Puncture the Gunbelt.  You have to be kidding.

The current worship of anyone wearing a uniform,
the militarization of our culture, the fear that questioning anything about the war means not "supporting the troops," the election to office of anyone who is in the military and the support without question of said candidates by the Democratic Party and us...

That's the Gunbelt and we are behind it 100% even when we think we aren't.

New trends: Movies that show dead bodies, that's a new trend in the culture of death and warriors. Death culture symbols are next, like SS skull and bones. Lots of TV shows and movies about horrific crimes and victims from a pathologist point of view.  

The culture war was a proxy for economic and political control

That metaphor is just about perfect.

Part of the relative gap between Dems' and Goops' reported prosperity has to be simply that Dems are so disgusted with the whole kit 'n' kaboodle that their default answer to poll questions is the negative one. (Some Goops might default the other way.)

Also, Dems might finally be fed up with the MSM's knack for looking in a cloud of bad poll results for Bush and digging out and emphasizing the one thread of a silver lining.  So, they exaggerate the negative, whatever the question.  I'd at least think about doing the same.

This is a down side of basing political debate and policy choices on 800-person poll samples. As people start to comprehend that their responses might actually make a difference, they'll exaggerate (four syllables meaning lie) to promote their own political preferences.

Well, both 'sides' here are part of a culture of doom. The last of the 'high tech' jobs will soon be exported to China and India. We have not been making televisions, apparently not one, since -- lets just say I read about this over a decade ago. Once there is no money left for the government, there will be no money left for the arms makers. Already, Great Britain's Health Service is in utter shambles, so you can be sure people will not want to hear that they are spending good money sending boats full of spooks shuttling between Iraq and Iran. (And getting arrested by the Iranians.)

Bush and Re. Moon are moving to Paraguay. Hasta la vista, babies!!!

The South has had population growth (attracting wingnuts from elsewhere--think Newt Gingrich) and economic growth (e.g., transplanted factory jobs) on it side for a generation or so. These dynamics are changing. The demographics of the South are undergoing rapid change because of Latino (and to a lesser and more localized extent), Asian immigrants. It will take a generation for those changes to effect elections, although there already are effects in Florida & Texas. Key employers in the South are leaving or decline-0-jobs are being offshored and employers like Delta Airlines and Coca Cola are in varying degrees of long-term structural trouble. The South has never been totally down or out politically, but the economically dynamic character of the region is becoming hobbled in places like Georgia & North Carolina. A lot of the decline is in smaller businesses (GOP territory) or large corporate entities like Delta which are nominally non-partisan, but functionally Republican. Outside of Florida and perhaps Virginia, I wouldn't see long-term electoral gains for Dems, but the structure of the national GOP will be harmed by these changes.

Military contracting scandals seem like the next wave of investigation and any meaningful enforcement will affect the South, including Northern Virginia where a lot of this stuff is headquartered. This will certainly harm the fundraising base of the GOP.

The theory is interesting, but it doesn't do much to explain the discrepency in perception of financial prospects between Republicans/Democrats who are essentially of the same class (Which I believe is something that the Pew data brings out as well)

From an overall perspective, the MIC theory makes sense - but it doesn't explain the differences between groups who, in theory, have roughly equivalent financial prospects.

My personal theory would be that liberals tend to have a bigger picture view of their own economic future - including factors such as the environment and rising healthcare costs which would put a damper on their optimism.

This is certainly a very tough nut to crack, but we don't have a prayer if we don't focus on the problem.

One thing we have to do is demonstrate how terribly destructive it is, as well as being ineffective at its purported goal.  Which is why--in addition to the obvious moral imperative--we need to place a very high priority on taking care of veterans.

Quite frankly, it is simply impossible for the war machine to take good care of them--as the recent Frontline, "The Soldiers Heart" reminds us, yet again.  How can it?  It exists on death, and they are the damaged survivors, who have been seared by death's presence.

