(X-Posted because it needs to be here not in GD)
"Empathy is scarce stuff in America in these times of "culture war." And all these folks, Pauline, Wilf, and even Denney to a certain extent, despite the political stereotyping his sexuality invites, are supposedly the "other side," in the culture war. Which is actually a class war by another name. We call it a culture war because educated influencers write books for similarly educated people who have been indoctrinated to interpret reality in such terms. Not a person here has ever heard of the culture wars. No one here cares about politics because politics is no longer cares about them, or the increasing struggle of hard working people. This makes them the traditional natural base for the Democratic Party, though the party refuses to claim them, and seems to have forgotten (or simply refuses to acknowledge) that the pyramid of American society is far broader toward the bottom than the top. In any case, they have become numb to America."
"Still, in this place you can feel America's people. Just like Roy felt them. It's not an inspiring America. It's not even a passable America. But it's an America where, contrary to the national lie, people do manage to accept one another. Poorly educated, beaten-down working folks, essentially Christian people, accept the queer, the biker, the Mexican and the Iranian swish, laughing and joking and singing until that last sad hour when their ten or twenty bucks is spent. Then they go back to lives that cannot ever achieve what middle class people would call modest success. But they know as truth what I can only allege in brittle, lifeless text. They know that all of us are in this together. They understand because in life they are exposed to the truth about what our country has become, and perhaps always was. There is no escape for them into insulated suburbs or high rise apartments or condos. They must live it every day of their lives to survive at all. Consequently, in this redneck beer joint is human respect and open laughter, drunken crying, friendship between people whom we are told are bigots, and whom we are told do not associate and do not like one another,. We are told this by people in whose best interests it is to see the working class divided. Still, it would be beyond naïve to say the mutual acceptance of these people offers hope for social unity among Americans. Not in a country where every living citizen has breathed in the air of Darwinian capitalism from birth. It merely offers small respite from animal struggle.
"Roy's People"
http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant09022006.htmlJoe Bageant's mission in life is explaining
America's Hardest Working People
The beer joint and trailer park crowd
to educated uptown liberal elites
Because until we REALLY UNDERSTAND them
we can't win them over
And we HAVE TO WIN them over
If we want to WIN ELECTIONS
The Working Poor Do Not Vote
or they vote against their own best interests
(like a battered spouse syndrome)
If we could give them a real reason to vote for us
WE'D WIN EVERY ELECTION
There are a WHOLE LOT of potential voters that the party
has turned off.
We need them back
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