"liberals dismissing their opponents as simpletons and troglodytes, literally calling them garbage and accusing them of bitterly clinging to guns and religion, is a big part of what got us into our current political mess"
To the extent that that's true, I don't think it's accidental.
When Dubya was president, liberals loved to make fun of his folksy, informal speaking style, occasionally vulgar and littered with grammatical errors. Then someone noticed that, when he gave speeches in Europe, a lot of that disappeared. He still sounded like a Texan, but like a Texan who'd graduated from Yale, as he did. The folksy style was a tactic, a deliberate strategy to get ordinary voters to think that he, a son of wealth and power, was in some sense one of them. I'm pretty sure that Donald Trump's accent, which Hollywood would assign to an Irish-American cab driver, is the same sort of tactic.
There's another possibility I think we should consider: that the Democratic Party leadership's expression of contempt for the white working class - "garbage", "deplorables", the bitter clinger thing -- is also a tactic, that its purpose is to repel the white working class, to keep them voting against their interests, to prevent the FDR coalition from reuniting and therefore becoming powerful enough to swing government policy in a direction more favorable to ordinary people.
I hear a lot of talk about the uniparty, but I don't think very many of the writers using the term allow for the possibility that the leaders of the two parties might actively conspire with each other and with major donors to divide the electorate in such a way as to neutralize the threat that democracy poses to the concentration of wealth and power.
I don't think the ruling class worries much about a moderate amount of rioting in the streets. Hey, that's what the militarized police are for. What scares them is solidarity.
Good stuff. I hope that you sent a link to this to Greer,
I tend to lean more toward yur way of looking at the issue. I am trying to construct a Venn Diagram in my head concerning how this is going to all play out.
I hope that you are correct about the last minute rush to one candidate or the other and that the results of the election are clear and the can will be kicked further down the road. I am not really interested in living through another contested election. Come to think of it, that lost its appeal at Bush/Gore and hasn't done anything but go downhill since.
"liberals dismissing their opponents as simpletons and troglodytes, literally calling them garbage and accusing them of bitterly clinging to guns and religion, is a big part of what got us into our current political mess"
To the extent that that's true, I don't think it's accidental.
When Dubya was president, liberals loved to make fun of his folksy, informal speaking style, occasionally vulgar and littered with grammatical errors. Then someone noticed that, when he gave speeches in Europe, a lot of that disappeared. He still sounded like a Texan, but like a Texan who'd graduated from Yale, as he did. The folksy style was a tactic, a deliberate strategy to get ordinary voters to think that he, a son of wealth and power, was in some sense one of them. I'm pretty sure that Donald Trump's accent, which Hollywood would assign to an Irish-American cab driver, is the same sort of tactic.
There's another possibility I think we should consider: that the Democratic Party leadership's expression of contempt for the white working class - "garbage", "deplorables", the bitter clinger thing -- is also a tactic, that its purpose is to repel the white working class, to keep them voting against their interests, to prevent the FDR coalition from reuniting and therefore becoming powerful enough to swing government policy in a direction more favorable to ordinary people.
I hear a lot of talk about the uniparty, but I don't think very many of the writers using the term allow for the possibility that the leaders of the two parties might actively conspire with each other and with major donors to divide the electorate in such a way as to neutralize the threat that democracy poses to the concentration of wealth and power.
I don't think the ruling class worries much about a moderate amount of rioting in the streets. Hey, that's what the militarized police are for. What scares them is solidarity.
Albert et al:
I just pulled this up again, I think that folks who read this could do worse than have a look
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10613/10613-h/10613-h.htm
Good stuff. I hope that you sent a link to this to Greer,
I tend to lean more toward yur way of looking at the issue. I am trying to construct a Venn Diagram in my head concerning how this is going to all play out.
I hope that you are correct about the last minute rush to one candidate or the other and that the results of the election are clear and the can will be kicked further down the road. I am not really interested in living through another contested election. Come to think of it, that lost its appeal at Bush/Gore and hasn't done anything but go downhill since.
Well that was fun.