Poor, White, and Pissed

This is quite a long article, but its all true.

    The working class  people in my town are angry, but not especially angry at Queer Eye For the Straight Guy, or unseen fetuses. I think working class anger is at a     more fundamental level and that it is about this: rank and status as citizens in our society. I think it is about the daily insult working class people suffer from employers, government (national, state and local), and from their more educated fellow Americans, the doctors, lawyers,     journalists, academicians, and others who quietly disdain working people and their uncultured ways. And I think working class anger is about some other things too:

   

    It is about the indignities suffered at the hands of managers and bosses -- being degraded to a working, faceless production unit in our glorious new global economy.

   

    It is about being ignored by the educated classes and the other similar professional, political and business elites that America does not acknowledge as elites.

   

    It is about one's priorities being closer to home and more ordinary than those of the powerful people who determine our lives.

   

    It is about suffering the everyday lack of human respect from the government, and every other institutional body except the church.

   

    It is about working at Wal-Mart or Home Depot or Arby’s wearing a nametag on which you do not even rate a last name. You are just Melanie or Bobby, there to kiss the manager’s ass or find another gig.

   

    It is about trying to live your life the only way you know how because you were raised that way. But somehow the rules changed under you.

   

    It is about trying to maintain some semblance of outward dignity to your neighbors, when both you and the neighbors are living payday to payday, though no one admits it.

   

    It is about media fabled things you've never seen in your own family: college funds set aside for the kids, stock portfolios, vacation homes...

   

    It is about the unacknowledged stress of both spouses working longer, producing more for a paycheck that has been dwindling in purchasing power since 1973.

   

    Yes, it is about values. It is about the values we have forsaken as a people -- such as  dignity, education and opportunity for everyone. And it is about the misdirected anger of the working classes toward those they least understand.  You. And me.

   

    By the way, the working people I am talking about are not entirely unhappy with life, just  angry to a certain degree at this point (and bound to be angrier when the Bush regime finally runs the nation’s economy off the cliff). They simply resist change because for decades change has always spelled something bad -- 9/11, terrorism, job outsourcing -- always something bad headed toward   worse.

It is a classic class war.  Social Security Privatization, War, Greed, Values.

THEY ARE STEALING YOUR GODDAMN MONEY AND TELLING YOU TO BE HAPPY WITH IT!

(Yes, I used expletives and all caps, but that is because I feel that strongly about it)

What do you think?

PS-- I am constantly trying to swim upward. I'm not going to get in a yelling contest with anyone, but both sides of my family were not even close to being rich.  I got really lucky with college because I got a merit-based scholarship and had this instilled in me when I was a child (it was assumed I would go to college).

Comments

[steve]

All of this is very true, but what does being white have to do with it? The only effective way to fight this class war is on an integrated basis. The ruling class loves to divide and conquer. I hope you're not implying that it's acceptable to live with these daily humiliations if one is other than white, because, if you grow up black in this country, the degradations and humiliations are ten fold.

[AJ]

You pretty much just told the story of my life, but I'm with Steve- the working class is colorblind. So I ask you, do you actually think that we'll all be equally respected, educated, and funded? You're deluded if you do, cause if that happens who's going to make rich and powerful look good?

[Cowcharge]

I have to laugh. You've been out of your parents' house for what, two, three years? Going to school for free? Oh you poor, downtrodden working-class hero! I feel your pain.

[Tom Williams]

I agree with you in a lot of ways. The government takes money from our paychecks, and spends it on whatever great program has come along. Social Security has been on the skids for some time now and only President Bush has taken serious steps to tackle the problem. Everything is on the table. I say this only because I was watching a rerun of "The West Wing" last night on Bravo which talked about reforming Social Security and the inherent problems associated. I don't expect Social Security to be there when I retire (I am 40 years old) because, unless they tacle the problem now I don't think it every will because of the way both parties use the issue to club one another. All these things have been discussed since President Clinton's first term. Pat Moynihan was one of the first to try and tackle this problem. He has passed, but the problem still exists.

[mark]

If you want to privatize social security its very simple. cut back the excess the government has by cutting back spending at least 50 percent wich would be easy to do and take everyone on ssi/ssd right now and put them on a fixed annuity account where they live off the interest and would live better off i might add then they are living now and stop taking out such taxes to pay ssi/ssd and let the american worker invest where they want to for thier retirement but thats too easy and simple for bush to think about. what can you expect from a republican?

[Tom Williams]

Democrats would never go for your plan.