “LAPD North.” You could live a good life here on a California state pension, especially if you sold your California home, took the money, and bought a much bigger house in North Idaho.
posted by mono blanco at 10:02 AM on October 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

But they're all about gutting the pensions of other civil servants.
posted by elsietheeel at 10:06 AM on October 26, 2017 [36 favorites]

"Got mine, fuck you" ain't just for suburbanites...
posted by notsnot at 10:23 AM on October 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

"Got mine, fuck you" ain't just for suburbanites...

While this is true, it sounds like many of these people are suburbanites, or rather they were until they retired.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:26 AM on October 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Man, I grew up for a time in Idaho. It’s a beautiful place. As a kid with Republican parents from back East, I met and started hanging out with the first progressive people I’d ever known there (in Boise), which very much changed my life. It's always been so underrated as a state. Most people think it’s in the Midwest and associate it only with potatoes and the Aryan Nation). Now we gotta deal with these dicks. I guess I just want to say Not All Idahoans. (Plus hasn’t it always been tradition in Idaho and Oregon to hate on rich Californians? These people make not be as welcome as they think they are. They certainly wouldn’t be by my old friends and neighbors.)
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 10:31 AM on October 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

I actually know a retired couple who retired early to Idaho like 30 years ago to build a house, and five years ago moved back because they couldn’t stand the increasing number of conservative assholes in their community and they’d rather die surrounded by nice folk instead.
posted by aramaic at 10:32 AM on October 26, 2017 [22 favorites]

For some reason, referring to these dudes as "Traditional Catholics" really bugs me. It would be like if after the confederates broke from the US that they were referred to as "Traditional Americans."
posted by drezdn at 10:42 AM on October 26, 2017 [27 favorites]

A powerful Central Committee that tries to snub out people who have the slightest difference in politics... Where have I heard that before?
posted by drezdn at 10:53 AM on October 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I know this isn't the main focus, but this

Society cannot thrive under Cartesian Relativism because it devolves into a muddle of conflicting
“truths”. The truths are that American Exceptionalism is the product of Judeo-Christinan morality (10 commandments) and of Logos (try to speak Truth), Greco-Roman philosophy (democracy and that nature can be understood) and AlgloSaxon law (Magna Carta, the laws apply to all, even the king).

makes me realize what sort of person Regan is. He may be a member of Mensa, but he has obtained all his self education from tertiary sources that choose their opinions first and fill in the details later. He boils all of Judaism and Christianity into the 10 Commandments, ignoring their context and ignoring all of Christian thought. His take on Greek philosophy is insulting at best and while I usually will not mock people for misspellings (I make them all the time), any spell checker would have picked up Alglo instead of Anglo, making me believe that he thinks he knows more than the computer. He's rich off of daddy's money, thinks he is smarter than everyone else and retreats when he loses. He seems to be applying a personal test of loyalty to everyone who wants his endorsement.

Actually, he is the perfect avatar of the current Republican Party. He is Trump writ small.
posted by Hactar at 11:10 AM on October 26, 2017 [35 favorites]

For some reason, referring to these dudes as "Traditional Catholics" really bugs me. It would be like if after the confederates broke from the US that they were referred to as "Traditional Americans."

That is, in fact, how modern Confederates think of themselves.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:11 AM on October 26, 2017 [23 favorites]

Everyone else is too busy chasing crumbs from the 0.01% to make time for politics, but many retired police officer and military assholes get an infinite amount of taxpayer-provided time to agitate for the removal of everyone else's security net. Socialism works when it further our political agenda. I wonder if Rand Paul has come out against police pensions yet.
posted by benzenedream at 11:18 AM on October 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

Hey, Regan, your Greco-Roman forebears happily killed people for believing in the wrong gods. If your boy Christ had lived in 4th-century Athens, he could've been executed for asebeia.
posted by praemunire at 11:20 AM on October 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

I laugh hollowly at the guy bemoaning how they're not behaving like the party of Lincoln.

any spell checker would have picked up Alglo instead of Anglo, making me believe that he thinks he knows more than the computer

To be fair, spellcheckers are crap. It is burned into my memory, the moment when Microsoft Word informed me that "clementine" wasn't a word. It's even worse nowadays that the common thing is for software to try and second-guess your inputs -- unwanted auto-stemming, undisableable* synonymy, etc. Google search doesn't even fully respect quoted strings as verbatim anymore, in my experience.

