11-17-2016, 04:10 PM
(11-17-2016, 02:29 PM)taramarie Wrote:(11-17-2016, 11:18 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:Well said(11-17-2016, 10:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: In 1952 they were rational enough to recognize that the common man had to have a stake in the system. One side of the Red Scare was the need for a consumer society in which such people as assembly-line workers had a stake in the system so that they would not fall for the great menace of the day to capitalism -- Communism. In the 1950s the Communists were largely people who had few connections to the proletariat -- like creative people and academics.
Donald Trump and other right-wingers may pretend to show love for the working class by praising vulgarity and under-education... but that is a con. I'm tempted to believe that many working-class people would find life richer if they turned off the idiot screen and the more witless part of the Internet and instead sampled some great literature and sophisticated music. Such can give some meaning in life even if it does not improve one;s vocational opportunities. It has kept me from suicide on occasions.
The short times in which I did factory work made me more crave intellectual sophistication. Maybe that makes me a poor match for factory work because certain jobs are made for certain cultures. I have never driven a truck, but you can just imagine what I would listen to on the radio to avoid falling asleep while driving through northern Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio ... something like this:
Could I convince my fellow truck drivers to listen to this? Probably not! Would I have credibility as a truck driver with other truck drivers? They would probably think me insane, if not snooty!
Snooty is likely enough.
I have a number of hobbies and interests other than visiting this forum. I get out a few times a week for fantasy role playing games. The computer I'm typing this on also drives a MIDI studio, with a keyboard, synth and mixer attached. My other internet forum is Patriots Planet, dedicated to the NFL football team. I still own the martial arts studio where I once studied, the building at least. It's use as a studio is essentially forgotten.
Taking pride in one's interests is fine. Scorning someone else's interests, less so. Scorning the person because of that interest? It is typical for a follower of classical music to have a low opinion of country and western, but is that an excuse to scorn the person as opposed to the music? My sisters are both into quilting, which isn't my thing, but I'm not going to imply in any way that that isn't a fine thing. (My bed is covered with a quilt made up from the T-shirts I wore in my early adulthood, for example. Warm memories.) Does it in any way diminish a man to follow the Sooners rather than the magnificent Patriots?
It's been said that part of the Trump backlash is urban folk laughing at and dismissing the rural folk as inferior in so many ways. Well, many live in a simpler environment. Simpler values and perspectives might still work fine there, while the faster pace and complexity of urban live makes for a different sort of person. It might be hard not to judge. It might be prudent not to rub in one's less favorable judgments.
I do not laugh at such people. It may be that one does not need so much sophistication to live in rural America. Small-town life entails a complexity of human relationships that in urban environments are far less personal. One may need some more sophisticated life to put up with urbam reality -- a reason to put up with the high costs of living, stress of commuting and using mass transit. Rural America is very different from any big city, and living in Chicago is more like living in New York City than in rural areas fifty miles away.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.