“They've passed plenty.

And yeah, tree, you got it right.”

“Not abortion.

Not gay marriage.

They barely (or did they?) passed a budget.

Remember, this is an election year. Not much goes against the grain this year.”

“The whack jobs think they are in the driver's seat and they are spinnin' their wheels.

Faith-based government does not work...........even in Saudi Arabia.”

“Look, there are both simple majorities and super majorities and there are committees that these bills must pass through to even get to the floor, and then to even get a simple majority at 51/100 seats you would need every single Senator in the party having 51 House Seats to vote identically. Having 51 seats vs. 50 seats does not cram the Republican machine through Congress. It just gives some control advantages on the floor.”

“"Partial-birth"

"marriage protection act"

etc.”

“Ahhh... I see, the Republicans control the Supreme Court? Hmmm. I guess that's why killing yet-to-be-born babies is still perfectly legal and they haven't banned gay marriage across this land and stuff like that. Damn those Republican Supreme Court judges. ha ha!”

“Now that the Republicans hold all the marbles they seem to be losing their marbles.

Time for change.”

“MarkO, let's keep your underwear out of this, k?”

“You're right about the committees, except that the committees are chaired by the majority party...”

“Buck, for cryin' out loud, it's only six o'clock out your way.

Shouldn't you be eatin' din-din or somethin'?”

“Buck,

The government runs tests to determine whether the TSA can stop explosives and guns. These tests have consistently shown that the Bush-created TSA is less effective than the private companies that came before. Big government was not the answer there.

I'm not sure how often you check to see what the terrorist risk level is, but how often do you see Tom Ridge anymore? The Department of Homeland Security is a total joke. And an expensive expansion of government at that.

The people of Afghanistan and Iraq have not voted for their leadership. The U.S. runs both countries. This Iraqi President who just came by is a total stooge for Bush. And it is highly doubtful that the winner of the January election will be anything more credible.

You make it sound as if Bush was just standing there as the Democrats ran a couple of big spending bills past him.

The Democrats have very little power in Congress right now. They can't investigate. They can't control debate. These are Bush's ideas that have gotten passed.

I have been a bit simplistic on this, of course. Conservatism is more than just limited government. But that is a core, central idea. It has been abandoned by Bush.”

“Oh, and the abortion stuff hasn't passed because the Republican leadership doesn't want it to pass. It is only in the party platform to pull pro-life votes. If abortion were ever banned, the backlash would be politically counterproductive to them.

So, they pass things like partial birth abortion bans even though it effects a very, very small percentage of abortions. They support things like consent laws and banning overseas family planning funding. These make little to no difference but keep the pro-lifers just happy enough so they don't bolt.

It's the "Trick-a-Catholic" campaign plank.

If you really oppose abortion, vote for someone who supports policies that help young women get health care and college tuition. Help them to pull themselves up with their bootstraps so that they can have the child without dooming themselves to lifetime poverty.”

“Let loose the power of individual initiative and watch those babies get saved.”

“I'm a free-market pro-lifer.”

“"marriage protection act......"

I didn't think that passed. t was supposed to support DOMA, in that the Judges could rule on the issue. That bill was structured to brake apart the Republic. If it passed as it was, it allows the Legislature to over power the Judical.”

“Some of you people have forgotten that it takes 60 votes to effectively cram stuff through. Without 60 votes if the minority party wants stop a bill it can. It doesn't always do this because of the political capitol it would have to spend. Abortion laws not passing has nothing to do with the leadership, there are *gasp* pro-abortion Republican Senators who won't vote for them.”

“"there are *gasp* pro-abortion Republican Senators who won't vote for them....."

The HELL you say!

Yea, I know. Back in the day, we'd cal'em damn Commies....but hey! What ever fits under the circus tent!


I mean "Big Top!"

I meant "The Sil-Nylon Tarp!"

Just what the hell is it?

Big, somthin`....


Big trap?


Big, bad voodoo daddy?

Oh, crap! I remember!

The big group of dorks that still can't get a date!

No, no.....that ain't it.

Sorry, bison. I'm sure you can get a date if you paid her enough.....!


KIDDING!


God damn it! Where is that cork!?!?”