*my browser spellcheck is picking this one up as a nonword!
posted by inconstant at 11:22 AM on October 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yeah, all I thought when I read that pull quote about Cartesian blahblahblah was that any one of my liberal arts college professors would have eviscerated that paragraph in two seconds. Particularly the philosophy and political science ones. But libtards, I guess.
posted by nakedmolerats at 11:22 AM on October 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

I have only the briefest of exposure to Idaho, a single day spent driving through it. Smelled of Onions and an open sewer sprayed my car and those around it as we passed by.

This may be a metaphor for what is going on now (given Idaho is known for potatoes and not open sewers) we did spend some time in Twin Falls (which was nice) and the majority of our time was not spent smelling onions (but first impressions stick around)

It's too bad people with money control so much of life.
posted by NiteMayr at 11:25 AM on October 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

He may be a member of Mensa, but he has obtained all his self education from tertiary sources that choose their opinions first and fill in the details later.

Ah yes, the Scott Adams approach to autodidacticism
posted by Existential Dread at 11:31 AM on October 26, 2017 [27 favorites]

I do recommend one visits Craters of the Moon once in their life - it's been on my (nerd) travel list since childhood, we went last summer and it was absolutely one-of-a-kind amazing.
posted by nakedmolerats at 11:34 AM on October 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Anyone who thinks Descartes was a relativist either hasn't read Descartes or is a moron.

Although in this guy's case, I'm thinking it might be both.
posted by joedan at 11:35 AM on October 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

Many years ago, I spent a summer in southern Idaho (Burley, not far from Twin Falls) and what I noticed was that everyone, and I do mean everyone, had two jobs. No one could live on what they made at one. One guy had been at the Boise-Cascade corrugated cardboard factory for ten years and had gotten promoted to the second shift, and was making $6.50 an hour. (I believe minimum wage at that time was about $5.50).

So those hateful conservative fuckers not only want to have Whitetopia, they want to have it with the lowest wages and zero benefits. Don't even think about unions. How's that Republican vote working out for ya?
posted by corvikate at 11:35 AM on October 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

Yes, I also got more than a whiff of the pseudointellectual blowhard who thinks he's blinded people with his brilliance all his life without realizing that any deference he's received has originated from while male privilege combined with inherited money. Sounds like any other typical petit-bourgeois small-business dictator.

But I did enjoy the tales of the snake eating itself. Thanks to their small a government dreams, they've probably cut off future recruitment of people from outside their little forts, as very few workers now will have access to the kinds of pension programs that allow them to comfortably retire to Rightistan.

Also:
>individual liberty
>following the Bible
Pick one.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 11:35 AM on October 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I love Rush, but this dude reminds me a lot of Neil Peart.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:38 AM on October 26, 2017

It feels like a heavy inheritance tax would make most fringe right wing movements go away
posted by The Whelk at 11:40 AM on October 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

Actually I'm now googling "Cartesian relativism" and most hits are from the Buzzfeed piece so um what is he even talking about?
posted by nakedmolerats at 11:41 AM on October 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

> How's that Republican vote working out for ya?

Working yourself to death to make someone else rich is the American Way. It's your patriotic duty!
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:46 AM on October 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I love Rush, but this dude reminds me a lot of Neil Peart.

I was thinking a greying, balding Joe Caputo.
posted by hwyengr at 11:46 AM on October 26, 2017

Actually I'm now googling "Cartesian relativism" and most hits are from the Buzzfeed piece so um what is he even talking about?

Honestly, even he probably doesn't know; he's counting on the fact that his audience will be too intimidated by big words and Mensa memberships to challenge him on his word salad bullshit.
posted by Existential Dread at 11:47 AM on October 26, 2017 [15 favorites]

i am really interested in the split between the LDS in southern idaho, which has had a strong, often very conserative (like John Bircher conserative) heritage (esp. thinking about the Bundies), and the far right catholics in the north-which seems to be a v recent innovation, maybe even a california import. I am also interested in the receding of a certain kind of far right evangelical nationalism when it has grown else where in the west
posted by PinkMoose at 11:52 AM on October 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

I heard a quote once about autodidacts: 'The autodidact lives in permanent fear of being found out.'
This guy Regan doesn't.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 12:03 PM on October 26, 2017

Kitty Stardust: Wait until you hear that they believe in Calvinist predestination, A.K.A the most bafflingly paradoxical Christian theological idea to ever reach serious and mainstream popularity.

