> Joanna: That's the other side of the happy face. Except, it's not anger.
> I think it's really anger covering up fear.
>
> Evidence? Fear of what? I simply have never noticed anything in the
> people I've met over 77 years that would justify this. Again, as with
> the handful that appear on Geraldo, doubtless one can pile up some
> anecdotate, but as cultural analysis it doesn't seem to fly.
I have to agree with this. I've spent more than my share of time living among the two job, second one at Walmart, strata of people in this country. I can't think of people who are angry or afraid.
While it's more anecdotage, I think it's supported in the literature in several instances, Joe Bageant's _Deer Hunting with Jesus_ provides a pretty good analsysis of what's going on.
As for the incredible power of never, ever telling anyone -- even people who are friends -- that life is not at all peachy economics-wise, Look at chuck0. Not that James Farmelant's advice was wrong, but it's a good example of the way the message is constantly reinforced. If you lose your job and can't find another, it's your fault.
In this case, we might all recognize that a certain percentage of people can't be employed in this economy. Almost everyone on this list will nod their heads in agreement. chuck, long term unemployed. Chuck may never get a job again in his life. who knows. If you go by the numbers, why shouldn't it be the case that chuck never gets a job again in his life?
Instead of thinking about that, we instead tell Chuck the secrets to the job search: try harder. Here's some insider knowledge you might not know. You're doing it wrong. Etc. etc. (chuck may even want to believe this himself. how terrifying it might be to realize that you have no control over your economic fate after all, eh?)
This advice tells chuck that what everyone says in the abstract is a position they don't really believe themselves. In their gut, the average lefty doesn't really "get it" -- even IF that left is long-term unemployed her/himself. This advice tells chuck that, no, the economy is not out of his control, that his job situation is perfectly well in his control, and statistics be damned. There is a job out there, even if in the abstract we know that a capitalist economy cannot employ everyone. There's a job out there for chuck, so he's got to keep trying.
Faced with that and myriad others ways in which the message is constantly reinforced -- whatever it is, your economic status is your own achievement and your own failure, no excuses, no abstract appeal to the machinations of the market. de nada. if you're one of the also-rans, you are so because you failed to take the advice, failed to try hard enough, failed utterly failed. These attitudes are so deeply ingrained in us, reinforced by exchanges that take place on a daily basis, that it's nearly impossible to drop them and go about life as if you don't believe that you are successful because of your own hard work and effort and that you're a failure because of your own lack of abilities, skills, smarts, talent, success, hard work.
And, as anyone should be quick to point out, to treat chuck any other way in this economy is to give him short shrift. You'd be remiss to tell him anything but the tricks and tips for job hunting that we all use. If you don't, you leave him with no defenses at all, let alone no reassurance that things might actually change. So, you keep on fueling the inferno of the very competitive individualism we need to critique, simply by trying to be good people.