The impact of class divisions on politics and just about everything else in America is something like the elephant in the living room that everyone ignores. Well, except when Republicans accuse Democrats of fomenting class warfare. Can’t have those unwashed peasants getting too riled up, can we?
Here are a couple of article that are interesting to read together — Richard Florida, “Class Decides Everything“; and Thomas Edsall, “White Working Chaos.” It appears our class distinctions are both growing sharper and also are driving not just politics but our quality of life in the U.S.
Great article, Maha, so good I printed a copy to share with a friend. The next article down on the Salon page, though, is equally pertinent: it deals with the nearly-forgotten and always-ignored Phil Gramm, architect of much of our financial debacle.
Listening to NPR news this a.m., I noted Georgia’s legislative move to permit sale of out-of-state insurance contracts. Isn’t that a violation of the sacred “states’ rights” to regulate commerce inside their own borders? Seems to me that if Dems were doing this, the teabillicans would be quite indignant.
Oops!!! Here’s the link to the Gramm article:
http://www.salon.com/2012/06/07/phil_gramm_the_success_of_failure/singleton/
maha,
Great links!
Thank you.
Reading them, it occurred to me that Obama’s “God, gay’s, and guns” line, though correct, had too narrow a focus.
He also needed to add “Brown people, and my women folk and children.”
Those, at least it seems so to me, are what the “working class” white males are concerned about.
They’ve been brainwashed into thinking of Jesus as if he was some Old Testament Prophet – who should/would be punishing and smiting those who don’t agree with him/them – and that he will, if they pray hard enough, and vote the “right’ way.
And that God, and his Son, want them to have dominion over all brown people, and their own women folk and children, and to cast out, or smite, the homosexuals in their midst.
Why else would God have had the Founders Fathers include the 2nd Amendment, and given them access to guns?
And Conservatives have been brilliant in identifying this, and using it to their advantage. The answer to “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”, is white male Kansan’s.
I’m tired of the “Chickens For Col. Sanders!’ line.
How about “Mad and Angry Albino Bulls, Leading Themselves to the Slaughterhouses?”
They seem as if they are ever willing and ready to do so, as long as they can control their cows and calves in the process, and make sure that the brown and gay bovines go ahead of them – using their horns, if and when, needed.
White working class males have signed a suicide pact with Conservatism, thinking they’re signing on the dotted line for and with God, instead of what they’re really doing: making a pact with the Devil – while the Devil laughs behind their backs.
And all of this would be fine if they didn’t vote – and take the rest of us down with them.
Maybe I’m wrong?
Please feel free to tell me that I am. And how and why.
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While I don’t consider Haidt’s work entirely without value, I think he’s overreaching, especially with regards to contextualizing his results to fit the current political climate.
On the other hand, I’ve always found Richard Florida’s work insightful and concise.
cund – I happen to have a down-and-out white, working-class, Republican male living in my downstairs (I hope temporarily) otherwise he’d be on the street, or somebody’s couch. He is for all practical purposes stuck on victimization – he is a victim of everyone and everything to the point where whichever political party will confirm his victimization and promise to do something about it, will get his vote.
Today’s Republican Party understands his type. It affirms his belief. It promises to rescue him. He will vote Republican.
(I should mention that, at least his victimization, is not altogether rational. The other day he went into a tirade about bicycle riders, of all people. They run stop-lights, veer into traffic etc. and somehow manage to menace him personally?)