Nakedmolerats: I'm familiar with the genre this guy falls in to. The unfortunate reality is that being intelligent does not protect against foolishness, bizarre obsessions, and fallacious self-evaluation that exceeds one's own horizons. Far more often than I've seen idiots who think they're geniuses, I've seen smart or even brilliant people think they're infallibly intelligent; gods.

Building on what was stated above by Hactar, there seems to be this obnoxious trend of right-wingers with a lot of raw intelligence to steep themselves in garbage. In this tragic misuse of their exceptional faculties of memory, or logic, they then spew it all over the rest of us and generally become a nuisance to those around them. These people are especially visible in the modern right, whether you're talking about someone like Brent Regan or instead further to the right, like Mencius Moldbug (or worse, Dr. Greg Johnson).

They're dangerous because they're smart enough to succeed monetarily in life, smart enough to have an inherent guile in their speech to those who are primed for it, and smart enough to organize, however, often all it takes to dismantle them is to listen to their arguments carefully. They're always fools, but fools that we need to pay attention to lest they become the centers of wider movements.


On another note:

I always find it terribly funny how childish these people (re: affluent, locally-focused, rural conservatives) end up behaving. The article is loaded with anecdotes about severely local power struggles that sound akin to rumour-soaked scuffles on the playground. And although there's a ladder to macro-politics that allows these spats to end up being more effectual and threatening than the conflicts of minors, it is hard to take seriously how pathetic and personal they are in basis. For conservative idealists with high-minded ideas about secession and theocracy, they can't seem to escape the sandbox.
posted by constantinescharity at 12:08 PM on October 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

I'm sure there are lots of nice people in MENSA but the folks who introduce themselves by saying "Hi, I'm a MENSA member" ... those folks, ugh. Those are the ones that think having a membership card validates them as a person, and the ones that most need the validation of their self-worth and importance. "I have a membership card, and that makes me better than you."

There are a lot of things about me that I can point at if my goal is to impress you with my intelligence and accomplishments. The difference is that unless I am trying to get you to hire me, I don't lead with that, because appeal to authority as an introductory move is simply confirmation that the individual is an insufferable ass.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:11 PM on October 26, 2017 [15 favorites]

Actually I'm now googling "Cartesian relativism" and most hits are from the Buzzfeed piece so um what is he even talking about?

He's yearning for everyone to recognize that there are Absolute Truths and that everything is ranked on a scale. The irony is that he believes that said scale agrees with his own personal truth scale and that other ones are faulty and do not matter. It's a Dark Knight Rises sort of statement. You nod along when you're first exposed to it, but the more you think about it afterwards the more your head aches.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 12:15 PM on October 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

> He's yearning for everyone to recognize that there are Absolute Truths and that everything is ranked on a scale.

I knew a guy in university like this. We never discussed politics (thankfully), but he was convinced that music could be judged and ranked in a completely objective manner. Eventually I learned that arguing with him was a waste of everyone's time because he was always correct.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:30 PM on October 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

There's lots of stuff in this article to mull over, especially that the "most effective route [to take over a party] is through a county’s central committee"
... but this made me spit up my coffee:
Regan moved to North Idaho from California "to get away from Gray Davis, the progressive Democrat who had recently been elected governor."
GRAY DAVIS IS CONSIDERED A PROGRESSIVE? Mr Tough on Crime? I know reporters can't be experts on everything but that has to be Regan's framing.
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:35 PM on October 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

"Cartesian relativism"

Autodidact wisdom lords like this guy often designate one philosopher as the dark inflection point where all of Western thought got corrupted. Descartes isn't nearly as popular a choice for this role as Kant, but he does have a sizable anti-following among people who believe that substance dualism leads inexorably to moral relativism for some reason.
posted by Iridic at 12:36 PM on October 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

Wait until you hear that they believe in Calvinist predestination, A.K.A the most bafflingly paradoxical Christian theological idea to ever reach serious and mainstream popularity.

