Clearly, the writer does not share the views or values of the working men she purports to sympathize with. But this is sure better than the norm for our expensively-educated elitists.
“I fully understand why transgender bathrooms are important”, but I also understand why progressives’ obsession with prioritizing cultural issues infuriates many Americans whose chief concerns are economic.
I don’t understand why transgender bathrooms are important,
I still don’t think he gets it
I don’t hear the middle class screaming for TG bathrooms
My reply to the author: The Democrats and the author completely miss the point of the Trump supporters. The culture issues do not belong in the political arena at all. The culture issues belong to the people. We would all get along just fine, including wild variances in opinion, taste and culture. The rage is because the liberal government, via social engineering is robbing us of our children, our culture and our future. It is a deliberate assault on who we are.
There is nothing in the Constitution giving the federal government the right to tell us what to think, who to like or dislike or what we must say to ensure that others feel “comfortable’.
In fact, if you want to know the truth, social engineers and racists are both operating under the same principle, the assumption that they are better than someone else. It just doesn’t get any more anti-American than that. And, please don’t forget, America’s first broad-based social engineering experiment was the Democrat Party’s Jim Crow laws.
After the Civil War, us “commoners” were getting along just fine. Blacks and whites were socializing, shopping in the same stores and inter-marrying. The pseudo-elite (i.e. inferior people who think they are superior) passed the Jim Crow laws enforcing segregation and preventing interracial marriages for the “good” of the common citizens who didn’t know what was best.
History tells us again and again that the common man does indeed know what is best. Our Constitution and government were deliberately designed for self-government. Hundreds of thousands of lives were freely given to ensure liberty for their children.
Leave us alone and stop fomenting class, racial, ethnic, academic and philosophic divides and hatred. Read the Constitution and just do your job and stop trying to fix us. We are not broken, you are.
Fence straddling writer, plays both sides. Has a few points, but is not on our side. Example: “I do not defend police who kill citizens for selling cigarettes.” Um, not what happened, Joan.
Some good points, but also incredinbly wrong in points as well. For example
‘when Trump proves unable to bring steel back to Youngstown, Ohio’
There where two start up mini-mills in Youngstown OH through 2008. The EPA and financial crises, Primarily the EPA closed them.
It is a myriad of causes for economic decline and Democrats promote all of them.
re: the white working class (WWC) resents professionals but admires the rich
True of those of Mexican Heritage also. They seek to start their own factory, their own construction company, their own restaurant, their own supermercado. They admire the self-made businessman.
Most of them do not admire the Mitt Romney/Carlos Slim type of big rent seeking businessman.
In contrast, some immigrant groups admire the professional employee: the doctor for a large hospital, the teacher or professor at a large educational institution, etc.
It is a great article. I rarely read these things top to bottom but I did this one. The section about Trump’s direct, anti-PC way of talking is very important. I think this is one of the major things that helped him in working class Pennsylvania. There was an emotional connection there because he spoke like them, which engendered trust and the idea that he would help them because he sounded like he understood them.
Thanks for the post.
Very good read.
Very nice piece. My son said something similar yesterday about the working class guys (all union) where he works. Nothing Trump has said or the way he says it would bother them. The way he talks they see him as one of them only richer.
an aside - American class structure is very different from Europe’s. It’s based strictly on income. This comes as a big surprise to europeans where you can have upper class people with no money and a wealthy working class.
powerful and true
thanks for posting this
It is unfair that she wasn't a plausible candidate until she was so overqualified she was suddenly unqualified due to past mistakes.
She was never qualified, much less overqualified.
And treasonous espionage, selling of state secrets and peddling influence to foreign governments? Those are hardly 'mistakes'.
Unfair? She was overqualified? She only got to where she did because she was the wife of a guy who became governor and then president.
She then carpet-bagged into a safe jurisdiction where she could win a senate seat due entirely to celebrity and name recognition and running on gender identity.
Her only accomplishment while Senator was getting money for NY after 9/11, which anyone in her position would have done.
She was made Secretary of State and was a global catastrophe, destroying Libya and Syria and Iraq and screwing up everything she touched, breaking numerous laws along the way.
She could not have even been in that position but for the fact that we are nearly a banana republic controlled by family political dynasties.
I’m still wondering what blood soup is and why the author considers it a marker of poverty.
Mrs. AV
Here’s what even the author of this piece overlooks: The Millionaire Next Door.
The working class sees a number of working class people start a business and grow it until they have a high net worth but become rich by remaining frugal, faithful to values, etc. This is a model that created 90% of the wealthy, who are first generation rich, and it is one that can be emulated by even the poor with an idea, plan or following the existing model (work for yourself, hire a helper, grow the base, hire more, you have your own company).
In contrast, many middle class professionals have never worked in manual labor, and they are aspirational rich by spending more money on status symbols while clinging to their image as higher than the poor and working class. Those with professional degrees (doctorates, masters) are even more elitist, looking down on those with only bachelor’s degrees. Income, net worth, are almost irrelevant to them.
I am not just quoting from “The Millionaire Next Door”. My husband and I are engineers, frugal and practical. I don’t dress like a professional but in jeans and T-shirts or sweat shirts so the shop floor doesn’t ruin my outfit, and it makes things easier when picking up the kids. I’ve had people in various offices put me down, until I informed them I am an engineer, not just married to one.
Around other parents, I get mistaken for a frumpy housewife. I was asked about our mortgage. Don’t have one. You live with family? No, it is paid off. They were stunned. They have an image of “money/class” that is based more off the Kardashians and soap operas than real life.
One of my most frustrating moments was with my last employer where the explicit bias against whites, men and conservatives something they punished you for bringing up in their implicit bias training. And there is a lot of bias from these same liberal arts grads for “working class” if you aren’t a minority of some type. So black ladies working on the assembly line are empathized with, but the white guys still left are dirt. Anyone without a college degrees is actively discriminated against in jobs that don’t require it, because of credentialitis. White guys without degrees, barring seniority or disabled vet status, were purged.
It was suggested that I go for a master’s degree to improve my job prospects. I asked how having a master’s degree would actually improve my ability to do my job or manage people, when the company had management specific training. We want to measure your status based on the degrees after your name! Oh, and experience and hard manual labor count against you ... and the people looking down on those who do the hard work or make it happen don’t understand why their lessers resent them.
The article makes some terrific points when its liberal bias, such as in the writer’s view of Hillary and Trump, isn’t seeping through.
bfl
Manly dignity is a big deal for most men.
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Dignity is a big deal for just about everyone.