I get schooled

[Two Americas]

A conversation

I stopped into a local general store (old fashioned version of a convenience store) here recently. There is a gal working behind the counter, in her 50's I would guess. I have chatted briefly with her in the past. She works two jobs, besides a few nights in the store, at a local light manufacturing outfit - a job that has been cut back to part time - and also part time at a local orchard. I had never gotten into a political discussion with her before.

I made a comment about farming - that is the most common chat subject around here - and asked her if the guy she works for was worried about his fruit trees with this warm weather. She answered that he was, and I joked "if this keeps up we will wind up with Gore as president after all." She didn't respond, and I asked "don't you think much of him?" Now check out the ensuing conversation -

Her - "Hagel."

Me - "Hagel?"

Her - "yeah, Hagel is the only one I could consider."

Me- "For president?"

Her - "He is the only one I would even consider." Then a long pause and she added "of the Republicans, that is."

Me - "Oh. OK. I am not considering any Republicans at all myself."

Her - "Oh! You aren't a Republican? I just assumed....well, you know... around here..."

Me - "Right."

Her - "...and they can be pretty ugly and mean spirited..."

Me - "True. So who would you support? Dean."

Her - "He always seemed like a candidate for the educated people, you know? But he did get money to places like this and we gave then a run for it for once. Most of those insiders write us off."

Me - "Good point. Kerry?"

Her - "Please. He let them steal it from him and wouldn't fight back."

Me - "Right. Clinton?"

Her - "She isn't on our side. Can't you tell that?"

Me - "Kucinich?"

Her - "He does some good things. I give him credit. He grew up poor and I don't think they own him like they do the others. But people here will never go for the guru type stuff though, you know? We can't afford to lose over that. The stakes are too high."

Me - "Obama?"

Her - "Pretty, isn't he?"

Me - "Edwards?"

Her - "He is the only one saying the right things. But is he a fighter? We need fighters. I haven't seen the fight in him yet. The other side is serious and they are nasty."

Long pause, then she looks around, leans forward and lowers her voice.

Her - "I'll tell you who we need."

Me - "Yes?"

She glances around again and lowers her voice more and looks right into my eyes.

Her - "That fella from Minnesota they murdered. Wellstone. Paul Wellstone."

Me - "Wellstone!?"

Her - "We need a couple hundred like him."

Me - "We need? We need?"

Her - "Sure, we are all in this together, don't you know. And, sure - 'need' - you do want to eat and be able to afford going to the doctor don't you? I call that 'need.' We need enough Wellstones so they can't murder them all. Or maybe you are a millionaire, and you just work 12 hours a day for fun, and drive a cheap car and wear blue jeans to blend in around here?"

[Mairead]

What an outstanding conversation. I think I'd disagree with her about Wellstone--afaik he was just a rather liberal Dem--but what an outstanding conversation overall.

So I wonder how many more there are of her, in hiding because they don't feel safe. She evidently perceives herself to be part of a tiny, underground minority around there. Is her perception accurate, or is it that everyone is cowed by a few bullying rwingers, inflated by their viciousness and overblown sense of entitlement to seem 10x their size?

[Two Americas]

What an outstanding conversation. I think I'd disagree with her about Wellstone--afaik he was just a rather liberal Dem--but what an outstanding conversation overall.

So I wonder how many more there are of her, in hiding because they don't feel safe. She evidently perceives herself to be part of a tiny, underground minority around there. Is her perception accurate, or is it that everyone is cowed by a few bullying rwingers, inflated by their viciousness and overblown sense of entitlement to seem 10x their size?
The right wingers on the national scene have emboldened the bullies all across the country on the local scene. Kid has a good intutitive handle on this - there is some direct connection between the bullying and humiliation we all are up against in our daily lives, and the national political climate. We worked hard here, but not the way that the Dem activists do. In fact, we didn't want them around because they did more harm than good. For the most part, the activists stayed out of farming country, fortunately. I spent the last two years attacked by the activists both here IRL and online – we weren't “doing something” and we were “hurting the party” and the like. They are so out of it – they assumed we were just nobodies of no consequence. They didn't realize that there are thousands of farmers, that they are the opinion leaders in rural counties, and that we have a relationship of trust with all of them. This is hard to describe, because it is invisible to the movers and shakers – there isn't any fanfare, publicity, press releases, media campaigns, no one playing the big shot, no one building a political activism career or lifestyle or hobby. The activists therefore think there is nothing there, and mock and ridicule it.

The discussions go on from the seat of a tractor, or out in an orchard, at the packing plant, at the local greasy spoon. The discussions are about the state of the country, the future, the big challenges - not about partisan politics. People are too busy with real challenges and living life and surviving to waste time on talking point partisan arguments. People are too close to the issues – global warning is causing crop failures, Homeland Security is terrorizing the workers, globalization is collapsing prices on produce, ethanol and oil and gas drilling is destroying the farms, development is driving up the cost of land, tax breaks for the rich are driving fees for everything up to the breaking point. These are very day real challenges, not some theory about things.

