What really lies at the heart of support for the right-wing among the working class?

[GPDP]

I'd like to chalk it up to propaganda from Fox News and such, but is that really all there is to it? Could there be some social factors to it as well, such as the legacy of racism?

I had a professor once tell me how, when conducting a poll in Mississippi (or was it Georgia? It was a Southern state for sure), he asked Republican voters their stances on various individual issues, such as health care, social security, welfare, jobs, etc., and he found out on every issue, they were clearly to the left of the Republicans they were electing to office.

What he went on to hypothesize is that despite their relatively positive response to such programs and policy proposals, they nevertheless voted for and elected right-wingers who actively campaigned against "welfare queens" and such, and as we all know, "welfare queens" is code for people of color. Thus, what ultimately eclipsed their support for a greater social safety net is the fear of blacks and Hispanics using them and leeching off of them. Thus racism trumps objective class interests for these people.

A friend also suggested religion is to blame, since religion clouds the mind, encourages blind obedience to dogma, and discourages critical thinking. Politicians can then use religious arguments to justify poisonous policy proposals, such as anti-LGBT legislation and such. Though I question just how much religion is truly a cause of this, as religious arguments really only make sense to the uneducated, the indoctrinated, and the downtrodden, all of which are symptoms of a thoroughly brutalized working class, which the American working class exemplifies, especially in places like the South.

Maybe there's more to this, or maybe I'm looking too much into it. Any input would be appreciated.

[Dimentio]

I am more thinking "the welfare queen" rhetoric is to blame.

[redSHARP]

I think it stems from seeing working class thought as communism, which in the U.S. is a evil thing. further more, though they might be economically left, socially they might be right, which might off set things and lead them to vote right.

[Obzervi]

Racism. The white working class has bought into the propaganda and is afraid of the coming demographic changes. Its inevitable though.

[Catmatic Leftist]

The bourgeoisie has always tried to divide and conquer the proletariat through appealing to racial differences. They try to marginalize one group and favor the other, regardless of who it is, to keep the proletariat fighting amongst each other rather than rebelling against the obvious injustices that the bourgeoisie creates.

[PilesOfDeadNazis]

I don't doubt that the white workers in America might actually want Socialism economically(whether they want to call it Socialism or not), but socially they are backwards. Old ideas such as racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. have completely mindfucked so many people(mostly working class since, after all, that is who this propaganda is for) that they neglect economic equality as long as racial and gender inequality can stay around(it's "family friendly" I guess).

This right-wing mind-set which is so deeply ingrained in the minds of the white workers of America will certainly be a pain to counter. Sure we can win them over in debates when talking about the general idea of emancipating the American worker from the Capitalist and the Capitalist politician, but their minds reclose when they realize the social battles which also must be waged in order to form a free society, i.e. the fight against homophobia, racism, sexism, and old, oppressive traditions in general. They don't take kindly to such ideas.

The working class has been very well divided by bourgeois propaganda. Race, gender, popularity, religion, etc. We have a lot of work ahead of us.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I don't doubt that the white workers in America might actually want Socialism economically(whether they want to call it Socialism or not), but socially they are backwards. Old ideas such as racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. have completely mindfucked so many people(mostly working class since, after all, that is who this propaganda is for) that they neglect economic equality as long as racial and gender inequality can stay around(it's "family friendly" I guess).


It's workers in general, not just white workers. You can find plenty of racism, sexism, and homophobia among black, Hispanic or Asian workers. The only difference is that white workers aren't socially discriminated against based on their skin color.

[Red Commissar]

I'm really curious too. Living down in the south as well I've always wondered about this.

Really talking to people you see that they have a distaste for big corporations and they support some welfare measures like social security, medicare, etc. If they haven't been duped they also still recognize the role the government has in developing infrastructure and schools. Not many politicians down here, or at least until recently with Tea Party fervor, could get far with out addressing public education in a meaningful way.

Personally I lean more towards the "welfare queen" explanation. One of the major drives for the Republican capture of the House in the 1990s rode off that energy, and the resulting changes to the welfare structure was realized as a result. Really this image of minorities leaching off welfare resonates with people and they see it as the problem of debt. Like you said they see any expansion on it as benefiting those leeching off the system.

Another element I think was the mistrust that began to develop towards the government coming out of the 1960s and 1970s, over welfare but as well as its efficiency. Many viewed the bureaucracy negatively and a hindrance to their lives. Those without work felt their potential employers were "tied up" and couldn't employ them because of red-tape. The only impact they saw then as government got "bigger" was more taxes and burden on them. This was something that Reagan, by glossing over some of the more unfavorable economic policies with morality politics, was able to exploit.

There was also the ability to attack "left" tenets with populism. To these people "socialism" may mean a government bureaucrat telling them what they should do. "Socialism" is then transferred to an ideology of college-educated professionals and those living in urban areas and well to do suburbs.

Really both Republicans and Democrats try to appeal to these things in the South. They try to present themselves as a "simple" man, one who understands the people, and has wholesome values. They try to present themselves as someone who will stand up to "Washington" and protect them. All smokes and mirrors but it's pretty powerful stuff for some reason.

I think we can look at the "healthcare reform" debate for some examples of this. While we had some tea-baggers preaching about free-market and the like, the core issues seemed to revolve around the points I raised above. While there was the true issue about the government pushing people to buy insurance, a lot of the hysteria seemed to focus on other areas:

-Death Panels: "Big Government" deciding people's fates
-Taxes: Back and forth over how the plan would affect national debt and current tax brackets
-Whether or not "illegals" will be able to use the system
-More bureaucracy
-Inefficiency (supported by horror stories from Canada or trying to compare to US Post)
-More "welfare"- ie "we" work hard while "they" sit around and do nothing
-They won't understand what you want
-The issue over the "freedom to chose your doctor"
-SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

We see some overriding issues here as I listed before- "big government", bureaucracy, inefficiency, "illegals", welfare queens, taxes, etc. The right has been able to associate these permanently as inevitable outcomes of "left" politics- in other words a welfare state in the European sense.

So really I think it might be attributable to multiple factors. For example in the "centre-left" and even "left" parties in Europe, we've seen them unfortunately attack "foreign" workers, welfare "leechers", "illegal" immigrants, etc. I've had some rather nasty encounters on other social forums with people who seemed mostly "progressive" at first, but had some rather reprehensible views on minorities and immigration. One example I recall was a Czech who while having a sense of what "socialism" is, had this demonic hatred for Roma. Historically we saw that trade unions here and "progressive" forces often closed themselves to blacks, Asians, and for awhile Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants.

