> James L: "Listening to Doug's show this weekend, it really looks like the
> DNC
> was reluctant to fight this one. Obama never went out to Wisconsin,
> and even with the loss, the state looks like an uphill battle for
> Romney so President Kill-List isn't all that damaged by it. Looking at
> the recall, what also happened in San Diego and San Jose (under
> Democratic governership, no less), and the last couple of years of
> Obama's education reform, which in many ways works as a cover to
> destroy teacher's unions - I'm wondering if the Democrats are looking
> to a post-labor-union period."
>
> [WS:] That is not how I read it. In my view Dems make a truly heroic
> effort to salvage something for the public sector services for the
> working class in the environment of utter public hostility to such
> services. This is the simple truth beyond Walker's landslide victory
> in WI - Americans hate anything that smacks of public sector or public
> services. They voted for Walker because they saw as a guy who 'does
> the right thing' by taking it on the public sector and its unions.
>
> One reason for that is that the self-perception of defines middle
> class in Amerika is the ability to pay your way instead of relying on
> public services. If you have to rely on public services in obtaining
> your transportation, housing, health care, education etc. - you are
> NOT middle class, you are a schmuck on a government dole. That does
> not mean that middle class do not use what is in fact public services,
> but that they are not perceived as public services. For example, a
> commuter bus for suburbanites to commute to their urban jobs as
> government employees or lawyers may be run by the same government
> agency that operates city buses - but these two services are operated
> in a way as to present them as two different animals. The commuter
> bus is typically contracted out to a private company that uses
> coaches, it is not called a "bus" but a "shuttle" or "commuter
> service", it is clean, fast and reliable. The buses - which serve the
> blow the middle class strata, are notoriously slow and unreliable,
> equipped with surveillance and generally crappy an inhospitable.
>
> So the bottom line is that the very definition of middle class in
> Amerika is not relying on public services of any sort. In the
> economic times when such reliance becomes an unavoidable reality for
> many middle class folk, expressions of hostility to public services
> become a symbolic gesture signalling membership in the middle class.
> it works like this " I may be on unemployment, Medicare, or foodstamps
> -but as long as I express my hatred toward public services I may still
> pass for middle class.
>
> Voting for Walker is such a symbolic gesture manifesting the "middle
> class" status by people who may be one paycheck from homelessness. In
> a way, this is reminiscent of the scene from the Lebanese film
> "Caramel" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caramel_(film) in which a
> post-menopausal woman conspicuously leaves stained feminine pads in
> public bathrooms to show that she still has periods.
>
> In this context, we should thank Democrats for whatever little they do
> to preserve public services, because they do not just against the will
> of the capital, but also against popular will.
> --
> Wojtek
>
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
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