A guy here – a crusty old loner farmer – ran for local office. The sum total of his platform was this - “we gotta do something about the bikes.” Everyone here knew exactly what he meant, but the Dem activists don't have a clue. “The bikes” - the beautiful people, the refugees from corporate jobs in Chicago and Detroit, with their second homes, their demand for “organic” boutique shops, their complaints about the smell of manure form the farms. Driving up the real estate costs, lecturing people here on how they should farm, treating the gals in the local fruit stands with arrogance and contempt.. It all comes to a head when you have an overloaded truck packed with cherries that have to get to market and have to get their now, your 10th trip today, with 20 more ahead of you, trying to get to the packing house and stay one step ahead of the harvest, working dawn to dusk in the July heat, equipment breaking down, the brokers trying to drive the prices down because they know you have to sell – you come over a rise, and there they are - “the bikes.” They own the road, because we should all be more environmentally minded, don't you know. Never mind that they themselves drive 200 miles each way every weekend to get here from Chicago, they are being energy efficient now, and they are not about to get put of the way for a flatbed truck with a few thousand pounds of cherries. “Bikers have rights too!” In their lime green stretchy outfits, and their expensive imported Italian bikes, and their sippy cups of water strapped to the handle bars – sometimes a child strapped in too - and their fancy sunglasses and cute little helmets. As you slam on the brakes and swerve to miss them they stare at you with those blank looks that say so much, and make an exaggerated point of moving as slowly and deliberately as possible – sending a non-verbal message. Who is kidding whom? Of course they are sending an arrogant and contemptuous message to their presumed sweaty inferiors in their ramshackle old trucks.

I wish I had a dollar for every SUV I have seen with an expensive bike strapped on back, maybe a kayak on the roof, and a Kerry sticker on the bumper, speeding past 20 little farms with fruit stands heaped with fresh local produce ripened on the tree and hand harvested an hour ago – the best in the world - as they drive 50 miles to get to the nearest Whole Foods to buy their fruits and vegetables.

Yeah, we do have to do something about the bikes.

There is no way that you can promote the Dems in this community – that is a sick joke, and no one would take you seriously. It is amazing to me that the Dem apologists and activists all talk as though they have the inside wisdom on all things, are the smarter people, and that anyone who isn't a Dem must be stupid or something. They can't conceive of the fact that the Dem party is a complete non-starter here. No sane person would try to promote or defend them. That isn't because the Dems are “too far Left” it is because they are not reliable allies against the bullies. They are wannabe bullies – they want “our” bullies in power instead of “their” bullies. People know this. They know that Clinton and Kerry, for example, are arrogant and pompous self-promoters, hypocrites and panderers. Only a person totally blinded by Dem true believer partisanship can fail to see that. People know that the Dems won't fight for the people when the chips are down. People know that the Dems are beholden to a small zealous group of social cause activist communities that have little or nothing to do with the left and are all about some suburban lifestyle choices for the well off, and that they are taking the same corporate money, and that they cannot be relied upon to fight their way out of a paper bag and always take the safe and cowardly course.

People trust us in the farming community because, yes, “we share their values.” That is a big joke to the liberal activists, but they don't have a clue what those values are. Hard work, self-sacrifice, honoring tradition and your ancestors, business done on a handshake, a community that pulls together and works together, humility, duty. All a big joke to the enlightened ones who control the politics of the Left.

Effective politics in this community is not a matter of “speaking truth to power” or marching or chanting some moronic slogan. I remember trying to explain to a carpet bagger activist what was wrong with the ant-war pitch she was haranguing people with. I related a story to her about a local farmer. He told me that he was deeply opposed to this war, but that he would never put a sign up in his yard, for example, expressing that. I asked him why, and he said because his neighbors had boys over there right now, and he would never want to suggest in even the slightest way that he didn't honor their sacrifice. What he would do, and did do, however, was sit down with his neighbor Cal at the kitchen table and open up his heart man-to-man about the war. Cal voted against the Republicans for the first time in his life. He has since lost a boy in Iraq, and the community honored the young man's sacrifice just as they did those who died at Gettysburg, Iwo Jima or Normandy. All of this was derisively dismissed by the liberal activist.

What we did do is we talked to thousands of people and we first criticized the Democrats. We can do that more effectively that Rush or Hannity could ever dream of doing, with much more insight, knowledge and passion. From that, it was relatively effortless to get people to turn on the Republicans because the logjam of the whole talking point partisan idiocy was broken apart. People don't trust criticisms of the republicans when it is all obviously for the purpose of promoting assholes like Kerry. But if you are willing to be honest about Kerry and the whole sorry bunch, people are open to hearing criticism of the Republicans too. We didn't ask people to hire the Democrats, we asked them to fire the Republicans. In county after county here in Michigan, where that message got out, the races were competitive. I think there was one district, near Grand Rapids, the most conservative area in the entire Midwest, where the Republicans cruised. The Dems won dozens and dozens of Republican counties, and here the race was within a tenth of a percentage point. Many areas that have been 70% Republican for decades were up for grabs and the Republicans lost most of them. The more remote, the more rural, the less attention they got from the Dem activists, the worse the Republicans did. We weren't marching in those areas, we weren't carrying signs, or running around door to door with literature or telemarketing people. We weren't trying to sell anyone on the Democratic party. We were meeting all day everyday face to face with people in the course of work, we were talking with everyone we met, quietly and respectfully, about the dire crisis in the country. We were talking socialism, we were talking about the New Deal, we were talking about beating back big money – the banks, the corporations, the real estate brokers and developers, the financial institutions - the bought and paid for politicians and corrupted bureaucrats - and we were talking about standing up to the bullies.

[Two Americas]

I think I'd disagree with her about Wellstone
Ah. see Mairead, that might be a blind spot for us. We might be too smart for our own good. As I have said before, we know the words but we don't hear the music. The blue collar people hear the music.

I ran into her again this morning and I asked her what is it about Wellstone, do you think? She said "it's like Bobby." We talked about that for a while - she said "can't you tell? a couple of times. I thought back to when I saw RFK in Detroit. It was a hot day in 1968 - must have been shortly before he was killed. I was cynical and suspicious of him - I thought of him as more conservative than his brother, more self-serving, more of a light weight.