Religion I think plays more to reinforce this rather than be the source of it.

And I want to note this isn't just in "white" workers, but I've seen some rather conservative views concerning homosexuality, "morals", "hard work", etc. among Mexicans and blacks I work with. This social framework, the civil society, is a concern for any country really. The US just happens to have a strong one that formed from being on one polar end of the Cold War.

[Ocean Seal]

Racism & sexism are probably the most deleterious influences. If you look at the data whites and Asians outearn blacks and Hispanics by fairly substantial margins, as men on average outearn women. They'll find a paradox of racial and gender privilege coupled with economic disadvantage. Also Ronald Reagan co-opted the working class vote by stating that he was an enemy of affirmative action.

Also another negative influence is that no one in America knows what working class actually means. They think it only means the poorest sections of the country. I recall telling a liberal friend that a majority of working class people vote for Republicans. Her response is "why do poor people vote for the Republicans". The combined notion of working class being a pejorative with the condescending nature of liberals causes many of the people in the more revolutionary stratas of the working class to join the right wing.

Effectively, in addition to racism and sexism the next influence is the fact that many liberals and seen as intolerable and elitist, hence the "I could have a beer with Bush (despite the fact that he's a billionaire he wasn't seen as an elitist)".

Also liberals have this problem that they think that when they lose, its the fault of the voters for not recognizing their superiority. I mean when the lose they call the electorate stupid, and who honestly would like to vote for the party which insults you.

[PilesOfDeadNazis]

It's workers in general, not just white workers. You can find plenty of racism, sexism, and homophobia among black, Hispanic or Asian workers. The only difference is that white workers aren't socially discriminated against based on their skin color.
Very true. The divisions go every way. And even the non-white workers could be considered right-winged since most workers either vote Republican or Democrat(obviously).

But I don't think the oppressed nationalities in America will reject Socialism simply on those social issues as much as white Americans(the non-racially oppressed majority) would. However, I'm no expert.

[Obzervi]

Its only a matter of time before the desired changes take place. In a few decades whites will be a minority. Soon after that they will be insignificant. They are the only ones standing in the way of change. As blacks and hispanics become the majority, so will the political and economic structures change. The whites will just have to accept it.

[Sixiang]

There are a lot of different reasons behind it all, but I would say that your assumptions about religion and racism are definitely likely and important. I know first hand growing up with Roman Catholics all around me, that Catholics were more left-wing in the past than they are now, what really was the turning point was abortion. After that, they maybe adapted more right-wing views or just stuck with the Republicans simply because of abortion and/or same-sex marriage. But, like I said, there are lots of different variables behind it all and it's a mixture of all of them over time with different degrees of intensity.

[Ocean Seal]

Its only a matter of time before the desired changes take place. In a few decades whites will be a minority. Soon after that they will be insignificant. They are the only ones standing in the way of change. As blacks and hispanics become the majority, so will the political and economic structures change. The whites will just have to accept it.
I disagree, the capitalist class knows how to protect its interests, as minorities become more established they will attempt to appease them. That being said, I don't believe that white Americans stand in the way of change. That avoids class analysis. Americans of all colors in the working class stand against their own interests. As racism begins to fade, whites will move further to the left, along with racial minorities in the United States. The enemy is not one race, but racism itself. Anti-capitalist action will take place within a few decades in the United States because even racism cannot hold back the working class when capitalism starts to fail.

[PilesOfDeadNazis]

Its only a matter of time before the desired changes take place. In a few decades whites will be a minority. Soon after that they will be insignificant. They are the only ones standing in the way of change. As blacks and hispanics become the majority, so will the political and economic structures change. The whites will just have to accept it.
This makes it sound like the revolution should be based on race lines. As Explosive Situation said, there is still homophobia and sexism in the whole of the American working class, not the just the white people.

Racism, sexism, homophobia and all the rest of that shit will not disappear along with the growing "insignificance" of whitey. It's the bourgeoisie class, the bourgeois propaganda, the bourgeios state etc. which must become insignificant(abolished, really) if these things are to be eradicated. Not just the white majority being replaced with another racial majority.

[griffjam]

You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do welt. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.



–Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.)



Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country’s call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education.



–Sen, John McCain (R., Ariz.)

In the lead-up to the midterm elections, the Republicans’ single fleeting ray of hope was a botched joke by Senator John Kerry. The joke was obviously aimed at George W. Bush, but they took it to suggest that Kerry thought only those who flunked out of school end up in the military. It was all very disingenuous, Most knew perfectly well that Kerry’s real point was to suggest that the president wasn’t very bright. But the right smelled blood. The problem with “aristo-slackers” like Kerry, wrote one blogger on the website of National Review, is that they assume “the troops are in Iraq not because they are deeply committed to the mission (they need to deny that) but rather because of a system that takes advantage of their lack of social and economic opportunities…. We should clobber them with that ruthlessly until the day of the election–just like we did in ‘04–because it is the most basic reason they deserve to lose.”

In the end, it didn’t make a lot of difference, because most Americans decided they were not deeply committed to the mission either–insofar as they were even sure what the mission was. But it seems to me the question we should really be asking is: why did it take a military catastrophe (not to mention a strategy of trying to avoid any association with the sort of north-eastern elites Kerry typifies for so many Americans) to allow the Democrats to finally emerge from the political wilderness? Or, in other words: why has this Republican line proved so effective?

It strikes me that to get at the answer, one has to probe far more deeply into the nature of American society than most commentators are willing to go. We’re used to reducing all such issues to an either/or: patriotism versus opportunity, “values” versus bread-and-butter issues like jobs and education. But I would argue that to frame things this way plays into the hands of the right. Certainly, many people do join the army because they are deprived of opportunities. But the real question to be asking is: opportunities to do what?

Let me offer an anthropological perspective on the question. It first came home to me a year or two ago when I was attending a lecture by Catherine Lutz, a fellow anthropologist from Brown University who has been studying U.S. military bases overseas. Many of these bases organize outreach programs, in which soldiers venture out to repair schoolrooms or to perform free dental checkups for the locals. These programs were created to improve local relations, but they were apparently at least as effective in their psychological impact on the soldiers, many of whom would wax euphoric when describing them: e.g., “This is why I joined the army,” “This is what military service is really all about–not just defending your country, but helping people.” The military’s own statistics point in the same direction: although the surveys do not list “helping people” among the motives for enlistment, the most high-minded option available–”to do something to be proud of”–is the favorite.

