As a solid-blue liberal, I feel compelled to respond to
Joe Bageant's article over on Smirking Chimp. He says:
[The poor white red-stater]'s been losing ground for 25 years, not that any of the tanned middle class suburban customers here or anywhere else give a good goddam.
That ain't true, Joe. I give a good goddam. That's why I'm a liberal.
More after the break.
I am, by most measures, a classic liberal. College educated, with a high paying job that has me sitting in a clean, comfortable office all day. One that pays multiples of what the average worker in this country gets. I'm a proud Dean supporter who lives in the liberal part of a liberal city, with lots of ethnic restaurants and ethnic people. My dad was a college professor. I don't think I could name five NASCAR drivers or five NFL quarterbacks if I tried- but I could name ten physicists and discuss why they're important without breaking a sweat.
You might think I'm light years distant from Roy:
Roy, the smiling, wise old guy in an orange vest in the plumbing department of the local Home Depot - the guy who knows everything there ever was to know about plumbing, is limping around at 67 on bad knees with two bone-grafted discs from life as a construction laborer is working solely so that he can have health insurance. Not insurance from Home Depot, mind you, but so his entire paycheck can pay the private insurance he must have if he doesn't want to lose the rundown bungalow he and his wife bought right after the Korean War to medical bills. And that bungalow is now in such a bad neighborhood that only the slumlords who dominate our city council ever make an offer, and even then not much.
But I'm not. I'm the grandson of two farmers, and my friends are the children of plumbers and truck drivers and landscapers. I grew up in a blue collar red neck town of big factories and big layoffs. The neighborhood I live in may be ethnically diverse, but by no means is it wealthy. Most of my neighbors work right along side Roy. When I look at Roy, I think "there but for the grace of God go I".
I don't think Roy should be forced to work simply to pay his medical bills- that's why I support single payer health care. And I don't think his previous job should have ruined his health, his back, and his knees- that's why I support OSHA and safe work environments. And I think he should be able to enjoy his retirement even if he didn't manage to save enough to provide his own way, which is why I support a strong public social security. And I don't like seeing his neighborhood crumble, which is why I support community development and community policing.
And, I am well aware, that I'll end up paying for a heck of a lot more of these benefits for Roy than Roy himself will. That's OK. He needs a hand, and I can afford it. Because Roy isn't all the different from me after all. But the Roys of the world are working diligently to lift the burden of taxation from me (well, not really- I don't make that much money).
Notice that I hate the term "white trash"- I feel it's right up there with "nigger" or "kike" or "slope". Roy is a human being, and I don't think any human is "trash", white or otherwise. Oh wait- was I just PC there? Guess I'm just a die-hard hippie commie liberal all over. (As a side note, I am well aware that the red state/blue state divide does not follow state, or even county, lines. But the fact that there is a serious political, cultural, and informational divide in this country is inarguable. So I'll use the terms to denote the two sides of divide.)
Roy, on the other hand, is the guy opposing me. Ask him, and get an earful about the "meddling" government "telling us what we can and can't do". And thus he supports gutting OSHA and workplace safety regulations. Then he'll call single payer health care a "communistic system". Then he'll bitch about all that money going to black people, and castigate the community development programs as a waste of money. And so on. Every attempt to help him is fought, tooth and nail, by the people we're trying to help.
Joe says:
The left should take its cues from Malcolm X, who understood the need to educate and inform the entire African-American society before tackling the goal of unity. Same goes for white crackers. Nobody said it would be easy.
OK. We need to educate Roy on how his politics is hurting him. But this brings up the problem- and the problem Joe himself is falling into. I could make a very strong case that I learn things for a living. I am certainly in a constant process of learning new things. And the first step to learning step is this: admitting you don't already know it.
This article was one of many "understand the Red Stater's" articles I have read in the past- and will likely read in the future. I don't believe I know everything, and my beliefs were not handed down from God. The same goes for most other liberals. This is why these articles are so popular. But, in general, 'education' isn't a problem among the, ahem, educated intellectuals.
But do the red-stater's ever attempt to understand where we liberal blue-stater's are coming from? Hah! A real American has nothing to learn from a latte drinking Volvo driving limp wristed New York crypto-liberal! The closest you can come to this happening is that beacon of enlightened debate, Ann Coulter, scribing "How to talk to a liberal (if you have to)".
The poor white people of this country have been being fed a diet of social superiority for decades. They are the best of the best. They are hardworking, honest, humble paragons, the standard that everyone else on this planet is held to (and found wanting). Turn on Fox news for five minutes and you'll see it- all that is good in this world comes from the "real Americans", aka the red stater's.
If the red staters are the source of all good (according to the red staters), than we liberals are the source of all evil. We are the epitome of all that is wrong with America, and responsible for everything wrong with Roy's life, according to Fox news- and not a few red stater's I have talked to.
There may be "liberals" the fit the caricature that the right paints of us. But not many, because it simply doesn't make sense. Why vote to tax yourself to the benefit of someone else, if you hate that someone else? It is certainly not the case of all the liberals I know of. No, the scorn these people think we hold them in is the reflection of the scorn they hold us in. It's much easier to hate someone, if you think they hate you back.
I don't hate the Roy's of this country- yet. But I have to admit that I'm getting there. You'll know I've given up on Roy when I've joined him. When I start going "maybe these morons, this human refuse, doesn't deserve health care and workers rights and living wages and all the other benefits I've been fighting for. They made their bed, let them lie in it." I'd be there already, except for one thing- I really ain't all that different from Roy. And I'll have to lie in the bed he's making as well.
Unlike Roy, I know this.