He took his motorcade down 12th street - the poorest of the poor neighborhoods in Detroit. He wanted to see first hand the place where the trouble had started the summer before, when the cops raided a blind pig and roughed people up and demonstrations started that led to a full blown police riot and hundreds of citizens were killed and half the city burned.

The word spread fast in the neighborhood that Kennedy was going to 12th street. I was in the offices of the local socialist newspaper when we got the word and we all raced over to see.

I never saw anything like it. The crowd was almost all Black, and there were thousands and thousands of people out in the streets spontaneously and the crowds just kept growing. Kennedy stopped his motorcade, got off the car and waded into the crowds. People were hugging him, whispering into his ear. So many people were shaking his hand that the sleeve on his shirt kept ripping off and he would go back to the car for a new shirt and change it right there. People were weeping and praying there in the street. Kennedy was tearing up. I looked up to Roosevelt Grier standing in the car watching all this - former football player and RFK's bodyguard, a big imposing guy - and he was tearing up and swallowing hard. I was stunned. We waded into the crowd hugging people and we were crying pretty soon, too.

Those people, forgotten and suffering – you can't imagine what it was like back then, the white police force like an an occupying army, no opportunities to be anything but a janitor or house cleaner, whites fleeing the city, businesses leaving, tanks in the street the summer before, and just a month or two before after MLK was murdered the whole city locked down and soldiers on every street corner – those people believed. They had been betrayed too many times by white politicians to be naively or quickly believing in anything. They hadn't been promised anything or told to believe in anything. That belief is more important than an analysis of what RFK “was” - more important than RFK himself – because that belief and that hope is in and of itself a powerful thing.

Something happened there. It was real. Those people matter. They were saying that they were willing to take a chance on RFK. And for whatever he had been for whatever he had done or said before, in that moment he responded and reciprocated. He made a promise to those people by his response – not verbal, not “policy,” not “positions” on “issues.” He was saying by his actions “I see you. You exist. You are real. You matter. I am here. I am with you.”

[Kid of the Black Hole]

I think I'd disagree with her about Wellstone
Ah. see Mairead, that might be a blind spot for us. We might be too smart for our own good. As I have said before, we know the words but we don't hear the music. The blue collar people hear the music.

I ran into her again this morning and I asked her what is it about Wellstone, do you think? She said "it's like Bobby." We talked about that for a while - she said "can't you tell? a couple of times. I thought back to when I saw RFK in Detroit. It was a hot day in 1968 - must have been shortly before he was killed. I was cynical and suspicious of him - I thought of him as more conservative than his brother, more self-serving, more of a light weight.

He took his motorcade down 12th street - the poorest of the poor neighborhoods in Detroit. He wanted to see first hand the place where the trouble had started the summer before, when the cops raided a blind pig and roughed people up and demonstrations started that led to a full blown police riot and hundreds of citizens were killed and half the city burned.

The word spread fast in the neighborhood that Kennedy was going to 12th street. I was in the offices of the local socialist newspaper when we got the word and we all raced over to see.

I never saw anything like it. The crowd was almost all Black, and there were thousands and thousands of people out in the streets spontaneously and the crowds just kept growing. Kennedy stopped his motorcade, got off the car and waded into the crowds. People were hugging him, whispering into his ear. So many people were shaking his hand that the sleeve on his shirt kept ripping off and he would go back to the car for a new shirt and change it right there. People were weeping and praying there in the street. Kennedy was tearing up. I looked up to Roosevelt Grier standing in the car watching all this - former football player and RFK's bodyguard, a big imposing guy - and he was tearing up and swallowing hard. I was stunned. We waded into the crowd hugging people and we were crying pretty soon, too.

Those people, forgotten and suffering – you can't imagine what it was like back then, the white police force like an an occupying army, no opportunities to be anything but a janitor or house cleaner, whites fleeing the city, businesses leaving, tanks in the street the summer before, and just a month or two before after MLK was murdered the whole city locked down and soldiers on every street corner – those people believed. They had been betrayed too many times by white politicians to be naively or quickly believing in anything. They hadn't been promised anything or told to believe in anything. That belief is more important than an analysis of what RFK “was” - more important than RFK himself – because that belief and that hope is in and of itself a powerful thing.

Something happened there. It was real. Those people matter. They were saying that they were willing to take a chance on RFK. And for whatever he had been for whatever he had done or said before, in that moment he responded and reciprocated. He made a promise to those people by his response – not verbal, not “policy,” not “positions” on “issues.” He was saying by his actions “I see you. You exist. You are real. You matter. I am here. I am with you.”

Well I see where some of the gap in our thinking comes from. I've never experienced or witnessed anything life that IN MY LIFE short of maybe Tienamen Square but I was like 10 years old at the time.

[Mairead]

Ah. see Mairead, that might be a blind spot for us. We might be too smart for our own good. As I have said before, we know the words but we don't hear the music. The blue collar people hear the music.
okay...but who's playing it?


I never saw anything like it. The crowd was almost all Black, and there were thousands and thousands of people out in the streets spontaneously and the crowds just kept growing. Kennedy stopped his motorcade, got off the car and waded into the crowds. People were hugging him, whispering into his ear. So many people were shaking his hand that the sleeve on his shirt kept ripping off and he would go back to the car for a new shirt and change it right there. People were weeping and praying there in the street. Kennedy was tearing up. I looked up to Roosevelt Grier standing in the car watching all this - former football player and RFK's bodyguard, a big imposing guy - and he was tearing up and swallowing hard. I was stunned. We waded into the crowd hugging people and we were crying pretty soon, too.