Is it possible that America is actually a nation of frustrated altruists? Certainly this is not the way that we normally think about ourselves. (Our normal habits of thought, actually, tend toward a rough and ready cynicism. The world is a giant marketplace; everyone is in it for a buck; if you want to understand why something happened, first ask who stands to gain by it. The same attitudes expressed in the back rooms of bars are echoed in the highest reaches of social science. America’s great contribution to the world in the latter respect has been the development of “rational choice” theories, which proceed from the assumption that all human behavior can be understood as a matter of economic calculation, of rational actors trying to get as much as possible out of any given situation with the least cost to themselves. As a result, in most fields, the very existence of altruistic behavior is considered a kind of puzzle, and everyone from economists to evolutionary biologists has become famous through attempts to “solve” it–that is, to explain the mystery of why bees sacrifice themselves for hives or human beings hold open doors and give correct street directions to total strangers. At the same time, the case of the military bases suggests the possibility that in fact Americans, particularly the less “affluent ones, are haunted by frustrated desires to do good in the world.

It would not be difficult to assemble evidence that this is the case. Studies of charitable giving, for example, have shown the poor to be the most generous: the lower one’s income, the higher the proportion of it that one is likely to give away to strangers. The same pattern holds true, incidentally, when comparing the middle classes and the rich: one study of tax returns in 2003 concluded that if the most affluent families had given away as much of their assets as even the average middle-class family, overall charitable donations that year would have increased by $25 billion. (All this despite the fact that the wealthy have far more time and opportunity.) Moreover, charity represents only a tiny part of the picture. If one were to break down what typical American wage earners do with their disposable income, one would find that they give much of it away, either through spending in one way or another on their children or through sharing with others: presents, trips, parties, the six-pack of beer for the local softball game. One might object that such sharing is more a reflection of the real nature of pleasure than anything else (who would want to eat a delicious meal at an expensive restaurant all by himself?), but this is actually half the point. Even our self-indulgences tend to be dominated by the logic of the gift. Similarly, some might object that shelling out a small fortune to send one’s children to an exclusive kindergarten is more about stares than altruism. Perhaps: but if you look at what happens over the course of people’s actual lives, it soon becomes apparent that this kind of behavior fulfills an identical psychological need. How many youthful idealists throughout history have managed to finally come to terms with a world based on selfishness and greed the moment they start a family? If one were to assume altruism were the primary human motivation, this would make perfect sense: The only way they can convince themselves to abandon their desire to do right by the world as a whole is to substitute an even more powerful desire to do right by their children.

What all this suggests to me is that American society might well work completely differently than we tend to assume. Imagine, for a moment, that the United States as it exists today were the creation of some ingenious social engineer. What assumptions about human nature could we say this engineer must have been working with? Certainly nothing like rational choice theory. For clearly our social engineer understands that the only way to convince human beings to enter into the world of work and the marketplace (that is, of mind-numbing labor and cutthroat competition) is to dangle the prospect of thereby being able to lavish money on one’s children, buy drinks for one’s friends, and, if one hits the jackpot, spend the rest of one’s life endowing museums and providing AIDS medications to impoverished countries in Africa. Our theorists are constantly trying to strip away the veil of appearances and show how all such apparently selfless gestures really mask mine kind of self-interested strategy, but in reality American society is better conceived as a battle over access to the right to behave altruistically. Selflessness–or, at least, the right to engage in high-minded activity–is not the strategy. It is the prize.

If nothing else, I think this helps us understand why the right has been so much better, in recent years, at playing to populist sentiments than the left. Essentially, they do it by accusing liberals of cutting ordinary Americans off from the right to do good in the world. Let me explain what I mean here by throwing out a series of propositions.

PROPOSITION I: NEITHER EGOISM NOR ALTRUISM IS A NATURAL URGE; THEY IN FACT ARISE IN RELATION TO EACH OTHER AND NEITHER WOULD BE CONCEIVABLE WITHOUT THE MARKET

First of all, I should make clear that I do not believe that either egoism or altruism is somehow inherent in human nature. Human motives are rarely that simple. Rather, egoism and altruism are ideas we have about human nature. Historically, one has tended to arise in response to the other. In the ancient world, for example, it is generally in the rimes and places that one sees the emergence of money and markets that one also sees the rise of world religions–Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. If one sets aside a space and says, “Here you shall think only about acquiring material things for yourself,” then it is hardly surprising that before long someone else will set aside a countervailing space and declare, in effect: “Yes, but here we must contemplate the fact that the self, and material things, are ultimately unimportant.” It was these latter institutions, of course, that first developed our modern notions of charity.

Even today, when we operate outside the domain of the market or of religion, very few of our actions could be said to be motivated by anything so simple as untrammeled greed or utterly selfless generosity. When we are dealing not with strangers but with friends, relatives, or enemies, a much more complicated set of motivations will generally come into play: envy, solidarity, pride, self-destructive grief, loyalty, romantic obsession, resentment, spite, shame, conviviality, the anticipation of shared enjoyment, the desire to show up a rival, and so on, These are the motivations impelling the major dramas of our lives that great novelists like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky immortalize but that social theorists, for some reason, tend to ignore, if one travels to parts of the world where money and markets do not exist–say, to certain parts of New Guinea or Amazonia–such complicated webs of motivation are precisely what one still finds. In societies based around small communities, where almost everyone is either a friend, a relative, or an enemy of everyone else, the languages spoken tend even to lack words that correspond to “self-interest” or “altruism” but include very subtle vocabularies for describing envy, solidarity, pride, and the like. Their economic dealings with one another likewise tend to he based on much more subtle principles. Anthropologists have created a vast literature to try to fathom the dynamics of these apparently exotic “gift economies,” but if it seems odd to us to see, for instance, important men conniving with their cousins to finagle vast wealth, which they then present as gifts to bitter enemies in order to publicly humiliate them, it is because we are so used to operating inside impersonal markets that it never occurs to us to think how we would act if we had an economic system in which we treated people based on how we actually felt about them.

Nowadays, the work of destroying such ways of life is still often done by missionaries–representatives of those very world religions that originally sprang up in reaction to the market long ago. Missionaries, of course, are out to save souls; but they rarely interpret this to mean their role is simply to teach people to accept God and be more altruistic. Almost invariably, they end up trying to convince people to be more selfish and more altruistic at the same time. On the one hand, they set out to teach the “natives” proper work discipline, and try to get them involved with buying and rolling products on the market, so as to better their material lot. At the same time, they explain to them that ultimately, material things are unimportant, and lecture on the value of the higher things, such as selfless devotion to others.

