Guest post: How to displace class consciousness
Originally a comment by Jeff Engel on Treats for the Rich.
Class consciousness has been “un-American” since early in the Cold War – some sort of Commie plot. Instead, we’ve had ideological and race consciousness as mainstream, normal, familiar, unexceptional. Any time something rings a little like a class issue, it will either get squelched in popular political discussion, or it will morph into a race/religion/cultural issue.
Manufacturing jobs disappearing? Talk about technological changes won’t get far except among wonks; calls for retraining programs will draw complaints about the “nanny state”; suggestions that the profit-seeking behavior of corporations is an issue will be condemned. But if you can blame it on the differently-complected foreigners, you’ve got a hot-button issue to get you deep into presidential campaigns; if you can suggest that a conspiracy of coastal elites is screwing “real” Americans in favor of their beloved non-Christians across oceans, well, your campaign is set.
Worried about mortgages being in the same hands as financial casino operations? It’s all about growth, see, and job creation, and keeping government’s hands out of your pockets. (And if it makes no sense, well, it only has to fill a sound bite – most voters are too tired from the jobs those creators stick them with to think that hard.)
Bill Mauldin, in his memoir, expressed his shock that GIs in the second World War seemed oblivious to the political/ideological aspect of conflict. But they easily worked up racial hatred toward Germans, and especially, Japanese.
And don’t forget, the Third Way Democrats, who are all business with a little social consciousness sprinkled in there, will respond to any talk of economic inequality by criticizing those who bring it up for being too radical (if they are nonwhite) or so privileged they don’t know they should focus on [Identity Group] first.
@Samantha Vimes And don’t forget the ‘politics of envy’! As if anyone were actually envying the lifestyles of the super-rich, who all seem like miserable petty boring people.