> Almost immediately, the project went awry. While the Clintonites saw
> themselves as gloriously democratic, they struck observers as deeply
> insular. Writing in these pages, Jacob Weisberg called it
> "Clincest"--the administration was enclosed within an arrogant clique
> of interconnected Rhodes scholars, Yale Law grads, and elite
> journalists. "The Clinton circle has a pronounced class consciousness
> that tells them they're not just lucky to be here," Weisberg wrote.
> "They're running things because they're the best." In 1993, the
> historian Stephen Ambrose said of Clinton, "I don't know anyone who's
> gone so far appointing friends and cronies since Warren G. Harding."
Here was my take on it, most of it written in early 1993:
------------------------------------------------------
The Clinton Movement and the Middle Class:
Of Dummycrats, Oxford-Morons, and
America's Class Battlelines
I remember shortly before the 1992 presidential election, that I tried
to get a copy of Mr. Clinton's personal resume containing his academic
history before making up my mind who to vote for. But Mr. Clinton's
supporters and staff were not responsive to this request of mine.
Instead of sending me what I had asked them for, they sent me his
education proposals which, after looking at them for five minutes, I
decided that either he or his daughter did not spend more than five
minutes drafting them. I also asked a 25 year old female sitting at a
pre-election Clinton table in front of a bookstore if she was a
college graduate. I do tend to poll people like this, you know. She
promptly took sexist-like offense at my question for no apparent
reason, and refused at first to give me a straight answer. I had to
explain to her that I looked upon college grads as an interest group,
and so forth. She apparently had not expected this explanation of my
question, and she finally admitted that she was a graduate of NYU. And
yes, I also observed that since she would be considered very sexually
desirable from a vulgar male psyche point of view, this did not hurt
her chances of admission and retention by a selective school such as
NYU and subsequent employers.
It was apparent from the election hoopla that Clinton voters had their
own agendas in mind rather than knowing what Mr. Clinton would have ~o
offer over the next four years. The word "change" was a key slogan in
the Clinton campaign, and Mr. Clinton, as he probably knows, would be
deluding himself if he believed the voter mandate was for change of a
progressive nature.
The strong movement of votes for Mr. Clinton came from people
dependent upon their college degrees and enrollments, and perhaps
others with their children in school with the same middle class
dreams. These are the people who have felt sorry for themselves and
resentful because their excessive privileges over the poor had
diminished under the Republican administration through budget cuts in
middle class social programs such as higher education.
"The middle class is always a firm champion of equality
when it concerns humbling a class above it, but it is
its inveterate foe when it concerns elevating a class below it."
- Orestes A. Brownson,
Boston Quarterly Review for 1840
The Rodney King riots in Los Angeles and elsewhere during the summer
of 1992 may have pushed the crest of white middle-class resentment
against Bush administration hundreds of non-white poor people rioted,
looted, and burned.
The electorate's resentment of George Bush at that time bore a strange
similarity to the resentful ouster of Prime Minister V.P. Singh of
India in 1990. Singh had opened up a slew of government jobs for the
lower castes in his country, and was voted out of office a month later
after riots and several suicides by college students who represented
the middle class who, like their American counterparts, had hoped to
monopolize employment opportunities. Singh had been decisively, yet
equivocally, accused by this frightened middle class of creating these
job opportunities to "buy" votes from the lower castes. The same
college-credentialed middle class in both India and the U.S. are
typically resentful at the idea of the poor and less credentialed
"rising up" above them socially and politically. In the spirit of this
resentment, the Bush administration was equivocally accused of
contributing to the Rodney King riots by failing to provide economic
assistance to the poor in the riot areas. But even if he had, then
Bush would have been nonetheless accused by the same middle class of
raising the status of the poor and "less qualified" through
"affirmative action" programs.
Shameless Quote:
"The homeless should be lined up and shot."
-Laura, sociology student, State University of New York, circa 1990
What the "preppies" and "yuppies" did during the 1980's insofar as
plundering America's economic system, they now look to the 1990's to
plunder America's political system using Clinton and Gore as leaders.
For this new political class, college students are narcissistic
symbols of power, youth, deja vu, and can be expected to be treated as
their special children.
One program to this effect is the Clinton enactment of tuition credits
for so-called public service. The current program makes for about
100,000 college students who would get a stipend of $7500 per year and
a deduction of $10,000 per year off their college tuition. The problem
with this program, in addition to engendering unrealistic hopes for
most of the nation's five million college students, is that this
special interest subsidy is far above the income level of the
devastated people who need help the most - financial help without
strings so they can live normal lives. This program not only promises
exploitation and degradation of poor people for $18,000 per year, but
the credential value of "public service" on student resumes are likely
to create additional financial perks for them in the future at the
further expense of the poor.
The so-called public service jobs, if they follow the example of the
Peace Corps, will have strong ideological requirements for their
applicants, and not just anyone can apply and expect to get a job.
These jobs are for relatively rich people who find it easy to fill out
a job application. Other qualified applicants are, of course, rejected
before they even apply, regardless of their abilities. This would
become consistent with the pattern in which the wealthy and unabused
are able to get through school while others of different persuasions
are induced to drop out and to not apply.
In contrast to the younger college generation and its recent
graduates, the Baby-Boom generation and its predecessors are much
older now and established insofar as their academic credentials and
consequential employment security (or lack of credentials and
insecurity for those without). The older dropouts are the personae non
gratiae of the schools and employers regardless of any future college
loan program, while the children of the rich will continue to be
welcome in the schools and the job fairs. Many, if not most or all
older underclass, can no longer get fair returns from any future
college investment. Therefore, the Clinton proposal for $24,000 in
guaranteed student loans for everyone will benefit only certain types
of people, usually from the middle class, and makes Mr. Clinton guilty
of "buying" middle class votes.
Bill Clinton is a graduate of Yale, Georgetown, and Oxford, and
therefore meets the narcissistic requirements of anyone ingenuous
enough to accept college graduates as an unremovable elite. If all
politics is the politics of values, then the values which he
symbolizes can perhaps suffer the fate of political upheaval, which
could well be on the way in the upcoming elections in 1996.
Despite his election promises for a better economy, the economy has
gotten worse. As he professes to concentrate on domestic issues,
pressures from abroad upon relative American wealth threaten to
increase to the point of alarm. The deficit is only a road sign. The
many foreign workers who have been allowed to supplant the U.S.
workforce will become much less friendly as the years roll by.
American society will become more and more bitterly divided - around a
1 to 4, 5, or 6 ratio, between the graduate and non-graduate aging
work force. This split will increasingly become exploited by massive
foreign interests which seek competitive advantage. In the meantime,
integration of the U.S. workforce will become increasingly difficult.
It is only a matter of time before much of the displaced workforce
consiously rejects the over-credentialed overlordish employers as
illegitimate and not worth working for, as they subconsciously do now.
"History is nothing but the succession of the separate generations,
each of which exploits the materials, the capital funds, the
productive forces handed down to it by all preceding generations,
and thus, on the one hand, continues the traditional activity in
completely changed circumstances and, on the other, modifies the
old circumstances with a completely changed activity."
-from Marx and Engels The German Ideology circa 1845
As a child of post World War II liberalism, the American Dream for
Bill Clinton's generation stated "Well, you can't have the family
home, but you can go to college, get a degree, buy your own home, and
rule the world". This unrealistic dream has not simply faded for the
many, it has become more than a cruel and illegitimate hoax for its
American victims.
Copyright 1995 by D.H. Myers. All rights reserved. For personal use
only. This generally means that academic, commercial, or occupational
use not permitted without author's written consent.