“A couple of points regarding religious government.
1. If the majority of Iraquis, who happen to be Shiite Muslim, vote in a strict fundamentalist regime, you had better bet the farm that the present administration will be filling their pants in light speed. As a matter of fact, I agree that fundamentalism has no place in governing a free society. However, there is a powerful movement among the present administration to make our government more fundamentalist. If you mention removing "under God" from the Pledge, (which was not in the original Pledge), hearts go into fibrilation in the White House. If you decide that local governments should decide who they can acknowledge as "married", GW starts doing the Curly dance on the White House floor.
We are working to stop fundamentalism in Iraq. Why don't we practice what we preach in the good ole USA?
2. Abortion is bad, bad. I agree that it's a bad solution to a problem that shouldn't have occurred in the first place. However, the fundy administration gets pretty squeamish when you mention that young people could put a rubber device on and avoid much suffering and confusion. No, even though they use such devices themselves, and probably encourage their children to do so, they can't say it in public. Abstinence, because it's God's way, is the only possibility for our citizenry. Oh,and a subtext to this, killing the unborn is the worst thing a human being can do. Killing the living? Hey, that's not so bad.
3. Show me a neo-con who really wants smaller government, and I'll fly my pink elephant around your living room. They just want to gut regulatory government that keeps corrupt corporations from ripping off the US economy to the tune of billions and billions. Regulatory government that keeps the boogie-men gays from doing it with each other is just fine. Big government that spends unlimited amounts of cash on "homeland security" while our borders are as open, (or more so), as they have ever been is just fine by them.
3. Government is the incarnation of the devil himself. However, to give tax-payer roads through our national forests to logging companies is the height of free-market economic thinking. Uhhh... which government is paying for those roads, which most people don't want in the first place?
I could go on, but I want everyone to enjoy these points.”

“Paraphrasing one of his bits....


You have to love conservatives. They care about you and your well being before you are even born. They try to get laws passed to make sure you are born, and will do anything in thier power to make sure your mom gives you birth.

Once you are born, you're on your own buddy. Conservatives would rather walk over hot coals before endorsing or passing legiclation that will help you get a decent education, healthcare or live a productive life......... that is until........

You turn 18. Then conservatives come courting you again, because they love wars, and they need people to fight them!”

“LOL! If abortion were illegal we wouldn't have such a shortage of cannon fodder.

Just think, we could of invaded the whole Evil Axis at once!”

“Actually, the pro-life movement has helped the United States avoid the drop in population forecast for Europe. This will allow us, if we spend our resources correctly, the ability to save social security and have a growing economy in the future.

I also think that young people today are more responsible than they've been in the past in terms of their reproductive choices.

But lack of health care and expensive education make it more difficult for a young person to raise a child.”

“First of all, the reason there is no fuego sign on this thread is because it was started before fuego started.

Secondly, I agree that Phaedrus's c&p was partisan. It reminds me of what my four year old son said when I was making natchos for us. Mine had jalepenos and his didn't. He said, "Dad, you like the spicy and I like the good" - he said it mildy, and sweetly and it was true from his perspective, but I would have put it differently.

If it had been a conservative writing, the fuzzy guy with the liberal attitudes would be stoned on "marijuana provided by a network of drug dealers far more repressive and brutal than any of the armies and regimes he complains about."

This ain't to say I don't have sympathies for the writer, or that I am not one of the many people shaking their heads in dismay over the high level of support Bush seems to have.”

“I just found a very cool website. It's titled: "Bush:Catholic Team."

It's really great because it shows how strongly Catholic George Bush is.

http://www.georgewbush.com/catholics/

I especially liked the picture on the opening page that shows the Pope endorsing President Bush.

My only concern is that I am a little uncomfortable knowing that the Pope can tell our president what to do.

Oh, well, that's what Jesus would want.”

“"My only concern is that I am a little uncomfortable knowing that the Pope can tell our president what to do."

reformed lurker
08:19:03 AM
09/26/04

Uh yeah, when the Pope told the Pres. not to invade Iraq, the Pres. did exactly what the Pope told him to do.

PS, anyone who bothered to take the time to look into GW's religious convictions would know that he is far from a fundamentalist, he's not even an evangelical and does not even consider himself a born-again Christian. Sorry to burst y'alls bubbles but GW is a mainline protestant. Or you could just go on believing the liberal propaganda. Or whatever else you'd like to believe.”

“"PS, anyone who bothered to take the time to look into GW's religious convictions would know that he is far from a fundamentalist, he's not even an evangelical and does not even consider himself a born-again Christian. Sorry to burst y'alls bubbles but GW is a mainline protestant. Or you could just go on believing the liberal propaganda. Or whatever else you'd like to believe."