PROPOSITION II: THE POLITICAL RIGHT HAS ALWAYS TRIED TO ENHANCE THIS DIVISION AND THUS CLAIMS TO BE THE CHAMPION OF BOTH EGOISM AND ALTRUISM SIMULTANEOUSLY. THE LEFT HAS TRIED TO EFFACE IT

Might this not help to explain why the United States, the most market-driven, industrialized society on earth, is also among the most religious? Or, even more strikingly, why the country that produced Tolstoy and Dostoevsky spent much of the twentieth century trying to eradicate both the market and religion entirely?

Whereas the political left has always tried to efface this distinction–whether by trying to create economic systems that are nor driven by the profit motive or by replacing private charity with one or another form of community support–the political right has always thrived on it. In the United States, for example, the Republican Party is dominated by two ideological wings: the libertarians and the “Christian right.” At one extreme, Republicans are free-market fundamentalists and advocates of individual liberties (even if they see those liberties largely as a matter of consumer choice); on the other, they are fundamentalists of a more literal variety, suspicious of most individual liberties but enthusiastic about biblical injunctions, “family values,” and charitable good works. At first glance it might seem remarkable that such an alliance manages to hold together at all (and certainly they have ongoing tensions, most famously over abortion). But, in fact, right-wing coalitions almost always take some variation of this form. One might say that the right’s approach is to release the dogs of the market, throwing all traditional verities into disarray; and then, in this tumult of insecurity, offer themselves tip as the last bastion of order and hierarchy, the stalwart defenders of the authority of churches and fathers against the barbarians they have themselves unleashed. A scam it may be, but it is a remarkably effective one; and one result is that the right ends up seeming to have a monopoly on value. It manages, we might say, to occupy both positions, on either side of the divide: extreme egoism and extreme altruism.

Consider, for a moment, the word “value.” When economists talk about value they are really talking about money–or, more precisely, about whatever it is that money is measuring; also, whatever it is that economic actors are assumed to be pursuing. When we are working for a living, or buying and selling things, we are rewarded with money. But whenever we are not working or buying or selling, when we are motivated by pretty much anything other than the desire to get money, we suddenly find ourselves in the domain of “values.” The most commonly invoked of these are, of course, “family values” (which is unsurprising, since by far the most common form of unpaid labor in most industrial societies is child-rearing and housework), but we also talk about religious values, political values, the values that attach themselves to art or patriotism–one could even, perhaps, count loyalty to one’s favorite basketball team. All are seen as commitments that are, or ought to be, uncorrupted by the market. At the same time, they are also seen as utterly unique; whereas money makes all things comparable, “values” such as beauty, devotion, or integrity cannot, by definition, be compared. There is no mathematical formula that could possibly allow one to calculate just how much personal integrity it is right to sacrifice in the pursuit of art or how to balance responsibilities to your family with responsibilities to your God. (Obviously, people do make these kinds of compromises all the time. But they cannot be calculated.) One might put it this way: if value is simply what one considers important, then money allows importance to take a liquid form, by enabling us to compare precise quantities of importance and trade one off for the other. If someone does accumulate a very large amount of money, the first thing he or she is likely to do is to try to convert it into something unique, whether it be Monet’s water lilies, a prizewinning racehorse, or an endowed chair at a university.

What is really at stake here in any market economy is precisely the ability to make these trades, to convert “value” into “values.” All of us are striving to put ourselves in a position in which we can dedicate ourselves to something larger than ourselves. When liberals do well in America, it’s because they can embody that possibility: the Kennedys, for example, are the ultimate Democratic icons not just because they started as poor Irish immigrants who made enormous amounts of money but because they are seen as having managed, ultimately, to turn all that money into nobility.

PROPOSITION III: THE REAL PROBLEM OF THE AMERICAN LEFT IS THAT ALTHOUGH IT DOES TRY IN CERTAIN WAYS TO EFFACE THE DIVISION BETWEEN EGOISM AND ALTRUISM, VALUE AND VALUES, IT LARGELY DOES SO FOR ITS OWN CHILDREN. THIS HAS ALLOWED THE RIGHT, PARADOXICALLY, TO REPRESENT ITSELF AS THE CHAMPION OF THE WORKING CLASS

This proposition might help explain why the left in America is in such a mess. Far from promoting new visions of effacing the difference between egoism and altruism, value and values, or providing a model for passing from one to the other, progressives cannot even seem to understand the problem. After the last presidential election, the big debate in progressive circles was the relative importance of economic issues versus what was called “the culture wars.” Did the Democrats lose because they were not able to spell out any plausible economic alternatives, or did the Republicans win because they successfully mobilized evangelical Christians around the issue of gay marriage? The very fact that progressives frame the question this way not only shows they are trapped in the right’s terms of analysis; it demonstrates that they do not understand how America really works.

Let me illustrate what i mean by considering the strange popular appeal, at least until recently, of George W. Bush. In 2004 most of the American liberal intelligentsia did not seem to be able to get their minds around it. After the election, what left so many of them reeling was their suspicion that the things they most hated about Bush were exactly what so many Bush voters liked about him. Consider the debates, for example. If statistics are to be believed, millions of Americans watched George Bush and John Kerry lock horns, concluded that Kerry won, and then went off and voted for Bush anyway. It was hard to escape the suspicion that, in the end, Kerry’s articulate presentation, his skill with words and arguments, had actually counted against him.

This sent liberals into spirals of despair. They could not understand why decisive leadership was equated with acting like an idiot. Neither could they understand how a man who comes from one of the most elite families in the country, who attended Andover, Yale, and Harvard, and whose signature facial expression is a self-satisfied smirk, ever convinced anyone he was a “man of the people.” I must admit I have struggled with this as well. As a child of working-class parents who won a scholarship to Andover in the 1970s and, eventually, a job at Yale, I have spent much of my life in the presence of men like Bush, every inch of them oozing self-satisfied privilege. But, in fact, stories like mine–stories of dramatic class mobility through academic accomplishment–are increasingly unusual in America.

America, of course, continues to see itself as a land of opportunity, and certainly from the perspective of an immigrant from Haiti or Bangladesh it is. But America has always been a country built on the promise of unlimited upward mobility. The working-class condition has been traditionally seen as a way station, as something one’s family passes through on the road to something else. Abraham Lincoln used to stress that what made American democracy possible was the absence of a class of permanent wage laborers. In Lincoln’s day, the ideal was that wage laborers would eventually save up enough money to build a better life: if nothing else, to buy some land and become a homesteader on the frontier.

