Of all the books I've read in my effort to understand our divisions the most helpful was "The New Class War" by Michael Lind, a conservative who, by my lights, does a good Marxist analysis of what's going on. This is a class war in which the PMC over time, with and without premeditation has diminished working class power.
Progressives who would like to write off 21 million people as morally irredeemable would like to avoid looking at NAFTA, treaty deals, MLMs scams that mostly burn people without means, the Opioid crisis.....
Racism is the preferred narrative for understanding these people. And there's plenty of that to go around. However, to me, status and race are interwoven in complicated ways. People who never gave a thought to their race and status were unnerved by Obama's election.
The possibility that the hidden "wage" of race would be rescinded, that the unending supremacy that had taken for granted would disappear mobilized them.
But underneath that fear is something deeper. And that is the valorization of certain skill sets above others. People who work with words and numbers are disproportionately rewarded and other skill sets are devalued which leads to a self-esteem deficit, a feeling that if you didn't have these skills or interest in developing those skills you were a loser. That's just not tenable place to be.
To me....that's the real rock in their shoe. They can't feel good about who they are and what they do in a society that doesn't have enough sense not to insult the people that make their lives possible.
Thanks for the comment! I wonder if you agree with Taibbi's 2020 article that I cite in the piece; that article brings up the issue of "urban liberal condescension".
I tend to agree that the twitterin' class is condescending. But it's not so much that as it is the staggering incuriosity about why these people are so unhappy, so miserable. Racism is definitely part of the answer....but it's not the whole answer and if we want to stay together as a union we will have to widen that path to understanding. Differing notions of masculinity is one thread of this.....
Check out this article written in 2015. It reads now like a prologue to the Trump years.
What about the basic issue of being screwed over materially? How do you weigh the material aspect where your wages/benefits have been stagnant/declining for decades against the non-material aspect of masculine honor?
In this country self worth will inevitably be linked to wages. Biden's people are making the bet that improving material circumstance will tame the wild beast but I'm not sure. Fascism gives rootless, underemployed men a cause, a chance to be part of something larger, and a stage on which to perform their super-hero function. That's seems an irresistible impulse to grandiosity for a certain population, stoked by the fire arms industry among others.
Lately, I'm seeing everything in terms of stratification and the stagnancy of mobility. There's a huge and somewhat different cohort that Trump has energized to take power using the political tools they are anxious to deploy: intimidation and threat. These people are ambitious and likely to see their window of opportunity shutting if Trump isn't enshrined. Call them the mini-Macbeths.
Norman: Try to think positively. The fewer Republicans who wear masks and are not vaccinated, the fewer Republicans will be voting in the next election. Floyd
The article is about dangerous tendencies in the GOP; I can also do an article on dangerous tendencies in the Democratic Party if you'd like.
I'm sure that you and I both agree that anyone involved in GOP politics whose reaction to my discussion with Ornstein is to start pointing the finger at the Democrats has some serious problems with basic morality; look in the mirror first and explain what you're doing to fix the problems on your own side of the aisle, and THEN point the finger at the other side AFTER you've done that. Every moral person agrees that that's the correct sequence of actions to take, correct? Anything other than that sequence seems to me to be a form of evasion and deflection.
I wonder what you think is "going to far" in the effort to protect the public; I can obviously understand the desire to keep the unvaxxed away from public spaces where they might harm people, but I think it's weird to have a problem with them living their lives as long as they're not harming anyone else.
Here are some notes that I took based on a conversation that I had with a left-wing friend (my friend is saying all of this, not me):
--the principle that you should look at yourself first makes sense
--but as Ornstein emphasized, it doesn’t mean much in this case
--the Dems have problems and critics like Ornstein and me go after the Dems all the time for the Dems' problems
--but it’s like a balance between a straw and an elephant; the overwhelming problem is that the Republicans have gone off the rails while the Dems remain a center-right party with a mildly social democratic voting base
--as for the vaccine stuff, the polls are presumably correct, but the far right Rasmussen interpretation is off the wall
--the word for the attitude that the unvaxxed should be segregated isn't "fascistic"; I would use the phrase “maybe going too far in their efforts to protect the public and definitely being insensitive to some of the reasons for refusing vaccination"
--as for fining the unvaxxed (like Quebec is doing), it’s arguable in principle but hopeless in practice; it fails to pay attention to the existing society
Of all the books I've read in my effort to understand our divisions the most helpful was "The New Class War" by Michael Lind, a conservative who, by my lights, does a good Marxist analysis of what's going on. This is a class war in which the PMC over time, with and without premeditation has diminished working class power.
