mis-red
One of the narratives that emerged from that last presidential election described a split between, on the one hand, a rural middle America that hewed to traditional values and patriotism, and on the other hand a leftist, elitist, urban northeast and western coast that rejected the same values. I know, gag me with a reductionist spoon.So: Fascinating report in this week's Army Times (it's a Gannett paper, not an army publication) on American military deaths in Iraq. As of Oct. 26, 213 Californians had died in combat while serving in the U.S. armed forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom. California leads the nation in this deeply unfortunate distinction; the state with the next-highest number of combat deaths is Texas, with 177. More interesting still is the map of the United States showing a red dot for each American servicemember killed in Iraq; the very large, very red blotch of ink covering coastal Southern California is the largest on the map by a very wide measure. (And deaths are mapped by hometown of servicemembers, not by service station; the red blotch in question is not a function of Camp Pendleton's location.)*
Also noted in the Thursday issue of USA Today (in a graphic on the front page of the "Life" section, unaccompanied by a story), are the states with the largest population of military veterans in the nation. California again leads the way with 2.3 million veterans -- a far higher number than the next two states on the list, Florida (1.8 million veterans) and Texas (1.7 million veterans).
So California, ladies and gentleman, clearly leads the nation in the embrace of traditional American values and patriotism. Far more of us have worn the uniform of our nation's armed forces than those patriotically indifferent folks in Texas, where they must eat a whole lot more brie than they're willing to admit. Measured objectively, California is the very reddest state of all. Right?
Or maybe the division of the country into red states and blue states with wholly different values is kind of full of shit.
An aside:
(*The numbers by percentage of population are fascinating for a whole different reason. By far the heaviest toll in U.S. military combat deaths incurred in Operation Iraqi Freedom have been those of American Samoa, at 8.63 deaths per 100,000 residents. Next down the list of the top five are the Virgin Islands, Vermont, Micronesia, and South Dakota. The Marianas Islands also make the top ten.)
posted by Chris Bray @ 10:51 PM
5 Comments:
Per your aside, Chris--maybe it's time our Pacific possessions were able to become states???
I'm not sure exactly what "coastal Southern California" refers to (orange county?), but I don't think this story undermines the concept of red and blue, only the mistake of trying to apply that concept to states as a whole. California outside of the Bay Area and Los Angeles (which have most of its population) is quite conservative.
BC,
I imagine "coastal Southern California" refers in part to Orange County but also to L.A. and San Diego as well. The armed forces are made up largely of the poor and young men and women of color. L.A. County has plenty of both to go around. I'd actually be interested to see what enrollment numbers are like for the various areas of California. Sadly, I don't think the question is red vs. blue at all but rather who has the political power regardless of ideology.
Of course the point that red and blue can't really be applied to states still holds. If you look at the red/blue maps of the 2004 election by county or precint rather than state you get a much less dramatic image. Much less "a country divided" and more "the country divided from the city."
Here's a link I should have posted to begin with; click on it to see the analysis from the Military Times newspapers of OIF combat deaths by several categories, including age, race, and home of record. Something that (as I read it) stand out in the data: 73.8 percent of servicemembers killed in OIF were white, reflecting a military that is 67 percent white (against a population that is 75.6 percent white); and the very overwhelming majority of servicemembers killed in OIF have been between the ages of 17 and 24.
This suggests two tentative conclusions about sarahliz's comment that "The armed forces are made up largely of the poor and young men and women of color": The first is probably defensible, as the military is crowded with very young people looking to get a start in life -- but the second part, that the armed forces are "largely made of...young men and women of color," is plainly overstated. Young men and women of color serve in numbers disproportionate to their numbers in the larger population, but not in wildly disproportionate numbers.
Final, unrelated note: By "coastal Southern California" I meant, yes, the parts of Southern California that lie along the coast: Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties, and arguably the western portions of San Bernardino county.
Sorry -- forgot the link!
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