The point is not how accurate this ideal was; the point is that most Americans have found the image plausible. Every time the road is perceived to be clogged, profound unrest ensues. The closing of the frontier led to bitter labor struggles, and over the course of the twentieth century, the steady and rapid expansion of the American university system could be seen as a kind of substitute. Particularly after World War II, huge resources were poured into expanding the higher education system, which grew extremely rapidly, and all this growth was promoted quite explicitly as a means of social mobility. This served during the Cold War as almost an implied social contract, not just offering a comfortable life to the working classes but holding out the chance that their children would not be working class themselves. The problem, of course, is that a higher education system cannot be expanded forever. At a certain point one ends up with a significant portion of the population unable to find work even remotely in line with their qualifications, who have every reason to be angry about their situation, and who also have access to the entire history of radical thought. By the late Sixties and early Seventies, the very point when the expansion of the university system hit a dead end, campuses were, predictably, exploding.

What followed could be seen as a kind of settlement. Campus radicals were reabsorbed into the university but set to work largely at training children of the elite. As the cost of education has skyrocketed, financial aid has been cut back, and the prospect of social mobility through education–above all liberal arts education–has been rapidly diminished. The number of working-class students in major universities, which steadily grew until the Seventies, has now been declining for decades. The matter was further complicated by the fact that this overall decline of accessibility happened at almost exactly the same time that many who had previously been excluded (the G.I. Bill of Rights, after all, had applied basically to white males) were finally being welcomed. These were the identities celebrated in the campus “identity politics” of the Eighties and Nineties–an inclusiveness that notably did not extend to, say, Baptists or “rednecks.” Unsurprisingly, many focused their rage not on govern. merit or on university administrations but on minorities, queers, and feminists.

Why do working-class Bush voters tend to resent intellectuals more than they do the rich? It seems to me that the answer is simple. They can imagine a scenario in which they might become rich but cannot possibly imagine one in which they, or any of their children, would become members of the intelligentsia. If you think about it, this is not an unreasonable assessment. A mechanic from Nebraska knows it is highly unlikely that his son or daughter will ever become an Enron executive. But it is possible. There is virtually no chance, however, that his child, no matter how talented, will ever become an international human-rights lawyer or a drama critic for the New York Times. Here we need to remember not just the changes in higher education but also the role of unpaid, or effectively unpaid, internships. It has become a fact of life in the United States that if one chooses a career for any reason other than the salary, for the first year or two one will not be paid. This is certainly true if one wishes to be involved in altruistic pursuits: say, to join the world of charities, or NGOs, or to become a political activist. But it is equally true if one wants to pursue values like Beauty or Truth: to become part of the world of books, or the art world, or an investigative reporter. The custom effectively seals off such a career for any poor student who actually does attain a liberal arts education. Such structures of exclusion had always existed, of course, especially at the top, but in recent decades fences have become fortresses.

If that mechanic’s daughter wishes to pursue something higher, more noble, for a career, what options does she really have? Likely just two: She can seek employment at her local church, which is hard to get. Or she can join the army.

This is, of course, the secret of nobility. To be noble is to be generous, high-minded, altruistic, to pursue higher forms of value. But it is also to be able to do so because one does not really have to think too much about money. This is precisely what our soldiers are doing when they give free dental examinations to villagers: they are being paid (modestly, but adequately) to do good in the world. Seen in this light, it is also easier to see what really happened at universities in the wake of the 1960s–the “settlement” I mentioned above. Campus radicals set out to create a new society that destroyed the distinction between egoism and altruism, value and values. It did not work out, but they were, effectively, offered a kind of compensation: the privilege to use the university system to create lives that did so, in their own little way, to be supported in one’s material needs while pursuing virtue, truth, and beauty, and, above all, to pass that privilege on to their own children. One cannot blame them for accepting the offer. But neither can one blame the rest of the country for hating them for it. Not because they reject the project: as I say, this is what America is all about. As I always tell activists engaged in the peace movement and counter-recruitment campaigns: why do working-class kids join the army anyway? Because, like any teenager, they want to escape the world of tedious work and meaningless consumerism, to live a life of adventure and camaraderie in which they believe they are doing something genuinely noble. They join the army because they want to be like you.

[Aurorus Ruber]

Sounds like you got quite a good head on your shoulders, Griffjam. An interesting and well-elaborated analysis.

[Jose Gracchus]

There are several factors at work. First of all this question must be poised, like all truly leftist analysis, from a historical point of view. Why is it that Kansas and Oklahoma were insurgent bases of left-wing agitation and third party insurgency - including the agrarian People's Party and the Socialist Party of America of Eugene Debs - and today are backward and right-wing in many cases? Well I think it can be reduced to several major factors:



