Posted on 08/06/2016 3:34:10 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Sometime during the past few years, the country started talking differently about white Americans of modest means.
Early in the Obama era, the ennobling language of campaign pundits prevailed. There was much discussion of “white working-class voters,” with whom the Democrats, and especially Barack Obama, were having such trouble connecting. Never mind that this overbroad category of Americans — the exit pollsters’ definition was anyone without a four-year college degree, or more than a third of the electorate — obliterated major differences in geography, ethnicity, and culture. The label served to conjure a vast swath of salt-of-the-earth citizens living and working in the wide-open spaces between the coasts — Sarah Palin’s “real America” — who were dubious of the effete, hifalutin types increasingly dominating the party that had once purported to represent the common man.
The “white working class” connoted virtue and integrity. A party losing touch with it was a party unmoored.
That flattering glow has faded away. Today, less privileged white Americans are considered to be in crisis, and the language of sociologists and pathologists predominates. Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010” was published in 2012, and Robert D. Putnam’s “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis” came out last year. From opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, they made the case that social breakdown among low-income whites was starting to mimic trends that had begun decades earlier among African Americans: Rates of out-of-wedlock births and male joblessness were rising sharply. Then came the stories about a surge in opiate addiction among white Americans, alongside shocking reports of rising mortality rates (including by suicide) among middle-aged whites. And then, of course, came the 2016 presidential campaign. The question was suddenly no longer why Democrats struggled to appeal to regular Americans. It was why so many regular Americans were drawn to a man like Donald Trump. Equally jarring has been the shift in tone. A barely suppressed contempt has characterized much of the commentary about white woe, on both the left and the right. Writing for National Review in March, the conservative provocateur Kevin Williamson shoveled scorn on the low-income white Republican voters who, as he saw it, were most responsible for the rise of Trump...
Huge cut. MUCH more in th article. Please read the whole thing.
Primal scorn against the elite describes a great swath of America, particularly poor and lower middle class whites who have seen the door to enrichment at almost any level barred and locked.
I want a boat.
Extremely good and important article about the calculated psychodynamics behind the isolation and persecution of whites by the Rats. The evil runs deep.
Thanks for posting.
I just finished J dot D dot Vance’s book, a memoir called Hillbilly Elegy. It was a good read. A lot of truth in it.
Many years ago I bought a copy of Jim Goad's The Redneck Manifesto. The book is a mixed bag. The author is apparently an atheist whose condemnations of liberal hypocrisy, however satisfying they sound, ultimately have no objective basis (since only G-d can serve as the basis of morals and ethics). The book is unbelievably obscene. It is disrespectful, if not hostile, to the Founding Fathers, and in addition gives forth an odor of sympathy for both the "palestinians" and the Irish Republican Army (like many right wing racialists who hate Jews and excuse Communist nationalist movements that work for white groups). But still, it is impossible for me to read without becoming filled with anger at the liberal hypocrites Goad lampoons, especially in the age of Obama when race has replaced class as the Left's obsession.
Goad is now a full-fledged "palaeo" (yuck!) who writes from The American Conservative--the organ of Israel-hers like Pat Buchanan. I really can't recommend the man or many of the sentiments implied in the book, but I do recommend people who can take it to read it to learn about the plight of poor American whites and the hypocritical hatred of them evinced by the "compassionate friends of the downtrodden."
Don't kid yourself; Black slaves didn't invent the term. Slave-owners encouraged slaves to look down on poor whites so they would be more satisfied with their lot. They did the same with the poor whites, teaching them to hate Blacks and hiring them to serve as their "patter rollers" (slave patrols). It began in the seventeenth century as a "divide and rule" strategy and it's still working.
They hate us because they know we have the power to derail them if we wake up and come together. They have built their world on treason.
One irony often overlooked by ideologues on both side of the political spectrum is that Blacks are also among the very oldest, least alien, and most American of all American ethnic groups. What the Left has made of the Black community (with impetus from white bigotry) is a tragedy.
That's an excellent point.
All people really ARE created equal.
Slaves and poor people can develop their own bad behavior without instruction from rich or white people.
Slaves and poor people can develop their own bad behavior without instruction from rich or white people.
Goad's book (referenced in my first post to this thread) explicitly described slave contempt for poor whites as a strategy of the slave-owners. He also traces its history back to seventeenth century slave/servant revolts in which Blacks and whites made common cause.
Just because I might tell you that I’m from Mississippi right before I punch you doesn’t mean I’m trashy. It means you will have more respect for Mississippi in the morning.
1) Kevin Williamson
2) Gibbet
Some assembly required.
Ping for all of the obvious reasons.
ping
looks like you are right and I am if you listen to the guy he uses it as an excuse but trump is very clear about not liking the term white trash. I think what got trump was that he doubled down and tried to treat it as a joke and like I said it is as loaded a term as nigger is and trump decided to make a point when the guy did not see anything wrong and could not be told that it was bad.
I saw him play at a Unitarian Church last Fall. He was a hoot, and his much younger wife who’s also in the band is smoking hot and a good singer. Twas fun!
Bikers, like the Irish and by historical extension, all hillbillies are incapable of being insulted.
That’s why I love them.
You call us a derogatory name and we’ll embrace it, make it our own and wear it with pride.
I have seen thousands of vest patches that say white trash/scooter trash/redneck/dirty white boy and infinite variations on the theme.
A ‘slur’ is only effective and ‘hurtful’ if self doubt is there, already.
/Dirty White Girl
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