Crosscutting Social Circles: Testing A Macrostructural Theory of Intergroup Relations Book

This book is a veritable slaughter house for sacred cows. Michael Graham does an excellent job of articulating three things: 1) the basic premise of the Tea Party movement, and why it attracts people like his (and perhaps your) mother (it's not that hard; fiscal responsibility); 2) the non-logical, emotional responses against the Tea Party movement and why they are non-logical and emotional. Names are named, examples are given; and 3) how and why the Tea Party movement has not only arisen, but why it is growing and thriving.



The writing style is light and engaging, but is clearly targeted on the choir to which it is preaching. This is the weakest part of the book, in that calling someone who still believes in the Hope and Change (tm) of the Obama campaign an "O-bot" repeatedly will probably not bring them into your camp, no matter how accurate the reasons. -I- enjoyed it because it fed my red-meat needs, but I'm not sure it will lead many into the light. The CASE it makes for supporting the concept of the Tea Party is logically sound and reasonable, but I'd be surprised if this book, by itself, changed many minds... I think people are hard-wired to defensiveness too strongly for that.



The real strength of this book is that in about 250 pages it hits on just about all of the major differences between the liberal and conservative sides of the argument: health care, illegal immigration, the role of government, the weakness of the press, etc. It provides not just one-off quotes, but the context for the statements that SHOULD be indefensible and yet stand unchallanged.



This is what I took away from the book: Much of the arguments against the Tea Party movement can only be stated in anonymous and impersonal ways, and it is a rare (and likely disfunctional) person that could express those exact same words to somebody like Graham's mother face-to-face... it would require absolute disrespect for the person being spoken to and no sense of shame.



I would welcome a similar treatment of this topic from the other side: light, engaging discussion of why it is racist and homophobic to question the wisdom of TARP, Stimulus and Stimulus II.



Personal jab: I recall when we are all being educated, post-Tailhook, about sexual harrasment, and one of the 'checks' on behavior was to consider if you'd be comfortable making a questionable statement or act in the presence of your mother or having somebody say the same thing to your sister. Not a perfect check (it takes all kinds), but a pretty hand little internal QA. If people believe the level of political discourse has descended too low, this would probably be a good QA to apply as well.