A leisure theory.

Another note #

Urban elites look down on rural leisure. But rural leisure is better. Moreover until the leisure left recognizes this they will not get far with some voters.

I was golfing when this occurred to me. Of course golfing is a suburban rich guy hobby. But it is fairly popular, and it certainly is something that some people look down upon from certain perches on the left. I've seen leftists on twitter blaming golf courses for the lack of affordable housing. Even the pro-leisure left more generally does a version of this. When chapo (pretty hilariously) mocks the beautiful boaters, they are making the point that Trump's biggest fans are middle class, but it's hard to escape the disdain of one leisure class (film enjoyers) for another (boating enjoyers).

When you account for guns, cars, less favored sports like NASCAR, boating, and hunting and fishing, the gulf does seem pretty wide. And of course the disdain goes both ways. Urban leisure consists mostly of achieving fine dining merit badges, fancy bar drinking, aimless shopping, and pretending that you will take advantage of high culture. The receding of common leisure surface area does seem to be something that has changed--not to claim it's cause or sympton--and I think makes building a more unified future more difficult.

I think that the culture wars are at least partially about competing visions of the good life, and leisure figures prominently in those visions. I won't claim not to have a dog in this fight, but I think that the solution to this is pretty straight forward, at least from a messaging strategy standpoint--simply be more inclusive. A "jobs and leisure" message would be broadly appealing. Something like "Socialism: Spend more time on your (reasonably sized, green) boat, fishing (well managed) fisheries." I think that a message about leisure pairs well with work, especially with the notion of being in control of your workplace.

I also think this is interesting in light of a previous note about how luxury is morally repellent. Some version of this vleblenian idea appears to be making a comeback. I think it's a bit a of a side show though--kind of like the obsession with anti-consumerism in the early 90's. Maybe interesting intellectually, but not that useful from the perspective of movement building.