Another thing we need to do is expose the the breadth and depth of the scandals involving the military-industrial complex.  The Cunningham/Wade/Wilkes/Foggo scandal is only the tip of the tip of the iceberg here.  Blackwater and Halliburton are virtually nothing but scnadals, from top to bottom.

And, for those wanting to do even more reading (Hint! Hint! Hint, Matt!), I'd suggest Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right by Lisa McGirr, which studies the development of conservatism in Orange County--the most intensively subsidized county in the Gunbelt in its early formative years.  

Also, let's not forget geography. Democrats are more likely to live in urban areas, where cost of living is much higher and temptations to spend are much greater. Meanwhile, Republicans are more likely to live in rural areas, where cost of living is low (unbelievably so, to a city boy like me) and temptations to spend are far fewer.

Naturally, then, Democrats might feel less financially secure than  Republicans.

I think, but don't have back-up for the thesis, that the per capita income differences between blue and red America remain as regions, but that whites in red America are more likely to enjoy greater gap over black residents than their blue-state counterparts.  Put simply, "blue black America" in places like Maryland is enjoying the fruits of economic growth whereas Mississippi - for all of it's vaunted "job growth" - remains largely a pit of racial economic apartheid, relative to each region's white neighbors.  The wealthiest majority-black jurisdiction in the country is Prince Oeorge's County, certainly no stranger to government spending either directly or with the massive number of military contractors in the metro area, with some large number of them in nearby Northern Virginia.

Seattle is pretty blue as well, and has a relatively well-off black community (not a large one, not a majority, but one of long standing.)  Again, a massive government-spending complex on both war goods and miscellaneous contracting (e.g. Microsoft and its trail of subcontractors, etc.)

Military Keynesianism: What is that and why should I care?

And that is why the DC Liberals (the issue groups etc) are poison to progressive politics - they eat from the same bowl as the MIC.

"Economic Instability for white liberals"? Are you talking about outsourcing or something?  That has always been way overblown, and California and Boston are dominated by Liberals to begin with.

Plus, I really doubt the Democrats are going to do anything about the military industrial complex.

Interesting concept re: the two economies - a tech/creative economy whose members lean Democratic, and a socialist/military economy whose members lean Republican.

Another of your thought-provoking posts on our sociopolitical environment. However, I'm beginning to worry that as you pursue the Unified Field Theory of American politics, that you are beginning to leave even some of your most loyal fans (like me) behind. You may need to find the simple formula that makes it clear to the rest of us (like Einstein's E=mc^2), or else you may need to do a lot of filling in the blanks for the rest of us to catch up.

Keep thinking, keep writing, I'll keep struggling to comprehend.

Several people have hinted that your analysis is too simple. Many of the high tech good jobs in the South come from military industry and many of the good working class jobs are in the active-duty military (they are often better than other available jobs). But the military-industrial complex doesn't provide all the jobs. Much of the economy has been (and still is) held up by cheap labor -- first slave labor, then exploited black people, and now exploited immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. Also, the oil/chemical industry provides much of the money in Louisiana, Texas, and Southern California. And the prison industrial complex (another government boondoggle) also exploits people.

So many of the main drivers of the economy in the Republican South are socialized (military and prison) industry, socialized labor (active duty military), exploitation of cheap labor, and exploitation of cheap natural resources. This is a lot different than the free market stereotype and, as you say, by pointing this out and threatening their socialized/exploitive economic model, we may be able to get some important concessions.

And don't write off the South. Immigration from the North and from other countries is changing the makeup and ideology. There is much potential there eventually, if not in 2008.

Almost without exception, the red states take in more in federal spending than they pay out in taxes, and the reverse is true for the blue states.  The Republicans rail against "big government", then spend like mad while their constituents feed at the public trough.  Democrats are at least consistent - we believe in good government, and we foot the bill for it.

Also, a friend of mine is convinced that one of the primary motivations behind the Iraq War was to start a new Cold War with Iran, to justify our insane amount of military spending.  That idea's starting to not look so crazy.