The collapse of an oppositional political culture and communities of struggle. Factories, slums, poor farming communities were actively political, and people perceived themselves socially and as belonging to a maligned or oppressed social group. This naturally suggests popular action. Compromises by some sectors of white industrial male labor through labor unions and left-liberal policies diffused some resentment and palpable marginalization. The farming communities were destroyed by agro-business. By the point the tide rolled back in the 1970s, the urban blight and abandoned communities had a racial angle, and left-liberal co-option has served to continue to frame this as a 'black' or 'minority' issue, rather than a 'poor labor' issue with 'people of color' shades to it. The 1950s spelled a mass purge and repression of the CPUSA and other major left-wing parties from unions and schools and government. Institutions were already purified for the Establishment by the time the New Left came around, and its failed to make a major institutional impact aside from maybe some changes in academia. However it made major ideological impacts. Riding on this trend is the end of 'community life' and 'civil society' in many ways. Consumerism and entertainment culture eroded traditional communities and their functions, and as hours at work increased, so did bowling leagues, union locals, and other major institutions slip away. People may feel a lot of ways about themselves and their neighbors struggling - however they are unlikely to infer this in a broadly social, much less class or class-political, way. A major sociological work on this in the late 20th century is Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. In the place of authentic and social communities, we have the rise of niche consumerism and obsessions, all kinds of pathologies - porn addiction, crazy cults, etc., etc. - we're a lonely culture of lonely people relatively isolated in a sea of social life that offer you no role other than consumer or follower or worker. A major side-effect of this is the triumph of well-organized religion revivalism in the U.S., especially in the South and ruralities nation-wide. Only thing left of the community other than the Super Wal-Mart. Corporate and far-right nationalist co-option is also a major ancillary problem developing from this.
Mass propaganda. The United States invented modern public relations and mass media technology and industrial techniques. Correspondingly, the U.S. population is the most passively and actively business-state-propagandized population, dollar per head, in the world. The consumer and pop and media culture is all-encompassing, and regardless of people's 'individualistic' ethos or skepticism, simply crowds out all other potential sources of information. Therefore, without intensive work and study and effort, it is very hard to even have the opportunity to construct counter-narratives. When in conjunction with the fact that social and community life is so evacuated of authenticity or even existence in many people's lives, and what you get is just crude conformity in small groups all propagandized by the very narrow, very well-funded mass media center. Passive propaganda refers to the thorough social and ideological information apparatus; it is the consumer and pop culture, alienating and often nihilistic and encourage hero and wealth worship. Commercials, mass media stereotyping, broad narratives of culture - the message today is most problems are questions of pop psychology, enthusiasm, New Age touchy-feely; your problems are anything so long as they are not social, political, class. Furthermore, the active apparatus propagandizes both the disaffected right with near-fascist propaganda and agitation and tawdry yellow journalism on the other hand. The well-off, well-educated, cosmopolitan political class is serenaded by Orwellian liberal propaganda like the New York Times or dry science of exploitation from the Wall Street Journal. There is near zero room for truly subversive narratives and values in the mass information society. So far informal connections through social groups, workplaces, colleges, and the Internet is the only place one can even hope to see presentation of our ideas.
Electoral Constraints. The U.S. is unique in having retained without substantial modification, basically an 18th century radical Whig constitution. The system conforms to Duverger's Law more thoroughly than any other advanced 'capitalist democracy' that I know of. Furthermore, the courts and statute have tended to raise barriers yet further to any possible insurgent candidacies, third party insurgencies, or fusion tickets. Only once has an insurgent party legitimately came to power, and that was the Republican Party in the 1850s and 1860s. The problem of this stacks even higher barriers on the other problems. It is simply extremely difficult to organize any visible alternative or opposition against the two party establishment; therefore very difficult to organize in a way that self-propagandizes, as well as has reasonable likelihood of making substantial gains, much less actually ever winning. It would be a major step forward merely to create a responsible executive, instant-run-off or multi-member proportional representation versus single-member plurality elections. Lower barriers to entry. A more passive means of restriction is via the investment model of party competition, whereby due to funding sources and the weakness of labor/rigidness of the two-party system, the parties basically cannot be anything but the competitive fanclubs of corporate donors, representing different policy "baskets" for different "clubs" of capital, within the framework of a class consensus on politics between both "parties".
Repression. Active repression has abated considerably, but it still a problem, especially following 9/11 and with the arrest of the Palestinian and Colombian solidarity activists. Still, things are not as bad as they were when Fred Hampton and comrades were executed in their sleep (having been drugged by a spy) by a Chicago PD-FBI death squad. Passive repression is considerable though. Provided organized labor or left-wing activists or community organizations actually do anything, then massive corporate spending, media flacks, "patriotic" groups and PACs, often with corporate funding, and astroturfing will be directed on them to repudiate, isolate, and disrepute them. University professors excessively radical will be show-trialed like Ward Churchill or simply denied tenure and pauperized and humiliated like Norman Finkelstein. Keep in mind, both of those professors great crime was impugning the nobility of our imperialism and our complicity in our client's imperialism, not even direct assaults to the class society and state. Look at even a group like ACORN - it paid dearly for trying to make the United States even a real bourgeois democracy, where working people and urban poor and people of color actually are registered and encouraged to vote. After all, in our fake popularity-poll-based-on-corporate-financed-PR type elections - substantially so even relative to European bourgeois democracies -, you can't offer people real choices, and if too many poor people petition the apparatus, and one party can't win anymore since its victories are more or less a function of working people's demoralization (Republicans), it might undermine things.


Right-wing beliefs among the working class are just one more weird fad or lifestyle or clique or cult that the disaffected mass, left only to consume and pick between two choices allowed by the finance and propaganda committees called "the two parties" every couple years. It just another amount of pablum served up by the passive and active propaganda system, finding fertile ground where real revolutionary or even real reformist movements are outright repressed, authentic communities obliterated, and any cultural memory other than Forrest Gump-style media sentimentalism over Americana totally obliterated from public memory.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

Required reading for this thread: Alexander Saxton, "The Rise and Fall of the White Republic," especially his discussion of the concept of a "Herrenvolk democracy." :cool:

[The Militant]

Much of the American working class have been brainwashed by U.S. propaganda from the Cold War. Communism = Oppressive Dictatorship. Religion and racism also play a small part in their opinions. The American sheeple are quick to defend their oppressive system.

[MarxistMan]

I think it's conformism caused by ignorance, and not conformism because all americans are wealthy. Because according to Dr. Michael Parenti, most americans have been poors, with very low living standards most of their lives. Wealth spreading in USA is a myth, only a few in USA have had all basic needs and self realization fullfilled. Americans have bought into the idea that driving a car, and eating 3 meals a day is wealth. But high living standards are not caused by cars, and houses, but by a good health and high levels of knowledge. And we all know that the american brand of capitalism has denied good health and university degrees for most americans.

So i think it's conformism, beause like I said all americans can do is drive a car and eat a lot of food. But are still living low living standards because lack of knowledge and poor health because of a privatized health care

.



I'd like to chalk it up to propaganda from Fox News and such, but is that really all there is to it? Could there be some social factors to it as well, such as the legacy of racism?

I had a professor once tell me how, when conducting a poll in Mississippi (or was it Georgia? It was a Southern state for sure), he asked Republican voters their stances on various individual issues, such as health care, social security, welfare, jobs, etc., and he found out on every issue, they were clearly to the left of the Republicans they were electing to office.

What he went on to hypothesize is that despite their relatively positive response to such programs and policy proposals, they nevertheless voted for and elected right-wingers who actively campaigned against "welfare queens" and such, and as we all know, "welfare queens" is code for people of color. Thus, what ultimately eclipsed their support for a greater social safety net is the fear of blacks and Hispanics using them and leeching off of them. Thus racism trumps objective class interests for these people.

A friend also suggested religion is to blame, since religion clouds the mind, encourages blind obedience to dogma, and discourages critical thinking. Politicians can then use religious arguments to justify poisonous policy proposals, such as anti-LGBT legislation and such. Though I question just how much religion is truly a cause of this, as religious arguments really only make sense to the uneducated, the indoctrinated, and the downtrodden, all of which are symptoms of a thoroughly brutalized working class, which the American working class exemplifies, especially in places like the South.