Those people, forgotten and suffering – you can't imagine what it was like back then, the white police force like an an occupying army, no opportunities to be anything but a janitor or house cleaner, whites fleeing the city, businesses leaving, tanks in the street the summer before, and just a month or two before after MLK was murdered the whole city locked down and soldiers on every street corner – those people believed. They had been betrayed too many times by white politicians to be naively or quickly believing in anything. They hadn't been promised anything or told to believe in anything. That belief is more important than an analysis of what RFK “was” - more important than RFK himself – because that belief and that hope is in and of itself a powerful thing.

Something happened there. It was real. Those people matter. They were saying that they were willing to take a chance on RFK. And for whatever he had been for whatever he had done or said before, in that moment he responded and reciprocated. He made a promise to those people by his response – not verbal, not “policy,” not “positions” on “issues.” He was saying by his actions “I see you. You exist. You are real. You matter. I am here. I am with you.”
Yep. And Clinton got the same desperate affection, and we know what that bought us all.

I have White privilege, so I have never known (thank the Goddess!) what it's like to be both poor and the "wrong" color. But I do positively know what it's like to be very poor, living-on-relief poor, and the one thing that makes me nervous is the idea of noble-savaging people. Being poor is not a more insightful state of being, it's just one in which one has less money, power, health, and choices. If anything, it blinkers people...though of course in a different way to how wealth blinkers the wealthy.

I'm positively not trying to say that you're noble-savaging the poor, but because you and I and our ilk don't sneer at the poor I think noble-savaging them is a trap that we can easily stumble into through overcompensation if we're not careful (I know I can, anyway!). Better we should treat them like we treat one another, no? You know: with honesty?

[Two Americas]

I remember many of the young and poor Kucinich volunteers reporting back how much they were ostracized. Even in the poor neighborhoods, bejeweled, perfumed, designer clothing clad people in nice cars showed up to take charge and treated the poor and young people like dirt.

I have spent most of my life among blue collar people where I was the odd one and have always known that I had much more to learn than I had to teach anyone. When you can see intellectual ability and verbal ability as just one skill set, no better and no worse than the skills other people have, and then try to be useful to the people who are doing the real work, the important work in the country, there is no danger of a condescending noble-savage b'wana thing going on, since you are always the student, not the teacher, and you are always the one struggling to make a contribution.

Intellectuals are channeled off into their own ghettos, separated from the people at large. There is no obvious way for us to survive without signing on to the ruling class program. We are told "there is no money in art (or writing, or music)" and that "there is no future in the Labor movement" and “you need to be practical” and a whole bunch of discouraging and cynical stuff, and in general are steered away from areas where our skills are desperately needed. We are given a certain amount of material well being, and in that sense are not as oppressed as the blue collar people. But we are required to do something that the blue collar people are not - we have to sell our souls.

That is why there is so much focus among liberals on personal moral choices and stances and on idealogical purity and on "being the change you want to see." They have a vague sense that they are morally compromised. They don't want to give up, or even question or look at, their privilege and ease, so they don't see the problem politically or socially, but take a religious approach to it. The hope is that they can keep their status, and with the right spiritual vibrations happening in their lives they will be freed from their moral culpability in the destruction and injustice all around us.

[Mairead]

there is no danger of a condescending noble-savage b'wana thing going on, since you are always the student, not the teacher, and you are always the one struggling to make a contribution.
oops, it sounds like I didn't make myself clear. By 'noble-savaging' I meant putting people up on a pedestal and ascribing all kinds of virtues that we supposedly lack because we've been corrupted by affluence/industrialisation/whatever. This is something that academics seem to do a lot, especially well-meaning liberal ones in social work and similar fields (I'm not suggesting that you fall into that category!!).

Feynman had an interesting anecdote about how he learned to value his own skills and not noble-savage skilled craftspeople -- he found that, against his expectations, he knew more about colors than a housepainter to whom he was being deferential.

I'm happy to put my skills at the disposal of people who want to do good things, and I have zero interest in in-group power struggles. But that doesn't mean I'm less than others in the group. Different, okay, but not less. I refuse to accept that I'm less--I got too much of that shit growing up. Someone who wants me to accept being less will have to accept me being gone instead.

[Two Americas]

oops, it sounds like I didn't make myself clear. By 'noble-savaging' I meant putting people up on a pedestal and ascribing all kinds of virtues that we supposedly lack because we've been corrupted by affluence/industrialisation/whatever. This is something that academics seem to do a lot, especially well-meaning liberal ones in social work and similar fields (I'm not suggesting that you fall into that category!!).
It isn't "whatever" - it is class. Those good with language would be a threat to the ruling class if they were not co-opted in some way. We are co-opted. Success and status are the things we are bribed with. We are resistant to hearing that, because we want to think that we earned success and status and are insulted when someone questions it.

I'm happy to put my skills at the disposal of people who want to do good things, and I have zero interest in in-group power struggles. But that doesn't mean I'm less than others in the group. Different, okay, but not less. I refuse to accept that I'm less--I got too much of that shit growing up. Someone who wants me to accept being less will have to accept me being gone instead.
Less? How would you be less? I am really curious about your thinking on that.

What I have been saying is that those with brains are now in the service of the ruling class. I am suggesting that we put our skills into the service of the working class. How does that make us less? How does that enoble blue collar workers or raise them above us?