I heard an author speaking about GW’s faith and how it is a bit misleading when people call him a religious zealot because Clinton spoke in more churches and invoked the name of Jesus twice as much as Bush has in public speaking. Something like 47 times and 21 in one year…his re-election year.”

“What? He's not Catholic?”

“No GW is not Catholic RL, he's Methodist.”

“John Kerry, however is Catholic, if that comforts you RL.”

“PS, anyone who bothered to take the time to look into GW's religious convictions would know that he is far from a fundamentalist

Yet he champions fundi causes. That's the bottom line.”

“"Uh yeah, when the Pope told the Pres. not to invade Iraq, the Pres. did exactly what the Pope told him to do."

This proves my point exactly, Bison. Bush tries to cozy up to Catholics with the abortion issue when he totally ignores the core of Catholic social teaching: care for the poor and respect the lives of others above all.”

“I believe JFK was the only and first Catholic president. If Bush is a Medodist he should look into changing a few of his Methods. LOL!”

“Exactly which fundi causes are you referring to?

Just because fundamentalists support certain things makes them fundi causes?

I don't think so.”

““Bush tries to cozy up to Catholics with the abortion issue when he totally ignores the core of Catholic social teaching: care for the poor and respect the lives of others above all."

Not looking for a debate or anything but as far as I know partial birth abortion is the only thing he’s ever went after. How does Bush not care for the poor and not respect the lives of others?”

“Just because fundamentalists support certain things makes them fundi causes?

Um, of course, isn't that obvious? I mean, how would you define them? Issues the fundis don't care about? LOL.

Now if you're talking about sole ownership of an issue, then you may have a point, but you certainly failed to articulate that.”

“If anyone's interested in Bush's faith/comunity based programs they can read about it here.”

“Nigal,

I was speaking from the perspective of Catholic social teaching.

Cardinal Bernardin expressed the official Catholic position as a "consistent ethic of life." This means that Catholics should work to end abortion, the death penalty and wars. They should also work to give that life dignity by helping the poor and weak.

So, my argument is that Bush is attempting to make a connection to Catholic social teaching on abortion while also waging a war that was against church positions and supporting policies on health care, taxation and the death penalty that also conflict with the church's support for the poor and weak.

I guess I really don't like the president, or any politician for that matter, telling me how to be a good Catholic. It would be like me telling you, Nigal, how to be a good Jew.”

“LOL! I’m not a good Jew. Hell, I’m not even a Jew.

I hadn’t seen anything where Bush was trying to tell Catholics to do anything but rather that they have a shared issue. If we look at some of the things JFK did we could say the same thing about him. But then again he actually WAS Catholic.

I think faith can be a good thing for politicians as a moral compass but not as a means of setting policy.”

“Gog is co-pilot”

“Nigal,

During Bush's papal visit, Bush asked Vatican officials to push the issues of abortion and stem cell research during the campaign to help him out with the Catholic vote.

John Allen of NCR and, I believe, Newsweek reported this.”

“Hmm. That was a bad call.”

“Poor, White and Pissed
A Guide to the White Trash Planet for Urban Liberals
by Joe Bageant
www.dissidentvoice.org
February 18, 2005

If
you are reading this it is very likely that you are a liberal, maybe even an
outright screaming burn down the goddam country commie --in which case I
say, “Come sit by me comrade! (Especially if you are a blonde.) Like most
lefties you probably live in an urban area, or someplace with reasonable
cultural diversity. More than likely you are educated and can read this
without moving your lips. Maybe you even live in the freethinking People’s
Republic of Berkeley, or bustle along under the fabled lights of Manhattan
where you can see independent films and buy such things as leeks and soy
milk at your grocery store.

 

I, however, live in a
town where it is easier to find chitterlings, ponhaus and souse in the
grocery store than a leek … and where Smokey and the Bandit still plays to
packed movie houses year after year. My hometown’s claim to fame is the 1983
“Rhinehart Tire Fire” in which some five million discarded tires burned for
nine months, gaining Winchester, Virginia national news coverage and EPA
superfund cleanup status.  The smoke plume was visible in satellite earth
photos, the cleanup took 18 years and the fire stands as my hometown’s
biggest event of the Twentieth Century. As for intellectual life, this is a
town where damned few residents ever heard of, say, Susan Sontag. Even though
our local newspaper editor did manage a post mortem editorial on Sontag,
which basically said: Goodbye you piece of New York Jewish commie #&%!$!, most
people reading the paper at their breakfast tables around town were asking
themselves, “Who the hell is Susan Sontag?”  They would ask the same thing
about Daniel Barenboim or Hunter S.
Thompson because those figures have never been on Oprah. Our general
ambience was well summed up by a visiting Atlanta lawyer who looked around
town and observed: “Dumb lordee I reckon!” This from a guy who’s seen a lot
of dumb crackers. Laugh if you want, but this is the red state American
heartland everybody is talking about these days.

