> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 21:21:00 -0500
> From: "W. Kiernan" <wkiernan at ij.net>
> Subject: Re: Fisk
>
> Mark Pavlick wrote:
> >
> > He's only telling the truth. You don't even have to leave
> > lbo-talk to read condescending attitudes towards working people,
> > including those he mentions who go on to become "cannon-fodder" .
>
> Do you think working-class people don't read lbo-talk? I'm a
> construction worker and I've been subscribed to this list for four or
> five years at least.
>
> OK, maybe I'm the one and only, the rest of y'all are hoity-toity
> innalecshural snobs - probably that's the case - but I'll tell you this:
> while nobody on the job site (excepting me) wants to come right out and
> say "Bush is a lying warmongering prick," on account of none of us care
> to be regarded as anti-patriotic, still it looks to me that the support
> for this proposed Iraq fiasco among us construction types is absolutely
> paper-thin.
>
> I've never seen anything like it, there was more enthusiasm for invading
> Granada, for crying out loud. Everybody down here wants to know one
> thing: "where the Hell is Osama?" This despite a too-blatant pro-war
> advertising push coming down from the millionaire bastards who own the
> mass media that out-shouts anything I've seen back to the sixties. Even
> the biggest suckers aren't sporting "Attack Iraq!" bumper stickers on
> their pickup trucks.
>
> Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net
>
I'm a computer/network tech., and I consider myself working class (though I'm salaried). The people I work with are a mix of high school and college grads, hailing from such places as Elberton GA and Hattiesburg MI and Warner Robins GA (that's me). I've been rather forward in my views, and I've gotten a warm reception from most, with a little eye-rolling being the most flak I've received.
Forget 'authenticity'. There is no real support for this war that I can see. I follow the eXile and Taibbi religiously, but this stuff about anger and resentment fueling the U.s. drive to war is crap. The one factor I've seen for real is fear.
It's weird: Left types seem to worry about their 'disconnects', yet at the various rallies that I've attended, the only _negative_ reaction that I've seen has been from a couple of bikers, a bunch of obviously rich frat boys, and a few kids dressed up as skins (and that's just a put on anyway). This, you'll note, in a conservative Southern town. I think that it's true that the activist types haven't connected with the average joe as much as they ought, but that doesn't mean that we're speaking different languages, and it certainly doesn't mean that said Joe's political stance is motivated by some sort of body image problem.
-david Athens, GA