[Mairead]

oops, it sounds like I didn't make myself clear. By 'noble-savaging' I meant putting people up on a pedestal and ascribing all kinds of virtues that we supposedly lack because we've been corrupted by affluence/industrialisation/whatever. This is something that academics seem to do a lot, especially well-meaning liberal ones in social work and similar fields (I'm not suggesting that you fall into that category!!).
It isn't "whatever" - it is class. Those good with language would be a threat to the ruling class if they were not co-opted in some way. We are co-opted. Success and status are the things we are bribed with. We are resistant to hearing that, because we want to think that we earned success and status and are insulted when someone questions it.

We were bribed?!? Shit, I must have been behind the door as usual. Other people always get the good stuff.

I'm being facetious, but only slightly. I have [redacted] If I can't take credit for what small success I ever achieved, I'd like to know what more I needed to have done.

Or when you say "we" are you talking about someone else?




I'm happy to put my skills at the disposal of people who want to do good things, and I have zero interest in in-group power struggles. But that doesn't mean I'm less than others in the group. Different, okay, but not less. I refuse to accept that I'm less--I got too much of that shit growing up. Someone who wants me to accept being less will have to accept me being gone instead.
Less? How would you be less? I am really curious about your thinking on that.

What I have been saying is that those with brains are now in the service of the ruling class. I am suggesting that we put our skills into the service of the working class. How does that make us less? How does that enoble blue collar workers or raise them above us?
Maybe I misinterpreted this (and similar things I've seen you say):
I have spent most of my life among blue collar people where I was the odd one and have always known that I had much more to learn than I had to teach ... always the student, not the teacher, and ... always the one struggling to make a contribution. That sounds to me as though you're declaring yourself one-down. I've never been around anyone but working-class people, on the job or off. I think I've spoken to someone in the upper class twice or maybe three times in my life. I've never thought of myself as having had more to learn than to teach except in the rather banal sense that if I'm one of many people with different skills, together they have more skills for me to learn than I have for them to learn. But breath for breath, what I have to say is no less important than what they have to say.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

We were bribed?!? Shit, I must have been behind the door as usual. Other people always get the good stuff.

Not bribed, sedated.

[Raphaelle]

Upper-middle-class girls in high school, talented, intelligent, beautiful with liberal parents who used to romanticize Blacks living in the ghetto. I remember that. We used to always talk about one in particular as going over to the bad side of the tracks with her white cape and basket of goodies on her arm. There was just something so patronizing about it, but we shouldn't have laughed I guess.

Is that what you mean?

[Two Americas]

Upper-middle-class girls in high school, talented, intelligent, beautiful with liberal parents who used to romanticize Blacks living in the ghetto. I remember that. We used to always talk about one in particular as going over to the bad side of the tracks with her white cape and basket of goodies on her arm. There was just something so patronizing about it, but we shouldn't have laughed I guess.

Is that what you mean?
Me?

[Two Americas]

We were bribed?!? Shit, I must have been behind the door as usual. Other people always get the good stuff.

I'm being facetious, but only slightly.

Or when you say "we" are you talking about someone else?
I don't mean any of us personally in particular. Probably the people here are mostly refugees and missed out on any goodies. But I think we are all familiar with the pressure, and know where we were supposed to go had things gone right or had we not been resistant. So we here are flukes and exceptions, I think, don't you?


Maybe I misinterpreted this (and similar things I've seen you say): That sounds to me as though you're declaring yourself one-down. I've never been around anyone but working-class people, on the job or off. I think I've spoken to someone in the upper class twice or maybe three times in my life. I've never thought of myself as having had more to learn than to teach except in the rather banal sense that if I'm one of many people with different skills, together they have more skills for me to learn than I have for them to learn. But breath for breath, what I have to say is no less important than what they have to say.
Interesting. I am seeing a common thread here. Thank God for newswolf, because I never would have understood this otherwise. It is powerful politically, but also personally for me.

I am not going to try to describe the common thread, because that always falls flat on its face. We have all been mashed around enough and seen the other side just enough that we are "failed" examples of the pressure to co-opt smart people into the service of the ruling class. There may not be many of us. We may be the only ones with the insights we have.

[Mairead]

Upper-middle-class girls in high school, talented, intelligent, beautiful with liberal parents who used to romanticize Blacks living in the ghetto. I remember that. We used to always talk about one in particular as going over to the bad side of the tracks with her white cape and basket of goodies on her arm. There was just something so patronizing about it, but we shouldn't have laughed I guess.

Is that what you mean?
If you're asking whether that's the kind of thing I meant by the term "noble-savaging", then: yep, that's it. It's profoundly and obliviously classist, and, honestly, I think laughter might be as good a response as any.

[Mairead]

A guy here – a crusty old loner farmer – ran for local office. The sum total of his platform was this - “we gotta do something about the bikes.” Everyone here knew exactly what he meant, but the Dem activists don't have a clue. “The bikes” - the beautiful people, the refugees from corporate jobs in Chicago and Detroit, with their second homes, their demand for “organic” boutique shops, their complaints about the smell of manure form the farms. Driving up the real estate costs, lecturing people here on how they should farm, treating the gals in the local fruit stands with arrogance and contempt.. It all comes to a head when you have an overloaded truck packed with cherries that have to get to market and have to get their now, your 10th trip today, with 20 more ahead of you, trying to get to the packing house and stay one step ahead of the harvest, working dawn to dusk in the July heat, equipment breaking down, the brokers trying to drive the prices down because they know you have to sell – you come over a rise, and there they are - “the bikes.” They own the road, because we should all be more environmentally minded, don't you know. Never mind that they themselves drive 200 miles each way every weekend to get here from Chicago, they are being energy efficient now, and they are not about to get put of the way for a flatbed truck with a few thousand pounds of cherries. “Bikers have rights too!” In their lime green stretchy outfits, and their expensive imported Italian bikes, and their sippy cups of water strapped to the handle bars – sometimes a child strapped in too - and their fancy sunglasses and cute little helmets. As you slam on the brakes and swerve to miss them they stare at you with those blank looks that say so much, and make an exaggerated point of moving as slowly and deliberately as possible – sending a non-verbal message. Who is kidding whom? Of course they are sending an arrogant and contemptuous message to their presumed sweaty inferiors in their ramshackle old trucks.