 

Is it possible for a
higher class of person to live in American places like Winchester, Virginia?
Not really. Only the local old family business elite and well-paid plant
managers transferred here find such a place livable -- the former for their
social status and the latter in the safe knowledge they will be transferred
out someday.

Most of the rest of us
stuck in Winchester are what used to be called the traditional working
class. These days, when we are called anything at all, it is White Trash.
Poor working whites, people with only a high school diploma, if that.
Nationally we at least number a quarter of white

U.S.
workers, thirty five million in all by the government’s own shaved-down
numbers.
Nobody knows
for sure in a nation that calls millions of $7-an-hour janitors and marginal
people working “contract labor”, with no insurance or benefits, “independent
businesspersons” and “entrepreneurs”. Small independent business people are,
we are told, “the backbone of America’s economy.” If that is true, then it’s
a sorry assed thing because we are talking here about citizens who bring
down maybe 25-30K a year before taxes. With both spouses working. I told my
freelance janitor friend Gator that he was the backbone of the American
economy; he said he felt more like its #&%!$.

In any case, my people
are not the people in the cubicle next to you at work (though they might
well be cleaning it at nights when you are sleeping.) Mine are not people
complaining about paying off their college loans or who got the best parking
spot at their office campus complex. They are people with different problems
entirely. Mostly related to truck payments. Or people like my old tree
service boss Danny, who cut off a finger working with a chain saw, wrapped
it in a McDonald’s foil wrapper and ran to the hospital to get it sewn back
on. Or any of the thousands of people in this town who smash apples into
apple sauce or boil them into vinegar at National Fruit Products, performing
soul grinding shift work year after year with no opportunity to ever
be promoted, or obtaining health care at all. Just the seasonal layoff when
all the apples are smashed and the millions of gallons of vinegar bottled.
Working class people going nowhere in a town that smells like vinegar.

One of the problems we
working class Southerners have is that educated progressive Americans see us
as a bunch of obese, heavily armed nose pickers. This problem is compounded
by the fact that so many of us are pretty much that. Call it the
“Dumb-crackers-lordee-I-reckon” syndrome. But liberals err in thinking this
armed and drunken laboring species is an exclusively Southern breed. No
matter where you live in this nation you will find
us. We are the folks in front of you at the Wal-Mart checkout lugging a case
of motor oil while having nicotine fits. But even in such democratic
venues as shopping, our encounters are limited because we do not buy
designer beer and you do not buy ammo or motor oil by the case.

 

And if we aren’t in
the checkout line then we are probably waiting on you as clerks. With our
bright red regulated vests and nametags we do not look poor or desperate.
But I can tell you that the smiling, wise old guy in the orange vest in the
plumbing department of the local Home Depot, Roy, the one who knows
everything there ever was to know about plumbing, is limping around on bad
knees with two bone grafted discs from a life as a construction laborer, and
at age 67 is working solely so he can have health insurance. Not for
insurance from Home Depot mind you, but so his entire paycheck can go to
cover the private insurance he must have if he doesn’t want to lose the
rundown bungalow he and his wife bought right after the Korean War to
medical bills. The one that is now in such a bad neighborhood only the
slumlords who dominate our city council ever make an offer, and even then
not much. He’s been losing ground for 25 years.  Not that any of the tanned
middle class suburban customers here or anywhere else give a good goddam.
This is solidly red state neo-con Virginia, where people have a ready
explanation for Roy’s condition in life:  As Jimbo the newsstand owner here
says, “They are losers who cannot cut it in the greatest society on earth.
Darwin was right. Gandhi was wrong. Tough #&%!$!” This is the same guy who
once advised me to “Always kick a man when he is down; it gives him
incentive to get up.” I sometimes think it was the meanest thing in hell
that made America’s little working class towns such as Winchester.

