On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Doug Henwood wrote:
> But let me try to put the point in more sober, less offensive language.
> There are a lot of people in middle America who feel alienated and
> trapped. They're deep in debt and have little pleasure in their lives.
> But instead of hating the pig system, sometimes they identify with the
> empire and get a charge out of bombing our "enemies." Nothing Norman
> Solomon could write would ever reach people like this. And don't tell me
> they don't exist.
Okay, let's grant they exist. How then to explain someone like Thomas Friedman? During the Kosovo war, he exhilerated about bombing the Serbs back to the Dark Ages fit to burst a pants button. Clearly this can't be the same emotional hydraulics that transforms frustrated desire and impotent rage, because Friedman is as successful and as influential as a man could be. Similarly the whole chickenhawk crew.
If completely opposite social-emotional situations lead to the same identification and reaction, I'm not sure how useful this is as an explanational starting point.
Lastly, even if tire-tubby and Tommy Friedman are accepted as types that represent larger classes, is it clear that tire-tubby is more representative of his class that Tommy Friedman is of his? In the US's last two wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan, the educated elite, at least as represented by the punditry, seemed to me to be as glowing with the joy of crushing the Other as any of their less privileged compatriots.
Michael