Your little anecdote became more figural for me yesterday.

I recently joined MassBike because I supposed it was a way to advocate for more accommodation for bikes. I can't safely ride up to the Holyoke Mall, for example, because, insanely, the only way to get from here to there involves riding a mile or two on a local 6-lane arterial road with the traffic you'd suppose.

Even more than motorcyclists, bicyclists are in danger from unthinking car/truck/bus drivers (a 19yo woman killed a bike rider recently because she was concentrating on downloading ring tones to her cell phone: she was so far off the road that she hit her victim with the driver's side of her car! Her MySpace entry, since pulled, made it plain that she felt herself to be the real victim in the episode since it was, y'knaw, a freakin acccident). I can't think the number of times I've had to death-grip my brakes because some nitwit turns right 10 feet in front of me or pops open their parked car door without looking. And of course it's totally charming when some truck driver sees how close he can come to me without actually hitting me, or air-horns me to see me jump. Or when some asshole screams at me to get off the road. A laugh a minute. For some people.

So I joined MassBike. I thought it sounded strange for them to be offering $60 classes on how to ride a bike, and some of the things I read seemed more yuppified than I had hoped. But they also suggest that it's dangerous to try to be accommodating by hugging the right edge of the street/road because then impatient people will try to squeeze past us when there isn't enough room (I thought of that when I read your note, above). The car/truck driver gets a dent and maybe insurance points, but the bike rider gets years of disability or a funeral which isn't a good tradeoff.

Yesterday they asked me to take a survey and my worst fears were confirmed: it does focus on the kind of yuppie "image" cyclists your rant describes. One of the membership benefit is discounts for acupuncture and yoga classes. eek! I'm apparently an anomaly--someone who rides not for sport or image but for the reason people in other countries ride: transportation.

So do I focus on the advocacy or the yuppiness?

[Raphaelle]

My old man used to call them "exhibitionists". Same thing with the bikers in their bike-racer play role mode. It is just a fad and they are into show. Around here if you want to take a bike as transportation, you use the tow path bike path. If you want to be seen you ride the narrow river road which is parallel to the tow path.

[PPLE]

A guy here – a crusty old loner farmer – ran for local office. The sum total of his platform was this - “we gotta do something about the bikes.” Everyone here knew exactly what he meant, but the Dem activists don't have a clue. “The bikes” - the beautiful people, the refugees from corporate jobs in Chicago and Detroit, with their second homes, their demand for “organic” boutique shops, their complaints about the smell of manure form the farms. Driving up the real estate costs, lecturing people here on how they should farm, treating the gals in the local fruit stands with arrogance and contempt.. It all comes to a head when you have an overloaded truck packed with cherries that have to get to market and have to get their now, your 10th trip today, with 20 more ahead of you, trying to get to the packing house and stay one step ahead of the harvest, working dawn to dusk in the July heat, equipment breaking down, the brokers trying to drive the prices down because they know you have to sell – you come over a rise, and there they are - “the bikes.” They own the road, because we should all be more environmentally minded, don't you know. Never mind that they themselves drive 200 miles each way every weekend to get here from Chicago, they are being energy efficient now, and they are not about to get put of the way for a flatbed truck with a few thousand pounds of cherries. “Bikers have rights too!” In their lime green stretchy outfits, and their expensive imported Italian bikes, and their sippy cups of water strapped to the handle bars – sometimes a child strapped in too - and their fancy sunglasses and cute little helmets. As you slam on the brakes and swerve to miss them they stare at you with those blank looks that say so much, and make an exaggerated point of moving as slowly and deliberately as possible – sending a non-verbal message. Who is kidding whom? Of course they are sending an arrogant and contemptuous message to their presumed sweaty inferiors in their ramshackle old trucks.

Your little anecdote became more figural for me yesterday.

I recently joined MassBike because I supposed it was a way to advocate for more accommodation for bikes. I can't safely ride up to the Holyoke Mall, for example, because, insanely, the only way to get from here to there involves riding a mile or two on a local 6-lane arterial road with the traffic you'd suppose.

Even more than motorcyclists, bicyclists are in danger from unthinking car/truck/bus drivers (a 19yo woman killed a bike rider recently because she was concentrating on downloading ring tones to her cell phone: she was so far off the road that she hit her victim with the driver's side of her car! Her MySpace entry, since pulled, made it plain that she felt herself to be the real victim in the episode since it was, y'knaw, a freakin acccident). I can't think the number of times I've had to death-grip my brakes because some nitwit turns right 10 feet in front of me or pops open their parked car door without looking. And of course it's totally charming when some truck driver sees how close he can come to me without actually hitting me, or air-horns me to see me jump. Or when some asshole screams at me to get off the road. A laugh a minute. For some people.

