All Politics Is Not Local: the Role of Competing Nationalisms in the Rhetoric of American Political Ideologies
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
All Politics is Not Local: The Role of Competing Nationalisms in the Rhetoric of American Political Ideologies Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Sepulveda, David Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 01/10/2021 02:51:20 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/223331 ALL POLITICS IS NOT LOCAL: THE ROLE OF COMPETING NATIONALISMS IN THE RHETORIC OF AMERICAN POLITCAL IDEOLOGIES by David Sepulveda _____________________________ Copyright © David Sepulveda 2012 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2012 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by David Sepulveda entitled “All Politics is Not Local: The Role of Competing Nationalisms in the Rhetoric of American Political Ideologies” and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _____________________________________________________ Date: April 11, 2012 Thomas P. Miller, PhD Associate Provost, Faculty Affairs _____________________________________________________ Date: April 11, 2012 Theresa Enos, PhD Professor _____________________________________________________ Date: April 11, 2012 Cristina Ramirez, PhD Assistant Professor Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. _____________________________________________________ Date: April 11, 2012 Dissertation Director: Thomas P. Miller, PhD Associate Provost, Faculty Affairs 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: ____David Sepulveda__ 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I must express my sincere gratitude to the members of my dissertation committee, Drs. Thomas P. Miller, Theresa Enos, and Cristina Ramirez. Dr. Miller, whom I secretly came to think of as “Doubting Thomas” for the way he constantly pushed me to fully develop my lines of argument. Dr. Enos, whose amazing attention to detail forced me to look at every word and sentence with a critical eye, and who will surely raise an eyebrow at this sentence fragment. And Dr. Ramirez, whose thoughtful commentary and positive reinforcement always seemed to come at the times when I most needed them. I must also thank my friends and colleagues Drs. Ben Ristow and Daylanne Markwardt for their thoughtful comments on early drafts. I can only hope that I was as helpful to them as they were to me. Thanks, as well, to the JAs. You know who you are. Finally, I would like to thank my family: Mom, Dad, Danny, Heather, Patty, Rusten, Landon, Connor, Elijah, and my as yet unnamed niece-to-be. I love you all very much. 5 DEDICATION To my parents, who have worked harder on me than I have ever worked on anything. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER 1: ACCOUNTING FOR IDEOLOGICAL CHOICE ............................................ 10 The Basic Thesis ........................................................................................................................ 13 The Quandary of Ideological Choice ......................................................................................... 17 Ideological Arguments and Labels ............................................................................................ 22 Political Ideology as a Function of Attitudes toward Change .................................................... 29 Political Ideology as a Function of Family Ideals ....................................................................... 32 Political Ideology as a Function of Epistemology ...................................................................... 38 Political Ideology as a Function of Branding ............................................................................. 40 Still Looking for Answers .......................................................................................................... 42 CHAPTER 2: NATIONALISMS AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES .......................................................................................................................... 45 Nation, State, and Nationalism ................................................................................................. 50 Civil Rights and the Rise of a New US Nationalism .................................................................... 56 National Formation .................................................................................................................. 58 7 The History of US Nationalism .................................................................................................. 67 Contesting and Defining the US National Identity .................................................................... 75 Identification and Consubstantiality in Nationalisms and Politics ............................................. 82 Ethos, Nationalism, and Ideology ............................................................................................. 84 CHAPTER 3: CONTESTING NATIONAL IDENTITY IN POPULAR CULTURE ........... 89 Philadelphia, Limbaugh, and McNabb ...................................................................................... 91 Sportswriters React .................................................................................................................. 95 Ideological Readings of Sportswriters’ Reactions.................................................................... 103 National Formation Defines the Middle Ground ..................................................................... 119 CHAPTER 4: VALUES VOTING AS NATION FORMING ............................................... 124 Narrating Nationalism ............................................................................................................ 129 Obama in 2004 ....................................................................................................................... 132 Palin in 2008 ........................................................................................................................... 145 Competing National Narratives .............................................................................................. 155 CHAPTER 5: REVERSING THE AMBIGUITY ................................................................. 157 Ideological Arguments in “The Zone of Ambiguity” ................................................................ 158 8 Making Use of Zones of Ambiguity in American Political Rhetoric .......................................... 165 Opportunities for Reversing the Ambiguity ............................................................................ 177 Conclusion: Not Entirely Local ................................................................................................ 184 WORKS CITED ....................................................................................................................... 189 9 ABSTRACT This dissertation addresses the different ways in which Americans define citizenship and nationhood and the associated implications for politics and political rhetoric. I argue that the contesting of the national identity—the ways in which a given image of the United Sates is privileged over other images of the nation—is central to the ideological divisions of the United States today. The dissertation begins by examining existing scholarship on the nature of ideological divisions and arguments in contemporary US politics, and the survey demonstrates that each of these approaches tells us a great deal about how certain individual factors influence ideological arguments, but these insights tend to come at the cost of minimizing the roles played by extremely powerful societal forces like race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. I propose, therefore, a view of the left- center-right political spectrum in the United States as a spectrum based on competing— and sometimes overlapping—nationalist ideologies, with opposing groups competing for control of the state agencies that sustain and diffuse the national high culture. According to this view, individuals define their position in the ideological spectrum based on whom they culturally identify with, and