[NewMusic] Indiana

[Matthew Goodheart]

Great post, Sarah.

On Jun 5, 2007, at 5:15 PM, Sarah - 21 Grand wrote:

>  I think the tech
> workers may be more liberal socially (attitudes towards homosexuality,
> alternative culture, racial issues, religion/spiritual beliefs) than 
> some of
> the "old school" residents, but tend to be more conservative 
> economically
> ... i.e. libertarians, who respect people of color, queers, weird 
> artists,
> etc. but aren't going to part with their tax dollars to support 
> services.

Yeah, I think you're dead right on this. There was some talk flying 
around during the dot-com era about how there was so little support for 
the arts despite the huge amounts of money flying around, and how many 
of the dot-com-ers didn't think to support art because they thought 
they were artists themselves. I think there was some truth in that. I 
think you also nail a bunch of other  factors on the head, but I'll add 
a side note to the affluence point ; for those NOT affluent in the Bay 
Area, the incredible cost of living here makes people too busy  to be 
politically active or etc.- many folks have shelved their ideals simply 
because they are  working too hard to act on them- they have several 
jobs or etc.

One could complain about the egotism of activists (see Cindy Sheehan's 
resignation letter), or compassion fatigue, or whatever, but I think 
the seductiveness of the libertarianism and conservatism that has swept 
the country in the form of (. . . insert previous rant on 
commodity-Spectacular discourse here. . . ). The ideas of social 
responsibility (hardly a "far left" idea, whatever the "far left" is 
supposed to mean. . .) have been fading for a coupla decades now. . . 
though not dead yet. . .


mg