So I joined MassBike. I thought it sounded strange for them to be offering $60 classes on how to ride a bike, and some of the things I read seemed more yuppified than I had hoped. But they also suggest that it's dangerous to try to be accommodating by hugging the right edge of the street/road because then impatient people will try to squeeze past us when there isn't enough room (I thought of that when I read your note, above). The car/truck driver gets a dent and maybe insurance points, but the bike rider gets years of disability or a funeral which isn't a good tradeoff.

Yesterday they asked me to take a survey and my worst fears were confirmed: it does focus on the kind of yuppie "image" cyclists your rant describes. One of the membership benefit is discounts for acupuncture and yoga classes. eek! I'm apparently an anomaly--someone who rides not for sport or image but for the reason people in other countries ride: transportation.

So do I focus on the advocacy or the yuppiness?

TAKE YOUR LANE. PERIOD.

Caveat - that's in town. On my 500 mile ride from Austin to Houston to Dallas a few years back, I never hesitated to move for a tractor or someone hauling stuff down the lonely country roads I was on. That is not the same thing as being surrounded by bitches in SUVs mad because you've impeded their god given right to break the speed limit laws in town. Not remotely the same. In Dallas I *never* give up my lane and have hopped off my bike and threated to beat someone who honked at me over it. The LAW is that a bike is a vehicle too.

Common Courtesy is a bit more important than the law on a lonely road where someone is making a living as they go by instead of making a stink (literally and figuratively) as they do racing round the city to buy shit they do not need.

[Mairead]

Common Courtesy is a bit more important than the law on a lonely road where someone is making a living as they go by instead of making a stink (literally and figuratively) as they do racing round the city to buy shit they do not need.
Agreed. Which is where, I think, the difference between serious and image cyclists comes into it. Or possibly, as Mike implies, it's a presumed-class issue--the image-driven yuppies have been trained up to only understand power relationships, not live-and-let-live courtesy.

Me, I can't imagine being a jerk about it--it'd be against my politics, for one thing. So I generally don't take much of my lane (55 years of habit is hard to overcome). But I put an amber xenon strobe on the rack, and it seems to help persuade people to give me more space as they pass. I'm planning to put 2-foot wide lightbars at both ends too, with a few hundred sparkling amber LEDs on each. I hope that'll attract even the attention of the cellphone drones.

[Two Americas]

"We gotta do something about the bikes" is not really about bikes.

Notice how we right away relate this to our own personal experiences with bikes? That is an example of the politics of personal choices that are so crippling and corrupting to the Left. That is the "something" that we need to do something about.

The politics of personal choices will always favor the upper class, because the upper class will always have more choices. Those choices will always be at the expense of the working class.

I am not criticizing you guys and your bike riding, nor am I defending SUV drivers who run people over.

[Mairead]

"We gotta do something about the bikes" is not really about bikes.

Notice how we right away relate this to our own personal experiences with bikes? That is an example of the politics of personal choices that are so crippling and corrupting to the Left. That is the "something" that we need to do something about.

The politics of personal choices will always favor the upper class, because the upper class will always have more choices. Those choices will always be at the expense of the working class.

I am not criticizing you guys and your bike riding, nor am I defending SUV drivers who run people over.
um, nobody thought you were criticising our bike riding or defending SUVs Mike :lol:

My point in responding was two-fold, on the one hand to acknowledge that the larger problem of classist disconnects illustrated by your anecdote is very real and pervades even organisations that you'd think would be immune...and on the other hand to point out that there are at least two ways we can react to discovering that the world isn't as we would wish. I really apologise that I wasn't more clear! PPLE and I had a tiny exchange about the serious, potentially fatal nature of the classist disconnect in your anecdote, but that was at least partly digressive.

[Two Americas]

um, nobody thought you were criticising our bike riding or defending SUVs Mike :lol:
Yeah I flinch as an automatic response. Try criticizing "the bikes" at DU.

[Mairead]

The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Better Business Bureau has recommended POM Wonderful discontinue its "puffery" and hyperbolic health claims regarding its pomegranate juice. NAD Director Andrea Levine reported that the claims were the strongest she'd ever seen for a food product, yet POM continues to make outrageous claims that its juice benefits cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's disease.

I wonder why the FDA hasn't done these people the same way. Could they be BushCo contributors?

[Two Americas]

I wonder why the FDA hasn't done these people the same way. Could they be BushCo contributors?
Yes, and it goes deeper than that and involves Amway and the Chinese. I don't want to go into detail, though, because the last thing we need is yet another cause. What is happening on this issue is the same thing that is happening everywhere. Making the case for one cause - the cherry growers on this one - actually distracts people from the larger picture. Making special interest causes out of things implies that things are pretty much OK everywhere else, but here is something we should worry about. That is false.

The whole country is sinking into a cesspool of corruption, dishonesty and exploitation, and it is happening every day everywhere we look, right under our noses, and eberyone is affected by it in everything they do. The people know this and are outraged and fed up, so we don't need special organizations dedicated to special causes with a marketing plan for how to "reach" the public and make them more "aware."

The only value of talking about the plight of the fruit growers is if we can put it into a context of class struggle, and the general abuse of the public by capitalism run amok.

It is rare to find anything that is not dominated by capitalism, it is the rare person for whom the system is working, the rare industry that is not being ravaged and destroyed by corporate power, the rare neighborhood that is not being destroyed, it is rare to find a public resource of any kind that is not at risk.

The liberal activist causes imply that in a context of things more or less working, there are these few problems that need our attention, donations, etc.

[Mairead]

The liberal activist causes imply that in a context of things more or less working, there are these few problems that need our attention, donations, etc.
The part that makes me nervious is the patriotism. We here know what what the country needs is a major buttkicking targeting the butts of the current ruling class and their fellow-travellers. But there seem to be a lotttt of people who don't quite get that. They confuse the ruling class with the country. Not all do, of course, and I wouldn't for a second imply otherwise. But a lot do. And they're willing to play Lumpenproletariat.

