Richard Jernigan -> RE: Divisive ignorance (Nov. 9 2016 23:46:57)
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ORIGINAL: BarkellWH The pundits will earn their pay over the next few days attempting to explain Trump's victory and why it was such a shock. As someone who will remain unpaid, I would like to offer my thoughts herewith. There are several reasons for the election results, not the least of which is the baggage Hillary carried with her. But I think one of the main reason's for Trump's victory and Hillary's defeat is the rebellion of the white working class. It had a much larger effect on the election than anyone imagined. Bill From two rather large extended families in rural Texas (father's side) and rural Oklahoma ( mother's side) my perspective on class division has a generational aspect. My grandparents on both sides lived in the country and made their living in agriculture. On my father's side, Texas ranchers; on my mother's, relatively prosperous family farmers: 320 acres in Oklahoma wheat country, when you could make a pretty good living off that. Only a few of my generation still live in the country, those who manage the ranch which is organized as a family corporation. The rest of the owners have been city people for two generations. During my grandparents' tenure on the ranch, it was practically a subsistence operation, before the discovery of oil, and before irrigation made a big difference in year-round agricultural productivity. During my childhood and young adult years, the grandparents' generation were still a big part of family life. The extended family's common origins were obvious to all. In my parents' generation most members of the family were urban working class, some (like my father and my mother's older sister) moved into the urban middle class. For example, my father rose to high rank as a military officer: middle class. One of his brothers-in-law was a union man, business agent for the painters' union in the big oil and chemical plants on the Texas coast. The union man came up through the ranks, working as a painter. Though their class membership and political views had diverged, my father and my uncle were clearly aware of their common origins. They hunted quail as part of the same family group. Uncle Mac was a better wing shot than Dad. Dad was the best sport fisherman of the whole bunch. They enjoyed their friendly competition at sports that originated in rural life. After the conservative wing of the Democratic party morphed into the Texas Republican party, Dad was an active Republican, Uncle Mac was a Democrat. At family gatherings they often discussed politics, even teased one another a little, but the tone remained friendly and respectful. Members of my generation didn't really share the common class origins of my parents' generation. In my case we lived in middle class neighborhoods, or on military bases, had air conditioned houses, and rode in Cadillacs. We went to college. Some of my cousins had similar lives. Their parents were professionals or business owners. Many other cousins lived in working class neighborhoods, and rode in Fords or Chevrolets. But the 1950s were the paradise of the working class. America was the only industrialized country left standing after WW II. Working as a master painter, a certified welder, a master carpenter, you could afford to buy a house, a decent car, and send a couple of kids to university. Several of my working class cousins went to college and became chemists, engineers, college professors, etc., and moved into the middle class. Others followed their fathers into the trades. My children's generation, now in their 40s and 50s had separate class identities. Middle class kids and working class kids lived in different neighborhoods, went to different schools, inherited different political views. Some retained their parents' political identities, others changed, but none of them had personal experience of the other class's lives. In the 1980s two high school football teams in Austin competed for the state championship in the largest population division. The captains of the two teams were jointly interviewed on local TV. It was so spectacular the clip went nationwide. The co-captains of the team from my kids' school wore button down dress shirts, chinos, penny loafers and yuppie haircuts. The captains from south Austin wore cowboy shirts, big hats, Levis, big belt buckles and cowboy boots. They even spoke with very different accents. One side looked down upon the others, and the others resented it. The rich kids won. They have been winning ever since, and the working class kids have been losing. No longer can a working man buy a nice house, a new car, and send a couple of kids to college. They are barely hanging on financially. A single hiccup, an illness, getting laid off work, any serious bump in the road, tips them over into financial disaster. Meanwhile my middle class generation retires with a nice house, a late model luxury car, and a nice nest egg of investments. Our kids are doctors, lawyers, luxury real estate agents, business owners....and many of them look down their noses at their working class cousins. The extended family, in the present generation of young adults, has divided into working class and middle class segments that have little to do with each other. Elsewhere in America, the class divisions run even deeper. Almost all white native Texans of my generation hark back to rural, agricultural roots. In other parts of the country the class divisions go back many generations, often to the time ancestors immigrated to America. The pressure built up by the deepening class division boiled over last night. The media were artfully exploited by Trump. The more outrageous his antics, the more free coverage he got. When the press were in control of public discourse, they developed an ethic of "fairness." This amounted to giving equal time to all sides of an issue. This worked kind of OK when discourse was civil. TV changed that. The "issues" became less important than the candidate's image. Kennedy was more glamorous than Nixon. Nixon was more forceful than Humphrey. Carter was more virtuous than Ford, who pardoned Nixon, who was crucified for our sins as well as his. Reagan was stronger, warmer and more reassuring than Carter, etc. And as rudeness and arrogance became more acceptable on "entertainment" TV and shock jock radio, the tolerance for the same began to stain politics. Trump's campaign fooled the experts by correctly intuiting that the limits of acceptable public behavior were a very long way past the limits of middle class decorum, especially when deployed to express working class, ethnic and religious resentment. He was right all along, and those who tried to make him "pivot" to be more "presidential" after he sewed up the nomination were wrong. Now we will see what comes next. RNJ
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