W has dredged up the old stereotype of right wing blue color workers, invoking the NY construction trades' attack on Vietnam war protestors in 1969. This was an ana,lous incident. As W ought to know, working class/blue collar America turned against the Vietnam war earlier and more decisively than the "liberal" elite -- after Tet in '68, well before the elite organs switched after Cambodia and Kent & Jackson State in 1970. And of course this was because it was working class folks who were being killed in Vietnam. The NY construction trades were anomalous. jks
Ws replies: I would not think of it as "anomaly." In my life experience, blue colar identity was frequently laced with authoritarianism, jingoism, and crushing liberal dissent - not just in this country. I saw that during the 1968 student rebellion in Poland, when blue collar thugs beat up protesting students (in "revenge", many students refused to join the worker protest in 1970), and during the Solidarnosc organizing.
I experienced that during the Persian Gulf war when a truck driver in New Jersey got off his truck and tried to beat me up because he did not like the anti-war sticker on my car (I run away and called the cops). Then again, in Western PA, when my Volvo broke down, and a tow truck driver pronounced "we shoot people like you here" upon seen my pro-abortion and anti-war bumper stickers. He towed my car to a garagare and pronounced that it would take at least three days to fix it (fortunately, another mechanic in that garage put a quick fix and advised me to drive across the state line to Ohio to get a more permanent repair).
Ah, and there is also that little incident in 1980s when auto-workers were smashing Japanese cars in "protest," and a group of of them chased and killed a Vietnamese guy - only to find themsleves acquited by the jury of their peers. Is that an "anomaly" too?
These days, when I go to Central PA where my wife lives, I am absolutely astonished by blue collar bigotry, examples of which include neo-nazi organizing inYork in response to prosecution of a few rednecks and the mayor for shooting a black woman during race riots some 20 years ago, raging jingoism expressed in bumper stickers, flag waving, signs and letters to editor, or for that matter, aggressive driving prcatices toward people with out of state licence plates.
Another thing that makes me puke about these people is their love of hunting - I think it is absolutely disgusting to derive so much pleasure from killing living things.
I do not have bumper stickers anymore, partly because I am afraid of US patriots slashing my tires, shooting at me, or pushing my car of the road with their monster trucks. In fact, when we go out, I let my wife do the talking - I am sick and tired of cashiers, waitresses, and other service workers making faces when their hear accented English.
Wojtek