Just noticed a post that is getting heavy HRs about someone messing with Whole Foods and after reading through the comments on it and other posts, I started thinking about how the attitudes of many progressives are a major reason why we can rarely achieve our goals.
Right now any attention on people being angry because they want healthcare is probably good but it probably isn't helped if one acts as if progressives are the ones who like expensive organic product while conservatives like Slim Jims and Coors. Progressives used to be a political movement for and containing poorer Americans but the US right have been relying on a narrative that many middle class well educated leftists have bought into just as much as have many poorer people in Red States who vote Republican.
The image of upscale food, limousines, over priced coffee and the like used to be an image of rich fat-cats backing the interests of the rich (even in the early 80s the preppy image was one of rich conservatives) and the change through the 80s and 90s was not so much one of the rich becoming more progressive as much as that of rich conservatives being less conspicuous in their consumption and the media image of the rich becoming more left leaning. The voting records and income distributions of Orange County vs Alameda county become lost in a narrative where Left/Progressive means middle class, somewhat new agey, highly educated and somewhat snobish and RIght/conservative means average, working-class, traditionally religious and into less high brow culture.
The reason the crazy people yelling at town halls work in promoting a Republican agenda but anti-war protests rarely help to promote an antiwar agenda is partly due to the effectiveness of the Right-wing media but also is due to the short-sightedness of left leaning media.
Why does NPR cover Birthers and right-wingers yelling about death panels but they barely covered Iraq war protests and would never cover the really looney left Truther type protests when Bush was President? Why does NPR tolerate reporters working for Fox News but push people out (think Bill Moyers) when there are complaints from the Right? Its is partly because many at NPR see themselves as Liberal and are afraid of being seen as having a liberal bias and also don't want to highlight crazy leftwing activism since it is embarrassing to them as they know its marginal while they don't know the rightwing wingnuts are marginal and even if they did they might see it as advantageous to show how crazy they are.
One sees a bit of this dynamic on this site and the impact is usually to shift the perception of the political center to the right even if that isn't the intention.
The creation of the rich liberal, poor conservative narrative is similarly a partial creation of the Left. Left leaning messages in TV shows and the like might make many ideas more mainstream but also have started perpetuating myths about political views and income distributions. All the people joking about conservatives going to Whole Foods ignore the fact that many many rich people are very conservative and rich conservative places have upscale stores selling overpriced groceries (some of which are now Whole Foods stores). Orange County is a good counterpoint to this new fake narrative but it is strange to have to come up with such examples since the stereotypes of wealth and political belief used to be so well defined in the opposite direction from the way they are now.
The idea that liberals tend to be better educated than conservatives is also a strange creation although it seems to be older and perhaps tied to political activism in the 60s and earlier Red Scare ideas about educated Communists. The Hoover Institution, Chicago School economists and the like make it clear that there are well respected intellectual conservatives many of whom come up with the ideas that drive the Republican Party but the myth of the Left being more rational and educated that "white trash" Republican types is in the psychological interests of many on the Left (since it is a positive self image) and in the political interest of the far Right since it plays into a snobish narrative closely tied to class. When some crazy person screams some clearly untrue thing about healthcare at a town meeting that is read several different ways by the audience watching it; on the left it confirms that the Right is irrational, to educated conservatives it is embarrassing and to some of the public that isn't following the debate it says that people like them are angry about the issue even if they are unclear about specifics (maybe they are wrong in this case but if they are so angry and the media is covering them there must be some problem with what is going on). Things are made worse when the complaints about the RIght are often pedantic such as talking about the stupidity of a right wing comment because of spelling or grammar (rather than the contents); someone carrying a sign saying "Moran" at a pro-war rally is funny and ironic and confirms a stereotype among rich progressives about rural poor people but it isnt even clearly embarrassing to most conservatives since the complaints are so tied into the negative stereotype rather than complaints about the issue being protested (some right-wing sites do the same thing with pictures from left wing protests but the stereotypes then tend to focus on hippy new-agey traits and the like)
All of this is more a response to comments than the post I recommended (about someone wasting groceries at a While Foods) that everyone else HRs but it relates a bit in that the whole being reasonable and taking the high ground thing doesn't always work. One can only be seen as moral and have something to gain by taking the high ground but you have to be conscious that appearing respectable and proper can come across as elitist and while people are frightened off by dirty tricks and the like (like Republican who know better talking about death panels), those using dirty tricks can often come out ahead even though it also has the rick of blowing up in ones face (and it is hard to every take the high ground to win arguments if you are seen to be playing dirty tricks). Someone leaving groceries in a cart at a Whole Foods is probably not enough to gain media attention but if you think of worse things people could do and the media reaction it is hard to say which direction it could take. People yelling at town halls can come across as crazy people acting out (and pain that side as marginal and irrational) or it can come across as an expression of a generalized outrage. The same can be said about protests in progressive directions where something like the WTO riots in Seattle raised issues in the media that would not have been raised if the protests had been more calm. People generalize and it is a question of the media generalizing the passion and outrage to larger portion of the public or generalizing the irrationality and lack of respect for others to a broader group sharing the same ideas. Often both are true and thus I would guess opinions would show people see the people screaming about heath care at town halls as crazy and embarrassing but also assume that more of the public for legitimate reasons really opposes health reform than really does.
Ok... this was a bit of a undirected rant but I haven't posted a diary in years so....