 

Paw, am I a paradox?

To be poor and
white is a paradox in America. Whites, especially white males, are supposed
to have an advantage they exploit mercilessly. Yet most of the poor people
in the United States are white (51%) outnumbering blacks two to one and all
other minority poverty groups combined. America is permeated with cultural
myths about white skin’s association with power, education and opportunity.
Capitalist society teaches that we all get what we deserve, so if a white
man does not succeed, it can only be due to laziness. But just like black
and Latino ghetto dwellers, poor laboring whites live within a dead end
social construction that all but guarantees failure. If your high school
dropout daddy busted his ass for small bucks and never read a book in his
life and your mama was a textile mill worker, chances are you are not
going to be recruited by Yale Skull and Bones and grow up to be president of
the United States, regardless of our national mythology to that effect. You
are going to be pulling an eight-buck-an-hour shift work someplace and
praying for enough overtime to make the heating bill. A worker. 

The political left
once supported these workers, stood on the lines taking its beatings at the
plant gates alongside them. Now, comfortably ensconced in the middle class,
the American left sees the same working whites as warmongering bigots, happy
pawns of the empire. That is writing working folks off too cheaply, and it
begs the question of how they came to be that way -- if they truly are. To
cast them as a source of our deep national political problems is
ridiculous.  They are a symptom of the problems, and they may be making it
worse because they are easily manipulated, or because they cannot tell an
original idea from a beer fart. But they are not the root cause by any
means. The left should take its cues from Malcolm X, who understood the need
to educate and inform the entire African-American society before tackling
the goal of unity. Same goes for white crackers. Nobody said it would be
easy.

 

Don’t laugh, you’re
next!

 

Middle class liberals,
or affluent conservatives for that matter, are hard put to understand poor
white working class culture. With our guns, God and coarse noisy aesthetic,
(let’s face it, NASCAR and Shania Twain?) we look like a lower species, a
beery subset of some sort. The truth is that poor white working culture is
not a subset of any other American class. It does not operate below the
middle and upper classes, but parallel to them. Just as there are few ways
out of it, there are few ways in. Its inhabitants are born here. The
educated left cannot easily get inside. When it comes to access, liberal
social academics are camels passing through the needle’s eye, though I’ve
never met one who would admit it, or even knew that observing is not
necessarily understanding. Consequently we find many books/studies focusing
on ethnic minorities, but few credible ones about our defiant native
homegrown poor. To my mind, it is impossible to be tenured and have street
cred, but then I am just a prejudiced redneck prick from Winchester,
Virginia, otherwise referred to as “Dickville”.

 

Yet this place from
which and about which I write could be any of thousands of communities
across the U.S. It is a parallel world created by an American system where
caste and self-identity are determined by what one consumes, or cannot
afford to consume, education and of course, the class into which one is
born. Like most things American, it was about money from the get-go. The
difference is that some of us have known this truth from birth and on brutal
terms. For instance, few middle class Americans today ever sold newspapers
on the street corner at age twelve to pay for school clothes or carried coal
to a dirty living room stove all winter. I did both. They never sat down to
a dinner of fried baloney and coffee after cold hours on the street corner.
If this sounds like some Depression era sob story, let me say that it was in
1959-62. And right now I can find a hundred people in my neighborhood who
did the same, or some kids still doing it (often Latino these days). My
point being that there are and always have been a helluva lot of us
know-nothing laboring sons out here, whether more fortunate Americans
acknowledge our struggles or not. But they should. You see, it’s like this:
When the heartless American system is done reducing us to slobbering beer
soaked zombies in the American labor gulag, your sweet ass is next. 

 

Everybody loves the
Dalai Lama, but nobody loves po’ me!

 

Ain’t no wonder libs
got no street cred. Ain’t no wonder a dope-addicted clown like Limbaugh can
call libs elitists and make it stick. From where we stand, knee-deep in
doctor bills and hoping the local Styrofoam peanut factory doesn’t cut the
second shift, you ARE elite. Educated middle class liberals (and education
is the main distinction between my marginal white people and, say,
you) do not visit our kind of neighborhoods, even in their own towns. They
drink at nicer bars, go to nicer churches and for the most part, live, as we
said earlier, clustered in separate areas of the nation, mainly urban.
Consequently, liberals are much more familiar with the social causes of
immigrants, or even the plight of Tibet, than the bumper crop of homegrown
native working folks who make up towns like Winchester. Liberal America
loves the Dalai Lama but is revolted by life here in the land of the pot gut
and the plumber’s butt. Can’t say as I blame them entirely, but then, that
is why God created beer. To make ordinary life more attractive, or at least
stomachable.

