He got elected twice. And Obama got elected twice. I'm tired of hearing how poorly the white workers of middle America have been treated. Their grievances don't add up to justifying their deplorable behavior and attitude. Black people, as a voting block and as a demographic, don't go around weeping and whining like these white crybabies, and the blacks were ENSLAVED for 400 years. And then semi enslaved for another hundred years. And keep getting gunned down in the streets. And women were left out of the equation of democracy by the constitution and had to fight to just be allowed to participate, and have just had their personal rights ripped away after only really having them for 50 years. These bellyaching whites are just a bunch of Rambos who believe they could have beat the Vietnamese if they weren't hamstrung. They are clinging to a manifest destiny view of history that tells them they are entitled to be on top and have dominion over everything and everybody.
Obey was right; when the Democratic Party abandoned the working class for neoliberalism, it pushed the white, male working class into Trump's open arms.
That doesn't mean we should go back to gay-bashing and force women to stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen any more than that the racism fostered by working-class white male insecurity means we should relegalize slavery.
During the Civil Rights Movement, I saw a poor, white, Southern sharecropper interviewed on the TV news as to why he wanted to maintain segregation. He said, "If you're too poor to have a dog to kick around, you gotta have something." As long as the the US is structured hierarchically in such a way that those near the bottom of the hierarchy will accept and even welcome being exploited and abused as long as they have someone "below" them as their "dog to kick around," the ideals of democracy-- liberté, égalité, fraternité, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness--will remain fantasies used primarily to manipulate and exploit those at or near the bottom but incapable of becoming reality.
White males, especially working-class white males, are in trouble and are giving up (women outnumber them in post-secondary education; they figure highly in the statistics of "deaths of desperation") because they have been taught for generations that they are entitled to a dog to kick around purely by virtue of being white and having a penis (why else accept jobs that barely pay enough to support their families and that wear them out physically before they reach retirement?). That isn't enough to grant them privilege anymore, and they don't know how to cope or to compete in a society based on competitive hierarchy.
"Toxic masculinity" is most toxic to men. Like feminist women, they have to learn that patriarchy is their enemy, not their friend, and to ignore it. Like POC, they have to learn that white supremacy is just another way to exploit them and is therefore their enemy and abandon it. They (and not just white working-class males) must learn that the idea that the US is a "classless society" is a lie, that the rich and laissez faire capitalism are their enemies (and that, no, they are not going to become billionaires anytime soon), that wealth does not trickle downwards.
The grievances of white working-class males are valid--American society has exploited and abandoned them--but the solutions the right feeds them are guaranteed to keep them in that condition.
Of course. But forget the culture war portion. If the flannel shirts had kept their jobs, or found 'future' skills, we wouldn't be talking about this today. Much worse, Howard Dean went on a crusade about this a few years later (we have to get the guys with the pickup trucks back,) and they ridiculed him intentionally, quite viciously, and laughed him out of the party. Your ex-bosses, + Obama, Summers, Geithner et al. sucking at the teat of the great and powerful technocrats, because, you know, they know what's best for us, don't they? As a convinced lefty, it's my sad duty to point out that the 21st C. limousine liberal bourgeoisie isn't much more competent than Kerensky was a century ago. And don't get me started on shooting ourselves in the foot (what Russ Feingold did to himself, what the party did to Al Franken...) or the repeal of the Telecommunications Act. I wasn't going to stoop so low as to compare all of the above to Ramsay MacDonald in the 20s, but I've changed my mind.
Professor, Upon reading your narrative, my thoughts turned to November and to two Democrats in particular—John Fetterman and Tim Ryan—both of whom are extraordinarily effective in addressing the frustrations and aspirations of white working class voters. No doubt we’re all aware of these voters who, for decades, have been the victims of modernity’s unevenly distributed opportunity and prosperity, due largely to shifts in manufacturing from high- to low-wage countries and also to rapid technological changes that increasingly have rewarded higher educated workers over the less skilled.
I sense that Fetterman and Ryan, in large part, could be demonstrating that a piece of the way forward for defeating Trumpism entails addressing both the widening oppressive redistributions and the needs of those who have lost jobs and are struggling with a changing economy.
