If I recall correctly, we were recently talking about the "99%" vs. the "one%,"
Um, the big news is a poll that says that support for gun control legislation has slipped below 50 percent. It's "only 47-49 percent" now (according to the source, it peaked at 55 percent). The specific numbers are not the issue, but even if the poll is wildly off the mark, I don't see how you can claim that support for gun control comes from the "one percent." I don't think that the fact that what the percentages refer to ("people of voting age" or whoever the poll sampled as opposed to income level) are different can explain away the difference between one percent and nearly 50 percent. I also think that the "armed agents of repression" are not predominantly liberals, and the gun manufacturers are members of the "one percent."
Many of my friends---whom I love in spite of their politics---support Obama, and some even support Bloomberg. None of them, however, could possibly be considered part of the "one percent" in terms of their incomes, possessions, social status, etc. Maybe the "twenty percent" or the "thirty-five percent" (I'm just guessing).
Now you can respond that they are (as you said) "OF the one percent" by correctly describing (some of) them as part of the class that populates the apparat of the ruling class. "Corn pone opinions" Mark Twain has Jerry, a slave who was his friend in his teens, call it ("Tell me where a man gets his corn pone and I'll tell you what his opinion is").
But doesn't that undercut the "one percent/ninety-nine percent" analysis? I thought the strength of that analysis was that it accurately described one of the bases of the solidarity people like my friends should feel with the working class.
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 3:36 PM, Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
>
> On May 9, 2013, at 3:05 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>
>> ...My argument that circumstances have changed - that the demand for arms
>> is now coming from the right rather than from the constituencies we
>> support, who now favour gun control - doesn't mean that I'm obliged, by
>> extension, to support restrictions on our rights to assemble, to speak and
>> publish freely, to organize trade unions and political parties, and to
>> exercise other democratic rights. I don't have the slightest problem
>> reconciling my unconditional support for these hard-won rights with my
>> endorsement of efforts by liberal and radical Americans to place curbs on
>> access to weapons...
>>
>
> If I recall correctly, we were recently talking about the "99%" vs. the
> "one%," and about the effective, coordinated, repression carried out by
> the armed agents of the "one%." The "liberal Americans" (there are, alas,
> very few radical Americans) who provide the constituency for the Bloombergs
> and Obamas are very much of the "one%," while the defenders of gun rights
> are almost entirely of the "99%" (the one-percenters don't need to own guns
> because they have the whole repressive apparatus of the State, which they
> own, at their disposal). So which constituency do "we support?" Do you
> think you have a clearer perception of the class interests at issue than
> Bloomberg does?
>
>
>
> Shane Mage
>
> "Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
>
>
>
>
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