Whatever the case,
helping the working poor does not mean writing another scholarly paper about
them funded by grant money. That is simply taking care of one’s middle class
university educated self. Yet the cause of dick-in-the-dirt poor working
white America is spoken for exclusively by educated middle class people who
grew up on the green suburban lawns of America. However learned and good
intentioned, they are not equipped to grasp the full implications of the new
American labor gulag -- or the old one for that matter. They cannot
understand a career limited to yanking guts out through a chicken’s ass for
the rest of one’s life down at the local poultry plant (assuming it does not
move offshore). Being born working class carries moral and spiritual
implications understood only through experiencing them. It comes back to
street cred.

The Census Bureau
keeps numbers on the working poor. Universities conduct studies and
economists rattle off statistics. If studies and numbers alone could solve
the problem of working poverty, then rip-off check cashing would not be one
of the hottest franchises in the country and Manpower would not be our
largest employer. Yes, and if a bullfrog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass.
Reason and social science are not cutting it, and numbers cannot describe
the soul and character of a people. Those same ones who smell like an
ashtray in the checkout line, devour a carton of Little Debbies at a sitting
and praise Jesus for every goddam wretched little daily non-miracle. (If
that last part does not make sense to you it simply proves my point about
the secular liberal disconnect.)

A good start on
healing this rift might be this: the next time those on the left encounter
these seemingly self-screwing, stubborn, God-obsessed folks, maybe they can
be open to their trials, understand the complexity of their situation, step
forward and say, “Brother can I lend you a hand?”  Surely it would make the
ghosts of Joe Hill, Franklin Roosevelt and Mohandas Gandhi smile.

More crap about values

Before I am asked the
more specific question, “What the #&%!$ do you think middle class liberals
should do then?” I’m gonna answer it. ORGANIZE! Quit voting for that pack of
undead hacks called the Democratic Party and ORGANIZE! Howard Dean is just
another millionaire Yale frat boy. ORGANIZE! Quit kidding yourself that the
Empire will protect professionals and semi-professionals such as you and
ORGANIZE!  Spend time on a Pentecostal church pew or in a blue-collar beer
joint and ORGANIZE! Join the Elks Club and ORGANIZE! Realize that there is
no party whatsoever in the United States that represents anything but
corporate interests and ORGANIZE! Start in your own honky wimp-assed white
bread neighborhood and ORGANIZE! Knock on doors and ORGANIZE! Move heaven
and earth and hearts and minds and ORGANIZE! And if enough people do it, it
will scare the living piss out of the political elite and the corporations
and they will come to club you down like they did in Miami and Seattle. But
at least you will have been among the noble ones when the history is
written.

There now. I’ve got it
out of my system.

Given that every
damned utterance or word published about America these days has to have
political implications and relevancy to the crooked 2004 elections, let’s
talk about the much discussed political anger and “values issues” of
hitherto faceless, self-screwing working class folks. Tell ya what. I have
both prayed and been #&%!$-faced six ways to hell with these people and I am
NOT seeing the much ballyhooed anger about the values most often cited,
such as gun control, abortion or gay marriage. True, these are the issues of
the hard-line Bible thumpers and fundamentalist leadership that has harped
on them for decades. And the politicians love that crap. And apparently so
do the media pundits.

But here in this
particular heartland, once I step away from the fundamentalist, I am simply
not seeing the homophobia so widely proclaimed by the liberal establishment.
Hell, we’ve got three gay guys and at least one lesbian who hang out at my
local redneck tavern and they all are right in there drinking and teasing
and jiving with everyone else. As my hirsute 300-pound friend Pootie says:
“Heck, I have a lot in common with lesbians!” (I would concede however, that
homosexual marriage, however, was just a bit too much for some of the
working class to accept in the 2004 elections. It was the visuals.)

The working class
people in my town are angry, but not especially angry at Queer Eye For
the Straight Guy, or unseen fetuses. I think working class anger is at a
more fundamental level and that it is about this: rank and status as
citizens in our society. I think it is about the daily insult
working class people suffer from employers, government (national, state and
local), and from their more educated fellow Americans, the doctors, lawyers,
journalists, academicians, and others who quietly disdain working people and
their uncultured ways. And I think working class anger is about some other
things too:

It is about the
indignities suffered at the hands of managers and bosses -- being degraded
to a working, faceless production unit in
our glorious new global economy.

