>>> Michael Pollak
[Or as he sums it up: social issues are the opiate of the elites.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/opinion/17bartels.html
The New York Times
Whos Bitter Now? By LARRY M. BARTELS
-clip
For the sake of concreteness, let's define the people Mr. Obama had in
mind as people whose family incomes are less than $60,000 (an amount
that divides the electorate roughly in half),
( ahh yes, more and more society is breaking up into just two great classes)
who do not have college
degrees and who live in small towns or rural areas. For the sake of
convenience, let's call these people the small-town working class,
though that term is inevitably imprecise. In 2004, they were about 18
percent of the population and about 16 percent of voters.
For purposes of comparison, consider the people who are their
demographic opposites: people whose family
incomes are $60,000 or more who are college graduates and who live in cities or suburbs. These
(again, conveniently labeled) cosmopolitan voter s were about 11 percent
of the population in 2004 and about 13 percent of voters. While
admittedly crude, these definitions provide a
systematic basis for
assessing the accuracy of Mr. Obama's view of contemporary class
politics.
Small-town, working-class people are more
likely than their
cosmopolitan counterparts, not less, to say they trust the government
to do what's right. In the 2004 National Election Study conducted by
the University of Michigan ( Go Blue !) 54 percent of these people said that the
government in Washington can be trusted to
do what is right most of the
time or just about always.
^^^^^ CB: So far this is the same thing O seems to have gotten at roughly. What I hear
commentated here is Barry O is saying they trusted
the government and the government didn't come through ( See Chuck Grimes discussion at http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20080414/006892.html
)
Although the "debate" has conspired to confine O to making this claim only about rural folks, I don't think O is not saying that urban , large
town folk are bitter and frustrated and opiating literally and figuratively , too; Obama could have listed drugging , along with the other cultural escapes he threw out off the cuff.
It's large swaths of most of the working class, rural, urban, suburban that are bitter. And those who are not bitter themselves have sons, daughters,
fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sisters ,
brothers, friends and comrades who are bitter, sad, alienated and immiserated. The ennui is generalized. Many people lead lives of quiet desperation still.
^^^^
Only 38 percent of cosmopolitan people
expressed a similar level of trust in the federal government.
^^^^ CB: "cosmopolitans", cosmopolitans,
cosmopolitans where have I heard that term used
as a code word before ? are they rootless ? Universal citizens ?
Anyway, there are large %'s of metropolitans, and submetropolitans as well as ruralpolitans, city mice and country mice, who are bitter and alienated about economic immiseration, and exploitation, who cling to their religion and guns, and identity politics
prejudices to escape their material blues. Some even turn to the blues and country
music to escape.
Bruce Springsteen is rich off of metropolitan/suburban rock and blues cryin' to assuage bitterness and sadness inflicted by the Invisible Hand of the
Free Market in the context of the Feds failing to
Promote the General Welfare.
^^^^^