Wait, do you mean there are Catholics who believe in Calvinism? Or just that Calvinism in general is a laughably dumb idea?
posted by Kitty Stardust at 12:45 PM on October 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I travel to North Idaho about once a year (it's one of the few places I can get to in a 6 hour drive that isn't prairie). I like some of the towns - Coeur d'Alene, Sandpoint. Wallace is worth visiting once, but it feels like it's emptying out.

Southern Idaho has lots worth seeing on a road trip, too - Craters of the Moon, the Snake River Valley, Atomic City, West Yellowstone...

Anyway, about Sandpoint - I stayed in a hotel just north of the town and the woman who checked us in had an iron cross belt buckle. Was she a biker? Alt-right Whitopianist Nazi? Neither and I'm overthinking this?
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 12:50 PM on October 26, 2017

"Cartesian relativism" seems to come from this book: The Discovery of Dynamics, in which it is used to mean that "the motion of bodies must be understood as relative to other bodies that are regarded as being at rest." So, yeah, dude is either wildly misapplying the term, or ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by Kitty Stardust at 12:55 PM on October 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

Many Americans want to vote only for a version of themselves, with their beliefs represented in totality. It’s not enough for someone to be conservative, or liberal — they have to be your very specific strain of conservative or liberal. And those who are not aren’t just different: They’re dangerous.

The most insightful paragraph in the whole thing.
posted by Talez at 1:00 PM on October 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

I love Rush, but this dude reminds me a lot of Neil Peart.

Maybe out of maturity, or maybe for better publicity, but the entire band has cooled off on hardcore Randism. This coincided with their induction into the HoF, so who knows.
posted by Beholder at 1:05 PM on October 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

He's yearning for everyone to recognize that there are Absolute Truths and that everything is ranked on a scale.

So he'd get along with Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, PhD.
posted by scalefree at 1:45 PM on October 26, 2017

He boils all of Judaism and Christianity into the 10 Commandments, ignoring their context and ignoring all of Christian thought.

This is the part that I never understand. One of these jagweeds says that they will know false Republicans "by their deeds", specifically in that they didn't oppose Obamacare. But...how can you quote the Sermon on the Mount while simultaneously misunderstanding EVERYTHING Christ was saying?

Also speaking of religion...this weird "Traditional Catholic" thing happening in North Idaho probably doesn't work well with the Saints in South Idaho. The LDS church has historically identified the Catholic Church as the "great and abominable church".
posted by elsietheeel at 2:14 PM on October 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Descartes isn't nearly as popular a choice for this role as Kant.

Ayn Rand is to blame for some of that. She didn’t understand Kant in the slightest.
posted by leotrotsky at 2:21 PM on October 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

y kant ayn read
posted by entropicamericana at 2:23 PM on October 26, 2017 [28 favorites]

Yeah, we've been looking at where we want to go when Mancub goes to college and we can sell this big ol house, and Idaho checked a lot of boxes, but once I started investigating the social climate, I noped right the hell out. I'm a small, brown, mouthy, socialist lady. Methinks I'd just be asking to get beaten by moving into lapd territory.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 2:51 PM on October 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

Metafilter: being intelligent does not protect against foolishness.
posted by glasseyes at 3:27 PM on October 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

.....people who believe that substance dualism leads inexorably to moral relativism for some reason

that's very strange
posted by thelonius at 5:08 PM on October 26, 2017

I could understand someone thinking that Descartes' search for foundational knowledge leaves him stranded in the isolation of the subject, and that this has relativism as a consequence, although of course this is not at all what Descartes understood himself to be doing. That's not really absurd, though, I guess.

It's another tell of the amateur that they often think it's just trivial that every possible variety of philosophical idealism immediately reduces to solipsism.
posted by thelonius at 5:15 PM on October 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

For example, when I asked him to help refine my understanding of liberty-minded conservative beliefs, Regan protested my use of “beliefs,” which infers that they are, in fact, decisions — instead of “immutable truths.”

This reminds me of the time I referred to Objectivism as an ideology, and an Objectivist, um, objected to that characterization, claiming it's a purely rational response to objective reality.

I can't imagine going through life thinking that way.
posted by brundlefly at 5:25 PM on October 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

AlgloSaxon law (Magna Carta, the laws apply to all, even the king).

