November 22, 2011--The 99%
In Iowa, at Saturday afternoon's "Thanksgiving Table Forum" hosted by the Family Leader, a Christian organization that encourages its members to consider their religious views when making political decisions, six of the Republican candidates attended. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, the two Mormons in the race, were conspicuously absent.
It was thus a discussion about Christian values and Mormons did not feel welcome.
The six tried to outdo each other in putting their piety on public display. One after the other they proclaimed how they have "turned their life over" to Christ and how, if elected president, they would take every opportunity to express Christian values and pray as conspicuously as possible.
Newt, the latest front runner, took the opportunity to give examples of his own version of Christianity. This included taking a nasty swipe at the Occupy Wall Street movement. Ignoring the Golden Rule--the foremost expression of Christian ethics--after castigating them for causing governments to have to spend money to clean up after them, he said:
I assume he bathes regularly at his own expense though about that job business, well we know how he's been making a living all his life--after being a government worker for decades as a member of Congress, he cashed that in and has subsequently made millions as an influence peddler.
He did, though, provoke me to think more about the Occupy folks. From my experience during the past two weeks down at Zuccotti Park and then participating in various marches and demonstrations, it is true that the movement has attracted some street people and radicals. But overwhelmingly, they are rather cleaned-up college-age folks who have been polite and well mannered. Even when it was apparent that the police were getting frustrated by having to spend long hours out on the cold streets in the middle of the night, when a few were clearly itching to bust a few heads, all things considered nearly everyone involved behaved with restraint.
On the other hand, this is not true for the UC Davis campus police who have been pepper spraying submissive student demonstrators. Films of the police casually and deliberately spraying squatting, hand-holding students in the face at point blank range has a large segment of the population outraged after the video went viral. The situation is hardly the equivalent of Kent State but is chilling nonetheless.
About the UC Davis police, a friend asked, "How can they do that? Don't the realize that they too are part of the 99 percent? They're spraying their own children."
I said, "Not exactly," meaning that though the 1 versus the 99 percent may be an effective shorthand way to mobilize people, it also masks a more complicated reality.
Not everyone in the bottom 99 percent is in the same circumstance nor has the same grievances. Many do share a deep frustration about the direction in which the country is trending--especially the hollowing out of the middle class--but not about it causes; what to do about righting things; and more profoundly, how they view themselves in relation to each other.
The police in Davis, for example, were not spraying their own children.
If their children are in college at all, it is likely that they are going part time to a local community college. If they have job opportunities, they will likely be in food services or health care. There are exceptions, but their children are less likely than UC Davis students to earn bachelors degrees much less think about graduate or professional school. Though an increasing percentage of young people are continuing to live with their parents until at least their late 20s, the children of the police have undoubtedly been living at home during their community college years while the UC Davis students have been living in undergraduate dorms.
All the families may be struggling but not in the same ways. If we think about this in class terms, as important as disparities in income and assets are, it is only part of the story. Class, true, is largely about money. But there is great variation in the earning capacity of the 99 percent. To be among them means earning anywhere from nothing to more than half a million a year.
But class is also about culture. To be of modest income but well educated (teachers come to mind) locates one higher in status than a less well educated, higher paid Wall Street worker. The culture of class also suggests how one spends leisure time, how one vacations, what one watches on TV or reads, even what and where one eats. People are thus distributed in the social hierarchy by many more things than just income.
As a result, part of what divides those of us in the "bottom" 99 percent is the comparative perception of privilege and entitlement. Valid or not, this is what Newt Gingrich, a spectacular demagogue, is playing on. He recognizes this lack of common class consciousness, how the under-educated resent the style and at times self-righteousness of the better-educated elite, even if an auto mechanic, nurses aide, carpenter, or policeman makes more than a college professor or newspaper reporter.
The fear among the true corporate elites and their conservative political allies and enablers is that the Occupy movement will figure out a way to bridge these economic, cultural, and emotional differences and thereby find common cause. Then the folks out in Iowa who at the moment are being successfully distracted from their own economic interests and are being pandered to around issues of "values" might say, "Enough." Think about how powerful that would be.
It was thus a discussion about Christian values and Mormons did not feel welcome.
