> That is one reason for the pre-occupation with the exotic. To be
> crudely materialistic,you can feed ten million starving children at a
> very low price, but if you want to provide single payer health or
> build a decent transit system or fund decent education for everyone,
> you will probably have to change our tax structure. If you are in
> that top 20%, and socially liberal,and not quite empty-headed or
> hard-hearted enough to be a Randian libertarian, a really tempting
> position is social liberalism combined with supporting relief for the
> agony of the poorest of the poor, without paying much attention to the
> vast part of the working class who is getting by, never missing a
> meal, with stable jobs and homes, but who have to work more hours for
> the same money, have health insurance that may not cover them if
> they really get sick, whose kids will have a hell of a time getting
> into college, and who are one minor catatrophe from ending up poor.
>
I agree. I just want to clarify that I did not advocate concentrating on the upper 20% of the working class - I used certain occupations as examples only. The idea was to concentrate on the _entire_ middle and working class people - not just janitors or truck drivers but software engineers and medical professionals (nurses and doctors) - who do form the bulk of the population - instead of wasting time and credibility on "freak" causes with little popular appeal.
I just watched a PBS documentary on the Symbionese Liberation Army http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/guerrilla/peopleevents/e_kidnapping.html and that evoked my memories from Santa Cruz and made me realize how utterly stupid and damaging these radical fools and their idiotic "revolutionary" mumbo jumbo really were. UCSC radicals were talking tough about imperialism, racism, capitalism, militarism and a hundred of other -isms, but these ratfuckers had no problems crossing a picket line to attend a graduation party in a posh restaurant; not to mention joining striking workers in Watsonville when asked to do so. Thinking about it makes me upset, perhaps too much. So if I blow a gasket every now and then, this is why.
BTW, I do not consider, say, a Latino farm workers being exploited by agribusiness, or a single mother not being able to afford health care for her child "freak" causes. When I think of freak causes I think more in terms of Spartacists, the Mumia cult, death penalty opponents, gay marriage advocates, knee-jerk racism criers, radical environmentalists, radical feminists, ANSWER, etc. While I am sympathetic to the principles underlying their causes, the style in which they do is absolutely repulsive to most normal people. As I said time and gain, it is not the reality that I am addressing her, but representations of that reality in narratives found on the left, narratives and cultural tropes if you will.
Wojtek