Obey was right. Loss of self. It's also a medical problem. Loss of identity may follow all sorts of change; changes in the workplace, loss of a job or profession, loss of a role that once defined us, as a child, as a parent, as a spouse. This leaves a gap, an abyss, an empty space. An identity crisis may cause feelings of frustration, being stuck, or lacking meaningful progression. Furthermore, an identity crisis can influence feelings of depression or anxiety, making people feel unsatisfied with themselves and their lives.
That can be a reason why so many cultists are male . Fox, Tucker Carlson have used it to build their viewership. Trump and the Republicans demagogue this to some people who have a predisposition due to a racist collective subconscious,
According to Healthline, treatment: How to work toward it:
-Practice acceptance. Learning to accept what comes — as it comes — can help you achieve self-actualization. ...
-Live spontaneously. ...
-Get comfortable with your own company. ...
-Appreciate the small things in life. ...
-Live authentically. ...
-Develop compassion. ...
-Talk to a therapist.
Of course this regimen is offered by a therapist -- not a political scientist. IMHO the prognosis is pretty obvious. There is little "science" to political science. A biology teacher once said that social science is to science as masturbation is to fornication.
Fundamentally 70% of the voting public are women and minorities, who are the true objects of the venom, Convince THEM that they can save us --- in some cases from ourselves. IMHO what the cult needs is classical Greek medicine - catharsis.
Marjorie Taylor Green is telling Blue Collar Men that they are being emasculated by electric vehicles. These guys seem to be emasculated if you sneeze at them wrong. It sounds more like a personal problem ... During the Clinton era I think you can point right to homophobia and fear of the rise of women's independence.
Also, funny how they loved neo-liberalism under Reagan, but were emasculated by it under Clinton. Give me a break. They are being manipulated by this narrative, not creating it. The proof will be in the pudding. Dems have brought manufacturing and unions back to America in two short years. If that is what it is really about, Dems should win by a landslide next month.
But I suspect not. The loss of white, male privilege and power, not jobs, is the issue. And they are already showing us who is still boss with the control of women's reproduction.
Marx warned us to distrust the social democrats and trades unionists as much as we distrust the financiers. The social democrats think there is a "third way", a way between. Clinton and Blair similar. Blair is now a smug multi-millionaire detested by the British Left. The lesson is you have to replace capitalist ideology with a different kind of social contract. (The word "socialist" is not allowed and in any case is already besmudged.) Something like "People should not work for capital; capital should work for the people." Capital is, after all, only the sum product of generations of labour. It does not belong to the cashiers who simply take it from the till.
What have the republicans done for working people?? Why would any middle class person vote for a Republican who only give tax breaks to billionaires and corporations?
Yeah. I have hoisted a Point Beer in a Stevens Point, Wisconsin, tavern. Worked at WSPT briefly and almost starved to death. I remember Obey.
What does anyone expect when greedy business owners lay off American workers and hire slaves in Third World nations? Ya think the people who lost those jobs are going to be happy? This does not affect just a few blue collars. This affects our entire nation. Remember what Yamamoto said when the Japanese were celebrating their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. He said, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." He was not talking about the American military. He was talking about our manufacturing strength ... the strength we no longer have due to the greed of business owners. Lenin is quoted as saying, "“When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract.” Other quotes ..."A capitalist will sell you the rope with which you can hang him." We need to put our blue collar folks back to work ... at a living wage.
I’m riding in the Buick (or whatever American car) with you in the Parade. Professor, you paint a picture of the times. Especially this line, “ Emasculation! Blue-collar men already lost one testicle before Clinton. Now they’re both gone. And they blame us.” Even today, for some men, (repubs?) women still belong in the kitchen baking cookies, recreating a Betty Crocker world. Lucky we got the Vote. We must continue to work for equality and human rights. The USA is so not finished.
Aside from the occasional obvious policy glitches, Democrats are not good at controling the narrative, and are adept foot shooters… while Republicans (easier as they all sing the same off key song) run circles around effectively projecting their myths. True the Roe vs Wade repeal is firing up folks but it’s not the only issue. If Democrats could explain the many wonderful things accomplished while paying more attention to workers issue, there would be more support from the voters,
When the Clinton Administration signed NAFTA and took no heed to the wage discrepancies of Mexico and the U.S. they gave up on the ideals of the New Deal and the Roosevelt Administration.
NAFTA and all its false promises destroyed all of those gains and alienated the base from Our Party. Now, despite the Progressives, the Party has become entrenched in fighting off Fascist Ideology, created because of those grave errors. If we could turn back the clock, negotiations for comparative wages would have saved the Party and avoided the mess we are now facing.