I don't have a good solution, or even a mediocre one. But I do have lots of worries about it!

[Two Americas]

I wonder why the FDA hasn't done these people the same way. Could they be BushCo contributors?
Annual cherry grower meetings this week - very interesting. The power of big money is so pervasive, the growers are so vulnerable, as are we all. We are all just being steam-rolled. It all become so clear to me this week.

My boss was pressuring me to go to the meetings, and I was resisting. I told him "I will just have opinions, start controversy, and piss everyone off." He said "good" lol. So I did. For the first time, I didn't feel like a lone voice in the wilderness fighting to establish credibility and listeners. Banquet room full of 4-500 people, all the movers and shakers an poobahs, and I was amazed at how effortlessly I was able to get up and speak on a strong and true voice and what I was able to say. Most of the people in that room are growers, dominated by a few people who one way or another represent corporate interests. The corporate scams are all "the emperor's new clothes" - an illusion that I suddenly feel can easily be smashed up.

It isn't so much an overt conspiracy that causes corporate dominance, it is more that we have all been bullied for so long, that we slip into the same mentality all of the time. Bullies rise to the top, the rest of us are cowed and silenced. The same pattern is happening everywhere. That serves the ruling class, but isn't managed and directed by the ruling class. Anywhere and anytime you stand up to the bullies - point out that they aren't wearing any clothes - the spell is broken, and people begin questioning the bullying and oppression everywhere.

[Mairead]

I was amazed at how effortlessly I was able to get up and speak on a strong and true voice and what I was able to say.
Excellent! Top good!


It isn't so much an overt conspiracy that causes corporate dominance, it is more that we have all been bullied for so long, that we slip into the same mentality all of the time. Bullies rise to the top, the rest of us are cowed and silenced. The same pattern is happening everywhere. That serves the ruling class, but isn't managed and directed by the ruling class. Anywhere and anytime you stand up to the bullies - point out that they aren't wearing any clothes - the spell is broken, and people begin questioning the bullying and oppression everywhere.
Y'know Mike, this is a really excellent insight and it hooks into some emerging research too.

There's a game ('ultimatum') being used to test economics theories. In it, two people are offered the chance to share out a substantial sum of money. Without prior discussion, one chooses how much to offer, and the other decides whether to accept. If there's no acceptance, the game is over and neither gets anything. So there's pressure on both. (I thought I talked about this in here already, but I can't find it. Apologies if I did!)

What the research turns up is we're not the 'homo economici' that the Chicago School arseholes would have us believe. According to them, we'll always take the offer because something is better than nothing. But we don't, and this cuts across cultures. If the offer is too low, the offeree walks away even when the amount of money is very substantial (several days' wages). Fairness is strongly valued cross-culturally, and we punish people, even at a significant cost to ourselves, who try to be unfair.

What's more interesting is the number of subcultures in which the offerers routinely offer half and occasionally even more than half! Researchers note that one way to get the offerer to make a better offer is the well-known one of providing information about the offeree in advance of the interaction. But in these subcultures, that's not needed. The people evidently have such a heightened community feeling that it simply doesn't occur to them to try lowball offers.

And now we come to the recent research. This game is normally a one-time game, with each pair sharing out (or not) a single sum of money in a single transaction. But the researchers are finding that, if they make it a series of transactions for each pair, the usual dynamic only holds if both people are of the same socioeconomic class. If the offerer is wealthier, and this is known to them, then over time the offers get stingier and stingier, but the offeree resignedly accepts them anyway. Researchers hypothesise that the exploitative behavior of everyday life is being replayed in the game context, and the poor person is so in thrall to their expectations that they can't break free, and they therefore accept lowball offers they would reject if made by someone else.

I wonder whether that's significant for our overall problem?

[Two Americas]

The part that makes me nervious is the patriotism. We here know what what the country needs is a major buttkicking targeting the butts of the current ruling class and their fellow-travellers. But there seem to be a lotttt of people who don't quite get that. They confuse the ruling class with the country. Not all do, of course, and I wouldn't for a second imply otherwise. But a lot do. And they're willing to play Lumpenproletariat.

I don't have a good solution, or even a mediocre one. But I do have lots of worries about it!
Indeed.

Chauvinism, xenophobia, racism and jingoism all masquerade as patriotism. If we attack all patriotism. however, I believe we are contributing to the confusion that promotes chauvinism, xenophobia, racism and jingoism.

Much more powerful to say that the CCC is true patriotism, for example, and that Haliburton is treasonous by way of contrast, then to say that all patriotism is bad and trot out all of the abuses by the ruling class as evidence that “America is no good.”

The politically useful thing about American nationalism, as opposed to nationalism in other countries, is that it can be used as a launching pad for talking about the principles that the country is at least nominally founded upon and defined by. German nationalism, by way of contrast, can only be about blood, soil and race. Those are the only basis for the group to which Germans could express loyalty.

Patriotism is loyalty to one's own, and a willingness to sacrifice oneself for the good of the entire group. It isn't inherently a bad thing. No matter how bad the government is, no matter what the ruling class does, loyalty to the group is not affected. It is important for us to separate the interests of the ruling class from those of the working class. When we do that "country" is redefined and the ruling class can't hide behind patriotism and manipulate people with it. In the absence of a class struggle analysis, attacking patriotism is what the right wing propagandists say that it is - tearing down America.