I'm talking about nothing more than what Katherine Newman talks about in _Falling From Grace_. If you want to take it personally, that's your problem. The reason why people can't stop blaming themselves is because they wholly bought into the notion that they were responsible for their success in the first place. Getting beyond that is at the heart of any form of solidarity among the working class. It's right there that's the heart of the ideology that grips you and everyone else here. It's what Peggy McIntosh calls unpacking the knapsack of privilege: turn the spotlight on your self rather than always putting it on the marginalized 'other'.
It's fine and dandy, apparently, to watch people fall from grace in a sociological text, but when people see it up close and personal they turn away because, as Katherine Newman writes, it terrifies the still employed. Wasn't someone talking about labor discipline the other day - MH was it? That's how it works. Every single one of us participates in it: me, you, everyone. When DR talks about his problems, he gets fucking advice about how to save money -- from me! He doesn't need my advice. He needs my outrage.
Barbara Ehrenreich writes about the same phenomenon in _Fear of Falling_ Countless sociologists and anthropologists have talked about how people ostracize the unemployed and the unsuccessful among their ranks, ignoring them because they can do nothing and/or because it's safer to think the unemployed are crazy or fatally flawed. Anything but recognize that the movement up and down the social mobility ladder happens to _real_ people.
If it makes people turn away in embarrassment, that's exactly the point. If it makes people feel superior, that's exactly the point. If it makes people feel that, underneath it all, they really do believe people deserve their lot in life, all the better. Face it head on for a change.