Maybe there's more to this, or maybe I'm looking too much into it. Any input would be appreciated.

[MarxistMan]

oh i forgot something: Jim Morrison of The Doors said that people are ruled by TV. And most TV news channels in USA like FOX news, CNN, Univision, ABC, etc. are right-wing channels. So i think that we should really blame the right-wing TV news stations of USA, and not US voters for their right-wing voting behaviour.

.



I'd like to chalk it up to propaganda from Fox News and such, but is that really all there is to it? Could there be some social factors to it as well, such as the legacy of racism?

I had a professor once tell me how, when conducting a poll in Mississippi (or was it Georgia? It was a Southern state for sure), he asked Republican voters their stances on various individual issues, such as health care, social security, welfare, jobs, etc., and he found out on every issue, they were clearly to the left of the Republicans they were electing to office.

What he went on to hypothesize is that despite their relatively positive response to such programs and policy proposals, they nevertheless voted for and elected right-wingers who actively campaigned against "welfare queens" and such, and as we all know, "welfare queens" is code for people of color. Thus, what ultimately eclipsed their support for a greater social safety net is the fear of blacks and Hispanics using them and leeching off of them. Thus racism trumps objective class interests for these people.

A friend also suggested religion is to blame, since religion clouds the mind, encourages blind obedience to dogma, and discourages critical thinking. Politicians can then use religious arguments to justify poisonous policy proposals, such as anti-LGBT legislation and such. Though I question just how much religion is truly a cause of this, as religious arguments really only make sense to the uneducated, the indoctrinated, and the downtrodden, all of which are symptoms of a thoroughly brutalized working class, which the American working class exemplifies, especially in places like the South.

Maybe there's more to this, or maybe I'm looking too much into it. Any input would be appreciated.

[CAleftist]

A combination of

-Racism
-Religion
-Nationalism
-Media/political propaganda

[RadioRaheem84]

CAleftist pretty much nailed it. It's a combination of all of those listed.

But all of that entails that ultimate reason that the American working class tends to side right; they're not allowed to think that the current economic system is an unnatural social order.

Instead they are spoon fed major doses of all the above list in order to explain away why their economic situations suck.

Whenever you pin a right winger to the wall on various subjects like health care, education and a social retirement pension, they will all shrug their shoulders and say two words; "that's life".

Apparently, the reason for dismantling all social services and relying on your own true grit is, "that's life, sometimes you have to roll the dice", "can't afford health care, too bad, not my problem, that's life, it sucks but that is how the cards are for some people".

They really believe that it's natural for people to starve, die, or go without any social security in life because they do not see the exploitation and wealth mal-distribution as a product of the established social hierarchy. They just assume that it's a natural by product of society and civilization from time immemorial.

[CAleftist]

CAleftist pretty much nailed it. It's a combination of all of those listed.

But all of that entails that ultimate reason that the American working class tends to side right; they're not allowed to think that the current economic system is an unnatural social order.

Instead they are spoon fed major doses of all the above list in order to explain away why their economic situations suck.

Whenever you pin a right winger to the wall on various subjects like health care, education and a social retirement pension, they will all shrug their shoulders and say two words; "that's life".

Apparently, the reason for dismantling all social services and relying on your own true grit is, "that's life, sometimes you have to roll the dice", "can't afford health care, too bad, not my problem, that's life, it sucks but that is how the cards are for some people".

They really believe that it's natural for people to starve, die, or go without any social security in life because they do not see the exploitation and wealth mal-distribution as a product of the established social hierarchy. They just assume that it's a natural by product of society and civilization from time immemorial.


Absolutely, and all of that (and much, much more) has been ingrained into the consciousness of people over a period of centuries, particularly Americans, who treasure their "individual freedom" (:rolleyes:) even as the ruling class continues to rob them of wealth, power, and dignity.

There's this cult of individualism in America that has destroyed class consciousness, ever since the "Founding Fathers" made the existing social arrangements of colonial America (under Britain ) into law.

[La Comédie Noire]

And if you push them further they will say "Well we would be able to have health care and jobs for everyone, but there are too many lazy people gaming the system."

I actually had a right winger seriously suggest to me that the welfare state worked for Europe because a combination of Nazi exterminations and war casualties cut the fat out of society.

[Apoi_Viitor]

I know these two sources are tainted with liberalism, but they are still worth reading.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html

http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html

To sum it up, many people tend to associate with right-wing groups because they associate specific morals and values with them.

Noam Chomsky - Of the people who voted for candidate George Bush, the major categories were people who were concerned about terror and about national security. It’s claimed that people who were concerned about values voted for Bush, but that’s mostly a statistical artifact. When you asked the further question, “What values do you have in mind?” it turned out that the major values were things like, “I don’t like this society because it’s too materialistic,” and “There’s too much oppression.” Those are the values. Is that what Bush stands for? Getting rid of that? As far as terrorism is concerned, the administration very consciously chose actions that it was expected would increase the threat of terror and, in fact, did. It’s not because they want terror, it’s just not much of a priority for them.

[MarxistMan]

The USA is only a wealthy country for celebrities, for the upper class politicians, for large stock owners, for rich doctors and rich lawyers. But it is an Africa with Wal Marts and Mcdonalds for the majority of americans. Wealth spreading and high living standards for all americans is a big lie and a big myth. In fact according to economist Fred Goldstein from The Workers World Party in this video http://workers.blip.tv/file/4534057/ there are workers in 40 states working for 5 cents an hour. Millions of americans are beating the bullets and in deep poverty, so wealth spreading in USA is a myth.

So i think it's conformism, along with mind-control from CNN, FOX news and most TV news channels of USA that leads US low wage workers and the poors to vote for Democrats and Republicans every 4 years.
.

[MarxSchmarx]

I think the "race and religion" explanation is deeply bunk. Worse, it is insanely parochial.

It seems vaguely plausible if one looks at, for example, the map of red and blue states and a map of the American civil war. Or if one looks at similar phenomena in Belgium, Australia, and other multi-ethnic societies.

But. The reason I don't buy it, is that if you look at relatively racially homogenous, secular countries, large segments of the working class still vote against their class interests. In particular, I am thinking of Japan and Denmark. Both countries have small immigrant populations and religion is weak to non-existent, and yet the neoliberal parties score major victories on much the same rhetoric that neoliberals in America and France use when they pit people against their neighbors of different cultural backgrounds.

now, if the question was why america, uniquely of all industrialized democracies, lacks even a reformist party, then I think you might have a point about race being an effective reason why white workers vote against their economic self interest. Although it is telling that perhaps only about 1/3 of white people in america under the age of 65 without a college degree vote for the republican party.