The six tried to outdo each other in putting their piety on public display. One after the other they proclaimed how they have "turned their life over" to Christ and how, if elected president, they would take every opportunity to express Christian values and pray as conspicuously as possible.
Newt, the latest front runner, took the opportunity to give examples of his own version of Christianity. This included taking a nasty swipe at the Occupy Wall Street movement. Ignoring the Golden Rule--the foremost expression of Christian ethics--after castigating them for causing governments to have to spend money to clean up after them, he said:
All of the Occupy movements start with the premise that we all owe them everything. They take over a public park they didn't pay for, go to bathrooms they didn't pay for, beg for food from places they don't want to pay for, instruct those who go to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park, so they can self-righteously proclaim that they are the paradigms of virtue for which we owe everything.
Now that is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country and why you need to assert something as simple as saying to them: ‘Go get a job right after you take a bath.’
I assume he bathes regularly at his own expense though about that job business, well we know how he's been making a living all his life--after being a government worker for decades as a member of Congress, he cashed that in and has subsequently made millions as an influence peddler.
He did, though, provoke me to think more about the Occupy folks. From my experience during the past two weeks down at Zuccotti Park and then participating in various marches and demonstrations, it is true that the movement has attracted some street people and radicals. But overwhelmingly, they are rather cleaned-up college-age folks who have been polite and well mannered. Even when it was apparent that the police were getting frustrated by having to spend long hours out on the cold streets in the middle of the night, when a few were clearly itching to bust a few heads, all things considered nearly everyone involved behaved with restraint.
On the other hand, this is not true for the UC Davis campus police who have been pepper spraying submissive student demonstrators. Films of the police casually and deliberately spraying squatting, hand-holding students in the face at point blank range has a large segment of the population outraged after the video went viral. The situation is hardly the equivalent of Kent State but is chilling nonetheless.
About the UC Davis police, a friend asked, "How can they do that? Don't the realize that they too are part of the 99 percent? They're spraying their own children."
I said, "Not exactly," meaning that though the 1 versus the 99 percent may be an effective shorthand way to mobilize people, it also masks a more complicated reality.
Not everyone in the bottom 99 percent is in the same circumstance nor has the same grievances. Many do share a deep frustration about the direction in which the country is trending--especially the hollowing out of the middle class--but not about it causes; what to do about righting things; and more profoundly, how they view themselves in relation to each other.
The police in Davis, for example, were not spraying their own children.
If their children are in college at all, it is likely that they are going part time to a local community college. If they have job opportunities, they will likely be in food services or health care. There are exceptions, but their children are less likely than UC Davis students to earn bachelors degrees much less think about graduate or professional school. Though an increasing percentage of young people are continuing to live with their parents until at least their late 20s, the children of the police have undoubtedly been living at home during their community college years while the UC Davis students have been living in undergraduate dorms.
All the families may be struggling but not in the same ways. If we think about this in class terms, as important as disparities in income and assets are, it is only part of the story. Class, true, is largely about money. But there is great variation in the earning capacity of the 99 percent. To be among them means earning anywhere from nothing to more than half a million a year.
But class is also about culture. To be of modest income but well educated (teachers come to mind) locates one higher in status than a less well educated, higher paid Wall Street worker. The culture of class also suggests how one spends leisure time, how one vacations, what one watches on TV or reads, even what and where one eats. People are thus distributed in the social hierarchy by many more things than just income.
As a result, part of what divides those of us in the "bottom" 99 percent is the comparative perception of privilege and entitlement. Valid or not, this is what Newt Gingrich, a spectacular demagogue, is playing on. He recognizes this lack of common class consciousness, how the under-educated resent the style and at times self-righteousness of the better-educated elite, even if an auto mechanic, nurses aide, carpenter, or policeman makes more than a college professor or newspaper reporter.
The fear among the true corporate elites and their conservative political allies and enablers is that the Occupy movement will figure out a way to bridge these economic, cultural, and emotional differences and thereby find common cause. Then the folks out in Iowa who at the moment are being successfully distracted from their own economic interests and are being pandered to around issues of "values" might say, "Enough." Think about how powerful that would be.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:48 AM
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