All those things are absolutely true, then pile on women’s lib, and the perceived conviction that men screwed everything up, and you have a perfect cocktail of dissatisfaction. But that is a government’s job; to move a country forward into progress, even kicking and screaming. What they failed to do was educate and present alternatives. American men had an inflated and unreal perception of themselves as frontiersmen and cowboys. What we failed to do as the world changed around us was to make it cool to be a computer programmer, or a business manager. Re-training, and more importantly, re-setting the legend should have begun in 1890 when the frontier was closed. Clinton, as bad as he was, was as much a victim of the failure to re-build the legend as he was the architect.
Now the Republicans will point to inflation and the border crisis, but the Democrats can run on job creation, the Inflation Reduction Act, the overturning of Roe, and the attempted insurrection which is now a slow rolling one. This midterm election won't be the same as that under former president Clinton.
If you have not done so already Prof. Reich, please write your memoirs. If you have – and I shall look – I know I will have a good book to read during the long dark nights of winter. Reading this post conveyed a complete picture not only of the realities of political power but how that looks at street level including all those nuances of time, place and personality that bridge to gulf between legislation and dry documents and the human.
Former member here, of USW 1010, East Chicago Indiana. ("Tin -Tin", get it?) At its peak Inland Steel alone employed around 30,000. There were bus lines inside the sprawling complex. 24/7 operation, toxic, deadly, war rats, good paying jobs. Lots of immigrants, it helped if you could speak Polish.
I was working and going to night school. I noticed that a lot of our equipment was getting worn out, obsolete. I asked a higher-up I knew about why we weren't replacing some of it.
'Well", he said, "about every twenty years this country goes to war. Then government buys us all new stuff to win the war. After we win the war we buy it from there government for a dollar"
"What if there is no war?"
He shrugged, "After we beat Japan, we bought them all new equipment, latest technology. We can't compete with their cold-rolled. Theirs is way better, fewer defects, cheaper. Auto companies are buying it."
"What happens to us?," I asked.
He shrugged.
I finished college at Indiana University Northwest in Gary and never looked back. I got a job in Chicago trading commodities futures and derivitaves. There is little left of the mills now.
He got elected twice. And Obama got elected twice. I'm tired of hearing how poorly the white workers of middle America have been treated. Their grievances don't add up to justifying their deplorable behavior and attitude. Black people, as a voting block and as a demographic, don't go around weeping and whining like these white crybabies, and the blacks were ENSLAVED for 400 years. And then semi enslaved for another hundred years. And keep getting gunned down in the streets. And women were left out of the equation of democracy by the constitution and had to fight to just be allowed to participate, and have just had their personal rights ripped away after only really having them for 50 years. These bellyaching whites are just a bunch of Rambos who believe they could have beat the Vietnamese if they weren't hamstrung. They are clinging to a manifest destiny view of history that tells them they are entitled to be on top and have dominion over everything and everybody.
Obey was right; when the Democratic Party abandoned the working class for neoliberalism, it pushed the white, male working class into Trump's open arms.
That doesn't mean we should go back to gay-bashing and force women to stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen any more than that the racism fostered by working-class white male insecurity means we should relegalize slavery.
During the Civil Rights Movement, I saw a poor, white, Southern sharecropper interviewed on the TV news as to why he wanted to maintain segregation. He said, "If you're too poor to have a dog to kick around, you gotta have something." As long as the the US is structured hierarchically in such a way that those near the bottom of the hierarchy will accept and even welcome being exploited and abused as long as they have someone "below" them as their "dog to kick around," the ideals of democracy-- liberté, égalité, fraternité, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness--will remain fantasies used primarily to manipulate and exploit those at or near the bottom but incapable of becoming reality.
White males, especially working-class white males, are in trouble and are giving up (women outnumber them in post-secondary education; they figure highly in the statistics of "deaths of desperation") because they have been taught for generations that they are entitled to a dog to kick around purely by virtue of being white and having a penis (why else accept jobs that barely pay enough to support their families and that wear them out physically before they reach retirement?). That isn't enough to grant them privilege anymore, and they don't know how to cope or to compete in a society based on competitive hierarchy.