It is about being
ignored by the educated classes and the other similar professional,
political and business elites that America does not acknowledge as elites.

It is about one's
priorities being closer to home and more ordinary than those of the powerful
people who determine our lives.

It is about suffering
the everyday lack of human respect from the government, and every other
institutional body except the church.

It is about working at
Wal-Mart or Home Depot or Arby’s wearing a nametag on which you do not even
rate a last name. You are just Melanie or Bobby, there to kiss the manager’s
ass or find another gig.

It is about trying to
live your life the only way you know how because you were raised that way.
But somehow the rules changed under you.

It is about trying to
maintain some semblance of outward dignity to your neighbors, when both you
and the neighbors are living payday to payday, though no one admits it.

It is about media
fabled things you've never seen in your own family: college funds set aside
for the kids, stock portfolios, vacation homes...

It is about the
unacknowledged stress of both spouses working longer, producing more for a
paycheck that has been dwindling in purchasing power since 1973.

Yes, it is
about values. It is about the values we have forsaken as a people -- such as
dignity, education and opportunity for everyone. And it is about the
misdirected anger of the working classes toward those they least understand.
You. And me.

By the way, the
working people I am talking about are not entirely unhappy with life, just
angry to a certain degree at this point (and bound to be angrier when the
Bush regime finally runs the nation’s economy off the cliff). They simply
resist change because for decades change has always spelled something bad --
9/11, terrorism, job outsourcing -- always something bad headed toward
worse.

Arise oh pissy
liberals!

It is one helluva
comment on the American class system that I get paid to speak, write about
and generally expose to liberal groups the existence of some 250 million
working Americans who have been fixing America’s cars and paving its streets
and waiting on its tables from day one. As a noble and decent liberal New
York City book editor told me, “Seen from up here it is as if your people were
some sort of exotic, as if you were from Yemen or something.”

Jeesh!

This is not to berate
educated liberal America -- well, OK, a little. But if liberal America has
been somewhat too smug, my working class brethren have been downright
water-on-the-brain stupid to be misled so easily by the likes of Karl Rove
and the phony piety of George Bush. (And god dammit Pootie, Saddam did NOT
attack the World Trade Center!) However, liberals and working people do need
each other to survive what is surely coming, that thing being delivered to
us by the regime which promised us they would “run this country like a
business.” Oh hell yes they are going to do it. So the left must genuinely
connect face to face with Americans who do not necessarily share all of our
priorities, if it is ever to be relevant again.

Once we begin to look
at the human faces of this declining republic’s many moving parts, the
inexplicable self-screwing working class voter is not so inexplicable after
all. God, gays and guns alone do not explain the conservative populism of
the 2004 elections. College educated liberals and blue-collar working people
need to start separating substantive policy issues from the symbolic ones.
Fight on the substance, the real ground zero stuff that ordinary working
people can feel and see -- make real pledges about real things. Like
absolutely guaranteed health care and a decent living wage. And mean it and
deliver it.

Who ho! It ain’t gonna
be easy, because poor working class Americans, like the rest of us, have
become fearful, numb, authority worshipping fools reluctant to give up the
mindless heroin of cheap consumerism…just like you…just like me. They’ll
never come to us, so we must go to them. Which means working the churches
and the wards and the watering holes, the Kiwanis Pancake Breakfasts, our
workplaces, and lo! Even the beeriest underbelly of America … where nice
liberal middle class people do not let their kids go for fear it will damage
their precious little SAT scores. Again, nobody said it would be easy.

Brotherhood.
Solidarity. Compassion. Too idealistic? Futile? Maybe. But if these are not
worthy goals, then nothing is.

Delivering on all this
in a peaceful orderly fashion will be a #&%!$. So hard in fact that I do not
much intend to participate. #&%!$ it. I’ve wanted an out and outright armed
revolution ever since the November elections. But that’s another matter and
the guy listening in from Homeland Security right now can go take a flying
#&%!$. Write to me in Gitmo, y’all! Just address it to “Joe from Yemen.”

Joe
Bageant is
a magazine editor and writer living in Winchester Virginia. He may be
contacted at:

bageantjb@netscape.net. Copyright
© 2005 by Joe Bageant.

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