Spelling error aside, Magna Carta was first signed in 1215, a full 149 years after the Anglo-Saxons got their arses kicked by the Normans at Hastings. It was agreed between Norman barons and a Norman king. “Anglo-Saxon” is being used as a dogwhistle here; no prizes for guessing what for.

(A friend of mine in Manchester once got a National Front leaflet through his letterbox that referred to the “indigenous Anglo-Saxon people of Britain”. Ah, how we laughed. There have been people of colour in Britain since at least the Romans; the Anglo-Saxons are a bunch of Eadmund-come-latelys by comparison.)
posted by Pallas Athena at 7:19 PM on October 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

The coolest places to live in America are liberal, SF, Austin, Portland, etc. The most conservative areas look bland and soulless by comparison. Not surprisingly, the liberal cities are more popular, more educated, and more expensive. I truly feel for any poor person who lives in these right wing hellholes.
posted by Beholder at 8:20 PM on October 26, 2017

My worst, most racist uncle was part of this migration. We haven't spoken to him in years, since well before they left California. You could not pay me enough to visit Idaho. I picture a state populated entirely by Worst Uncles.
posted by potrzebie at 9:05 PM on October 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

there were similar lapd exoduses to places like montana and bullhead city, arizona. as a californian, thanks, dont let the door hit your fucking ass on the way out.
posted by wibari at 9:49 PM on October 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

thanks, dont let the door hit your fucking ass on the way out.

The only problem is that in California, the most these guys could do to influence politics was call into their local radio shows and leave vehement comments on LA Times articles. In Idaho, they have a real shot at controlling a statehouse, a governorship, and two percent of the US Senate vote.
posted by Iridic at 8:45 AM on October 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

This reminds me of the time I referred to Objectivism as an ideology, and an Objectivist, um, objected to that characterization, claiming it's a purely rational response to objective reality.

I can't imagine going through life thinking that way.

They're the folks who think "A=A" demonstrates something other than a simple tautology.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:55 AM on October 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

The only problem is that in California, the most these guys could do to influence politics was call into their local radio shows and leave vehement comments on LA Times articles.

I live in deep red California (northeast) and I have family who are Kern County oligarchs. Trust me, they can accomplish so much more than that.
posted by elsietheeel at 9:39 AM on October 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

For example, when I asked him to help refine my understanding of liberty-minded conservative beliefs, Regan protested my use of “beliefs,” which infers that they are, in fact, decisions — instead of “immutable truths.”

Of course this dude is a "traditionalist Catholic" with this fucking third-tier Robert George bullshit.
posted by en forme de poire at 10:23 AM on October 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

The area of the country that's referred to by racist morons as the "American Redoubt" has a number of the U.S.'s most beautiful natural areas. All those transplants didn't decide to move there because it's an undesirable place to live

I agree about the beauty of northern Idaho, but there was that line in the article about the rash of big box stores and gridlocked traffic on U.S. 95. Given that they would say government has no role in the protection of said beauty and a very limited role to play with infrastructure, I wonder what the place will be like in a decade or two.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 12:38 PM on October 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

When I read articles like this I can't help but think that the possibility of America splitting into two countries in the next few decades isn't negligible.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 3:35 PM on October 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

My entire family comes from Northern Idaho. If I could just get them to read this article, maybe my facebook feed would flip from Clinton/Obama conspiracy theories to "Damn Californians!". But it's longer than a meme, so I doubt they'll check it out.
posted by Glibpaxman at 4:26 PM on October 27, 2017

They're the folks who think "A=A" demonstrates something other than a simple tautology.

I think Rand actually used to boast that she was a "greater philosopher" than Plato and Aristotle - but was seemingly ignorant that the A-man had formulated the law of the excluded middle 2000 years before.
posted by thelonius at 4:39 PM on October 27, 2017

I live in deep red California (northeast) and I have family who are Kern County oligarchs. Trust me, they can accomplish so much more than that.

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/10/26/kern-county-bans-pot-sales-even-as-ca-legalizes-it/
posted by Beholder at 10:12 PM on October 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Hey cool, something to talk about at Thanksgiving that isn't Trump!
posted by elsietheeel at 10:31 PM on October 27, 2017 [1 favorite]