Progressives who would like to write off 21 million people as morally irredeemable would like to avoid looking at NAFTA, treaty deals, MLMs scams that mostly burn people without means, the Opioid crisis.....
Racism is the preferred narrative for understanding these people. And there's plenty of that to go around. However, to me, status and race are interwoven in complicated ways. People who never gave a thought to their race and status were unnerved by Obama's election.
The possibility that the hidden "wage" of race would be rescinded, that the unending supremacy that had taken for granted would disappear mobilized them.
But underneath that fear is something deeper. And that is the valorization of certain skill sets above others. People who work with words and numbers are disproportionately rewarded and other skill sets are devalued which leads to a self-esteem deficit, a feeling that if you didn't have these skills or interest in developing those skills you were a loser. That's just not tenable place to be.
To me....that's the real rock in their shoe. They can't feel good about who they are and what they do in a society that doesn't have enough sense not to insult the people that make their lives possible.
Thanks for the comment! I wonder if you agree with Taibbi's 2020 article that I cite in the piece; that article brings up the issue of "urban liberal condescension".
I tend to agree that the twitterin' class is condescending. But it's not so much that as it is the staggering incuriosity about why these people are so unhappy, so miserable. Racism is definitely part of the answer....but it's not the whole answer and if we want to stay together as a union we will have to widen that path to understanding. Differing notions of masculinity is one thread of this.....
Check out this article written in 2015. It reads now like a prologue to the Trump years.
https://aeon.co/essays/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-man-in-the-age-of-austerity
What about the basic issue of being screwed over materially? How do you weigh the material aspect where your wages/benefits have been stagnant/declining for decades against the non-material aspect of masculine honor?
In this country self worth will inevitably be linked to wages. Biden's people are making the bet that improving material circumstance will tame the wild beast but I'm not sure. Fascism gives rootless, underemployed men a cause, a chance to be part of something larger, and a stage on which to perform their super-hero function. That's seems an irresistible impulse to grandiosity for a certain population, stoked by the fire arms industry among others.
Lately, I'm seeing everything in terms of stratification and the stagnancy of mobility. There's a huge and somewhat different cohort that Trump has energized to take power using the political tools they are anxious to deploy: intimidation and threat. These people are ambitious and likely to see their window of opportunity shutting if Trump isn't enshrined. Call them the mini-Macbeths.
Norman: Try to think positively. The fewer Republicans who wear masks and are not vaccinated, the fewer Republicans will be voting in the next election. Floyd
I suppose that the GOP sees a disastrous situation on the Covid front as ultimately politically beneficial for them, correct?
The article is about dangerous tendencies in the GOP; I can also do an article on dangerous tendencies in the Democratic Party if you'd like.
I'm sure that you and I both agree that anyone involved in GOP politics whose reaction to my discussion with Ornstein is to start pointing the finger at the Democrats has some serious problems with basic morality; look in the mirror first and explain what you're doing to fix the problems on your own side of the aisle, and THEN point the finger at the other side AFTER you've done that. Every moral person agrees that that's the correct sequence of actions to take, correct? Anything other than that sequence seems to me to be a form of evasion and deflection.
I wonder what you think is "going to far" in the effort to protect the public; I can obviously understand the desire to keep the unvaxxed away from public spaces where they might harm people, but I think it's weird to have a problem with them living their lives as long as they're not harming anyone else.
Here are some notes that I took based on a conversation that I had with a left-wing friend (my friend is saying all of this, not me):
--the principle that you should look at yourself first makes sense
--but as Ornstein emphasized, it doesn’t mean much in this case
--the Dems have problems and critics like Ornstein and me go after the Dems all the time for the Dems' problems
--but it’s like a balance between a straw and an elephant; the overwhelming problem is that the Republicans have gone off the rails while the Dems remain a center-right party with a mildly social democratic voting base
--as for the vaccine stuff, the polls are presumably correct, but the far right Rasmussen interpretation is off the wall
--the word for the attitude that the unvaxxed should be segregated isn't "fascistic"; I would use the phrase “maybe going too far in their efforts to protect the public and definitely being insensitive to some of the reasons for refusing vaccination"
--as for fining the unvaxxed (like Quebec is doing), it’s arguable in principle but hopeless in practice; it fails to pay attention to the existing society