Many liberals have their own class issues. This is a post about them, perhaps somewhat disjointed due to its being cobbled together from lots of bits & pieces I’ve jotted here and there recently as these thoughts buzz around my skull. I hope I’ve synthesized something useful here.
It’s related to some of what I wrote about the recent Miami labor win — there’s an ingrained classism, simply part of living in our culture, which is exemplified and smartly called out in some comments I noticed here and here. (In fact, the first comment is on a post also talking about the recent Miami labor win.)
Oh how we love to look down on others, and so define ourselves as not them. But we’re really just defining ourselves as latent dictators, who want to share in privilege rather than eradicate it. This develops into snobby culturalism, where we take subjective differences and try to pretend they are objectively comparable. We thereby define ourselves as superior — and in so doing, lose our cause before we begin.
But hey, who am I to argue. It’s why I live on the Upper East Side, after all.
All this is not to say that there are no differences between people or cultures and that all states of being are equal. Rather, the only difference between economic classes is in our levels of assets and debts. This should not translate to social differences (meaning a perception of differences of human worth between class groups), with pseudo caste systems and people looking down their noses at others, or looking up longingly at those ahead of us.
After all, “those people” with whom some would rather not associate themselves are our would-be allies. More than that, they’re the ones who generally would most benefit from liberal policies.
The foes of liberal goals are also citizens of this country, and they have rights. It’s just that what they presently have is undue rights. We have a Supreme Court that grants freedom of speech to money, a Congress and President who grant monied families eternal power by taking away the estate tax, media companies eternal rights by repeatedly extending copyright, etc.
Removing these undue rights must be progressive goals. We will not accomplish them by nurturing scorn for any of our fellow citizens.
Our drive must be based on the Preamble to the Constitution: “We the people” are the first words, not We the monied interests, nor We the corporations.
The Constitution and Declaration of Independence are not conservative documents (we should hold our noses while passing over references to slaves in the pre-amendments Constitution). Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — progressive, not conservative. “Promote the general welfare” and “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity” are phrases from the Preamble — progressive, not conservative.
American culture as a whole has drifted into an area where most people, rich and poor alike, want to have it all, and believe everyone can. And yet reality says otherwise, and our government isn’t helping much any more because money unbalances it. As Max Sawicky says, “Aspiration is crucial. People want to get rich, or at least see a path forward, for their children if not for themselves. On average they have unrealistic expectations. Woe to the politician who dares to tell the truth on that score.”
But it’s not that the “American dream” is bullshit, it’s that these perceptions of everyone winning the economic game are not the American dream. The real American dream encapsulates “both individual and community effort resulting in dignity, freedom, and reasonable prosperity to every American willing to work for it.”
We’ve gotten off track and we need to turn this boat back around towards progress from its currently backwards, gilded-age direction.
FDR began the work. (Actually, 19th century unionists and suffragists began it. Actually, British merchants began it with the Magna Carta. Actually…) Let’s try to continue it, so that freedom is expanded and protected from those who would return to the gilded age.
Freedom is an activity – the activity of its own realization. If then, we are to say that ‘we are free’, we must be engaged in the activity of making freedom possible. We must be seeking the solution to scarcity, not making the problem worse. We must be seeking to undermine privilege, not strengthening its cancerous spread.
There’s a personal level to this, too. When that moron cuts you off on the freeway or that scum bag shouts too loudly and elbows you on the train, detach that from politics and class issues. No, I’m not defending them — be angry, savor the emotion — and then let it pass. Let’s try to keep our dislike for rude behavior at the personal level and not generalize to humanity as a whole. Our momentary angers should not permeate our being and possess us, sabotaging our political goals. Most people are reasonable and rational when you sit down, talk and listen. We just tend not to do that any more, preferring righteous smugness in the face of every personal injustice. Time to stop and be more mindful of our goals, and integrate them into our lives to become whole persons. An end to snobby, liberal classists.