But the intensely disappointing fact is that one need not invoke racial bias and religious puritanism to explain why people like Koizumi in Japan can win outright majorities. There is some element of bigotry and religious fundamentalism (e.g., the Komeito), to be sure, but all in all, if racism and religiosity were the prime cause of working people voting for reactionaries, in countries where these are much, much less of an issue one would expect workers would vote their economic self interest.

But this doesn't happen. Many working people earning very little vote for reactionaries still. So there must be more to this than the traditional American/French/Latin American etc... account of the legacy of racialism and reactionary religion.

[CAleftist]

It seems vaguely plausible if one looks at, for example, the map of red and blue states and a map of the American civil war. Or if one looks at similar phenomena in Belgium, Australia, and other multi-ethnic societies.


But. The reason I don't buy it, is that if you look at relatively racially homogenous, secular countries, large segments of the working class still vote against their class interests. In particular, I am thinking of Japan and Denmark. Both countries have small immigrant populations and religion is weak to non-existent, and yet the neoliberal parties score major victories on much the same rhetoric that neoliberals in America and France use when they pit people against their neighbors of different cultural backgrounds.

Are wages and overall "quality of life" higher there than in America?



now, if the question was why america, uniquely of all industrialized democracies, lacks even a reformist party, then I think you might have a point about race being an effective reason why white workers vote against their economic self interest. Although it is telling that perhaps only about 1/3 of white people in america under the age of 65 without a college degree vote for the republican party.What does voting for the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party, or any other party have anything to do with economic self-interest for white working class people?


But the intensely disappointing fact is that one need not invoke racial bias and religious puritanism to explain why people like Koizumi in Japan can win outright majorities. There is some element of bigotry and religious fundamentalism (e.g., the Komeito), to be sure, but all in all, if racism and religiosity were the prime cause of working people voting for reactionaries, in countries where these are much, much less of an issue one would expect workers would vote their economic self interest.I don't think voting is a necessarily great indicator of economic self interest for working class people in general.


But this doesn't happen. Many working people earning very little vote for reactionaries still. So there must be more to this than the traditional American/French/Latin American etc... account of the legacy of racialism and reactionary religion.There's definitely more to it, but racism and reactionary religion do play a large part in the United States, at least.

[Goatpie]

The Failure of the left

[BlackMarx]

I'd like to chalk it up to propaganda from Fox News and such, but is that really all there is to it? Could there be some social factors to it as well, such as the legacy of racism?

I had a professor once tell me how, when conducting a poll in Mississippi (or was it Georgia? It was a Southern state for sure), he asked Republican voters their stances on various individual issues, such as health care, social security, welfare, jobs, etc., and he found out on every issue, they were clearly to the left of the Republicans they were electing to office.

What he went on to hypothesize is that despite their relatively positive response to such programs and policy proposals, they nevertheless voted for and elected right-wingers who actively campaigned against "welfare queens" and such, and as we all know, "welfare queens" is code for people of color. Thus, what ultimately eclipsed their support for a greater social safety net is the fear of blacks and Hispanics using them and leeching off of them. Thus racism trumps objective class interests for these people.

A friend also suggested religion is to blame, since religion clouds the mind, encourages blind obedience to dogma, and discourages critical thinking. Politicians can then use religious arguments to justify poisonous policy proposals, such as anti-LGBT legislation and such. Though I question just how much religion is truly a cause of this, as religious arguments really only make sense to the uneducated, the indoctrinated, and the downtrodden, all of which are symptoms of a thoroughly brutalized working class, which the American working class exemplifies, especially in places like the South.

Maybe there's more to this, or maybe I'm looking too much into it. Any input would be appreciated.
A large section of the American working class, predominately white with a lot of fears and anxieties about the changing state of America, are being forced to leave their ideological shells of American exceptionalism, white privilege and free market meritocracy.

[MarxSchmarx]

What does voting for the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party, or any other party have anything to do with economic self-interest for white working class people?

I don't think voting is a necessarily great indicator of economic self interest for working class people in general.

I disagree.

Voting, especially in stable liberal democracies, is one of the surest and most concrete ways workers express their support for the right wing. It is not the only way that people can express their economic self-interest, but it is a major factor in this and how a person votes, especially in two party systems, is very tightly correlated to how they view the world in general.

[Dunk]

The Failure of the left

This is, of course, not entirely true - but I think one of our primary responsibilities is to be ruthlessly critical of ourselves and how we can do better...and I do not mean to suggest a comrade of one tendency has the responsibility to heap scrutiny and criticism merely on comrades of other tendencies, but I mean to suggest we should be critical of the anti-capitalist movement, and more effective ways to swell it's ranks than merely waiting for capitalism to produce it's own gravediggers. Yes, capitalists produce plenty of potential gravediggers, and the material conditions of the graveyard may dictate when the gravediggers decide to bury the capitalist alive, but the first gardeners who realize they have a shovel need to spread the word as much as possible - because we are an indivisible part of the material conditions of the graveyard.

Also, sorry for the metaphor, but it was fun writing it, and I'm very much in need of sleep.

[Dimmu]

Ignorance and religion and both of these things are mutal.

[Cencus]

Saw a report a while back, on bbc news I think, that put forward the idea the reason poor folks in the U.S. voted for the right, was that they felt the left instead of listening to what they wanted, had a tendancy to tell them what they needed. This it was suggesed created a feeling of resentment within the lower end of the socio-economic scale.

It kinda fits,in my head anyway, in that people want to move up the ladder rather than accept they are poor and could do with a hand up. The American dream is alive and well in the minds of some.

[Dunk]

Saw a report a while back, on bbc news I think, that put forward the idea the reason poor folks in the U.S. voted for the right, was that they felt the left instead of listening to what they wanted, had a tendancy to tell them what they needed. This it was suggesed created a feeling of resentment within the lower end of the socio-economic scale.

It kinda fits,in my head anyway, in that people want to move up the ladder rather than accept they are poor and could do with a hand up. The American dream is alive and well in the minds of some.

That certainly is disheartening, although the notion that the right wing, or that neoliberals address the needs of the poor or working class in general is just absolutely wrong.

As for The American Dream, upward mobility exists on a very limited scale, just enough for prominent propaganda examples to dazzle the poor or working class into thinking "I'll keep working hard and one day I'll be well-off, or rich." But reality simply doesn't support that myth. Then again downward mobility is more common than upward. The most common feature of class mobility is no mobility at all from generation to generation.