"Toxic masculinity" is most toxic to men. Like feminist women, they have to learn that patriarchy is their enemy, not their friend, and to ignore it. Like POC, they have to learn that white supremacy is just another way to exploit them and is therefore their enemy and abandon it. They (and not just white working-class males) must learn that the idea that the US is a "classless society" is a lie, that the rich and laissez faire capitalism are their enemies (and that, no, they are not going to become billionaires anytime soon), that wealth does not trickle downwards.
The grievances of white working-class males are valid--American society has exploited and abandoned them--but the solutions the right feeds them are guaranteed to keep them in that condition.
Of course. But forget the culture war portion. If the flannel shirts had kept their jobs, or found 'future' skills, we wouldn't be talking about this today. Much worse, Howard Dean went on a crusade about this a few years later (we have to get the guys with the pickup trucks back,) and they ridiculed him intentionally, quite viciously, and laughed him out of the party. Your ex-bosses, + Obama, Summers, Geithner et al. sucking at the teat of the great and powerful technocrats, because, you know, they know what's best for us, don't they? As a convinced lefty, it's my sad duty to point out that the 21st C. limousine liberal bourgeoisie isn't much more competent than Kerensky was a century ago. And don't get me started on shooting ourselves in the foot (what Russ Feingold did to himself, what the party did to Al Franken...) or the repeal of the Telecommunications Act. I wasn't going to stoop so low as to compare all of the above to Ramsay MacDonald in the 20s, but I've changed my mind.
Professor, Upon reading your narrative, my thoughts turned to November and to two Democrats in particular—John Fetterman and Tim Ryan—both of whom are extraordinarily effective in addressing the frustrations and aspirations of white working class voters. No doubt we’re all aware of these voters who, for decades, have been the victims of modernity’s unevenly distributed opportunity and prosperity, due largely to shifts in manufacturing from high- to low-wage countries and also to rapid technological changes that increasingly have rewarded higher educated workers over the less skilled.
I sense that Fetterman and Ryan, in large part, could be demonstrating that a piece of the way forward for defeating Trumpism entails addressing both the widening oppressive redistributions and the needs of those who have lost jobs and are struggling with a changing economy.
Obey was right. Loss of self. It's also a medical problem. Loss of identity may follow all sorts of change; changes in the workplace, loss of a job or profession, loss of a role that once defined us, as a child, as a parent, as a spouse. This leaves a gap, an abyss, an empty space. An identity crisis may cause feelings of frustration, being stuck, or lacking meaningful progression. Furthermore, an identity crisis can influence feelings of depression or anxiety, making people feel unsatisfied with themselves and their lives.
That can be a reason why so many cultists are male . Fox, Tucker Carlson have used it to build their viewership. Trump and the Republicans demagogue this to some people who have a predisposition due to a racist collective subconscious,
According to Healthline, treatment: How to work toward it:
-Practice acceptance. Learning to accept what comes — as it comes — can help you achieve self-actualization. ...
-Live spontaneously. ...
-Get comfortable with your own company. ...
-Appreciate the small things in life. ...
-Live authentically. ...
-Develop compassion. ...
-Talk to a therapist.
Of course this regimen is offered by a therapist -- not a political scientist. IMHO the prognosis is pretty obvious. There is little "science" to political science. A biology teacher once said that social science is to science as masturbation is to fornication.
Fundamentally 70% of the voting public are women and minorities, who are the true objects of the venom, Convince THEM that they can save us --- in some cases from ourselves. IMHO what the cult needs is classical Greek medicine - catharsis.
Remember Lysistrata!
Marjorie Taylor Green is telling Blue Collar Men that they are being emasculated by electric vehicles. These guys seem to be emasculated if you sneeze at them wrong. It sounds more like a personal problem ... During the Clinton era I think you can point right to homophobia and fear of the rise of women's independence.
Also, funny how they loved neo-liberalism under Reagan, but were emasculated by it under Clinton. Give me a break. They are being manipulated by this narrative, not creating it. The proof will be in the pudding. Dems have brought manufacturing and unions back to America in two short years. If that is what it is really about, Dems should win by a landslide next month.
But I suspect not. The loss of white, male privilege and power, not jobs, is the issue. And they are already showing us who is still boss with the control of women's reproduction.
Marx warned us to distrust the social democrats and trades unionists as much as we distrust the financiers. The social democrats think there is a "third way", a way between. Clinton and Blair similar. Blair is now a smug multi-millionaire detested by the British Left. The lesson is you have to replace capitalist ideology with a different kind of social contract. (The word "socialist" is not allowed and in any case is already besmudged.) Something like "People should not work for capital; capital should work for the people." Capital is, after all, only the sum product of generations of labour. It does not belong to the cashiers who simply take it from the till.
