Oh, and stop THIS meme before it kills again, too.

Over the last few days I've seen this David Brooks quote bandied about all over the place, often cited as if it's some kind of Grand Revealed Truth, so incredibly astute that it's almost as if Brooks found it enscribed on golden tablets buried in the deserts of Egypt, beside a big stone head named Ozymandias:

If you want to understand why Democrats keep losing elections, just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are. It makes you wonder: why is it that people who are completely closed-minded talk endlessly about how open-minded they are?

This seems to me to be a perfect illustration of the old adage that "Those who win get to write the histories", because this is simple nonsense. Not that there isn't some genuine contempt on the part of some on the left for "Red America" -- that's no revelation -- but to pretend that this is somehow a phenomenon that is either unique to "the Left" or, failing the uniqueness test, somehow exceedingly dominant on "the Left", is ludicrous.

Last time I checked, "Red America" (which is, in itself, a pretty useless term) wasn't exactly bubbling over with enthusiasm for "Blue America" (another doltish term, but then, doltish terms seem to be all we have room for in our discourse anymore), with condemnations of the "Hollywood elite", the "New York liberals", the tax-happy whackos of Berkeley or California or Massachusetts, and so on. I'm not going to take Brooks's tut-tuting about this stuff seriously as long as he's on the side of the folks who put Ann Coulter on the bestseller lists when she writes about how she wishes that Timothy McVeigh had blown up the New York Times, for example.

While I'm at it, I'm a little bit tired of looking at this county-by-county election results map, as if this proves the extent to which "the Left" has been marginalized in the United States. This is a nation of people, not geographical areas, and the fact is, very nearly half the people who voted in this election live in those blue counties. The fact that Bush captured a gigantic geographical area is not relevant; that he captured more voters is. And the other fact remains that it wouldn't take much coloring with a blue crayon to turn that same map into one that sent John Kerry to the White House. More interesting maps, which distort the geography to take population into account, can be found here. Elections are about people, not geography, and I'm tired of looking at the map every time out as if the Democratic and Republican campaigns are engaged in little more than a big-ass game of "Risk". (Link to the maps via Sean, who is linking a whole lot of stuff I disagree with lately. What's up with that?!)

And for a last thought for this post, I hadn't read Body and Soul in a long time (for reasons passing understanding, because I think Jeanne's a terrific writer), and in the midst of some awfully good stuff, I found this nugget of wisdom:

One of my biggest gripes about this election is that it has had more numbers than words in it. It's been especially short of hard to pronounce words like Fallujah and Abu Ghraib, and especially long on electoral vote predictions.

"Too many numbers". Well, it was either too many numbers, or too many of the wrong numbers. Either way, the discourse this time out was pretty Godawful.

(BTW, remember a time when the term "Red America" would have had a slightly different connotation? Things sure do change when you're not paying attention.)

ADDENDUM: Just looking over my blogroll, I see a number of avowed liberals (or, failing that, former Kerry supporters) who live in "Red America" (or, failing that, live near or in the "hearland"). Darth Swank lives in Indiana and has hailed from Kentucky before. Jason Streed lives in Iowa (actually, I'm less certain of Jason's political leanings, but I don't recall him being a Bush supporter). Sean started in Iowa and has now moved to South Carolina via Tulsa, OK. Scott of Archpelapogo has ties to Tulsa, and lives in Dallas. John Scalzi lives in Ohio, and judging by what he writes, he loves where he lives. James aka Dominion, Jayme, and Morat all hail from Texas. I'm pretty sure one of the Pandagon duo lives in Ohio. Mickey, I believe, hails from Detroit. The Esteemable Mr. Cuthbertson hails from Kansas, went to college with me in Iowa, and now lives in Missouri. Those are just the ones I'm sure of (or reasonably sure). Hell, I live in New York state, but believe me, Buffalo is far closer to Cleveland in temperament than New York City. This "Liberals don't understand the heartland" stuff is pure hooey. Bear in mind, folks: where does Rush Limbaugh hang his hat when he's not on the air?