What have the republicans done for working people?? Why would any middle class person vote for a Republican who only give tax breaks to billionaires and corporations?
Yeah. I have hoisted a Point Beer in a Stevens Point, Wisconsin, tavern. Worked at WSPT briefly and almost starved to death. I remember Obey.
What does anyone expect when greedy business owners lay off American workers and hire slaves in Third World nations? Ya think the people who lost those jobs are going to be happy? This does not affect just a few blue collars. This affects our entire nation. Remember what Yamamoto said when the Japanese were celebrating their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. He said, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." He was not talking about the American military. He was talking about our manufacturing strength ... the strength we no longer have due to the greed of business owners. Lenin is quoted as saying, "“When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract.” Other quotes ..."A capitalist will sell you the rope with which you can hang him." We need to put our blue collar folks back to work ... at a living wage.
I’m riding in the Buick (or whatever American car) with you in the Parade. Professor, you paint a picture of the times. Especially this line, “ Emasculation! Blue-collar men already lost one testicle before Clinton. Now they’re both gone. And they blame us.” Even today, for some men, (repubs?) women still belong in the kitchen baking cookies, recreating a Betty Crocker world. Lucky we got the Vote. We must continue to work for equality and human rights. The USA is so not finished.
Aside from the occasional obvious policy glitches, Democrats are not good at controling the narrative, and are adept foot shooters… while Republicans (easier as they all sing the same off key song) run circles around effectively projecting their myths. True the Roe vs Wade repeal is firing up folks but it’s not the only issue. If Democrats could explain the many wonderful things accomplished while paying more attention to workers issue, there would be more support from the voters,
When the Clinton Administration signed NAFTA and took no heed to the wage discrepancies of Mexico and the U.S. they gave up on the ideals of the New Deal and the Roosevelt Administration.
NAFTA and all its false promises destroyed all of those gains and alienated the base from Our Party. Now, despite the Progressives, the Party has become entrenched in fighting off Fascist Ideology, created because of those grave errors. If we could turn back the clock, negotiations for comparative wages would have saved the Party and avoided the mess we are now facing.
All those things are absolutely true, then pile on women’s lib, and the perceived conviction that men screwed everything up, and you have a perfect cocktail of dissatisfaction. But that is a government’s job; to move a country forward into progress, even kicking and screaming. What they failed to do was educate and present alternatives. American men had an inflated and unreal perception of themselves as frontiersmen and cowboys. What we failed to do as the world changed around us was to make it cool to be a computer programmer, or a business manager. Re-training, and more importantly, re-setting the legend should have begun in 1890 when the frontier was closed. Clinton, as bad as he was, was as much a victim of the failure to re-build the legend as he was the architect.
Now the Republicans will point to inflation and the border crisis, but the Democrats can run on job creation, the Inflation Reduction Act, the overturning of Roe, and the attempted insurrection which is now a slow rolling one. This midterm election won't be the same as that under former president Clinton.
If you have not done so already Prof. Reich, please write your memoirs. If you have – and I shall look – I know I will have a good book to read during the long dark nights of winter. Reading this post conveyed a complete picture not only of the realities of political power but how that looks at street level including all those nuances of time, place and personality that bridge to gulf between legislation and dry documents and the human.
Former member here, of USW 1010, East Chicago Indiana. ("Tin -Tin", get it?) At its peak Inland Steel alone employed around 30,000. There were bus lines inside the sprawling complex. 24/7 operation, toxic, deadly, war rats, good paying jobs. Lots of immigrants, it helped if you could speak Polish.
I was working and going to night school. I noticed that a lot of our equipment was getting worn out, obsolete. I asked a higher-up I knew about why we weren't replacing some of it.
'Well", he said, "about every twenty years this country goes to war. Then government buys us all new stuff to win the war. After we win the war we buy it from there government for a dollar"
"What if there is no war?"
He shrugged, "After we beat Japan, we bought them all new equipment, latest technology. We can't compete with their cold-rolled. Theirs is way better, fewer defects, cheaper. Auto companies are buying it."
"What happens to us?," I asked.
He shrugged.
I finished college at Indiana University Northwest in Gary and never looked back. I got a job in Chicago trading commodities futures and derivitaves. There is little left of the mills now.