Re: the liberal class. I was an Alinsky-style organizer back in the day, something the right likes to hate, even though we were populists. I guess only right-wing populists are acceptable to them. I think this country- both parties- abandoned working class people a long time ago, even though at different times they each give lip service to them. When Trump came on the scene, I thought his supporters were right to be pissed about their opportunities and their future and wrong to think he is in any way the solution.
I think the basic question people ask is: do I have at least the same opportunities and the same quality of life my parents had? And for some segments of the working class, the answer is no.
<b>I think the basic question people ask is: do I have at least the same opportunities and the same quality of life my parents had? And for some segments of the working class, the answer is no.</b>
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but I believe I disagree with this. Maybe it’s just that I tend to see the glass as half full. I realize there are people in dire straits, as always.
From a material point of view, tho. My parents both worked and through much of my youth our family had one vehicle. One of them would get rides when they worked different shifts. I compare this to the present where I believe multi-vehicle homes are absolutely the norm.
So, maybe I’m looking at this from too narrow a perspective. Or too personal. But, the whole talk of nostalgically saying things were better “back in the day” bothers me. It kinda brings Trump’s American carnage talk to mind.
There’s a good book I read recently called “It’s Better Than It Looks” by Gregg Easterbrook. It’s available at the Crandall if you have any interest. Maybe it just fits my Pollyannaish nature, but I found it quite reassuring.
“These times like all times are good ones if we but know what to do with them.” Emerson.
When I was young the campuses and cities were ablaze from protests over the Vietnam war and civil rights. Sometimes literally ablaze. When I got a little older and that war was over and civil rights at least on a path toward justice and John, Bobby and Martin had been eulogized and buried, the fear was from nuclear war and nuclear power plants.
There is a lot of data on wage stagnation; the various Federal Reserves have generated a lot of information on how wages have not kept pace with inflation for decades (with a few sectors being the exception). NYS is better than most states, but the minimum wage for our neighbors next door in PA is $7.25 an hour, which mirrors the Federal minimum wage. If it had kept pace with inflation since 1968, the minimum wage would be more than 3 times that; close to $25 an hour. What hit the working class particularly hard was the erosion of unions. In addition to low wages, we see loss of benefits- no more defined benefit pensions unless you are certain public sector employees or have a super strong union. Health care costs as well have risen for workers. And rising cost of living expense really hits home when you have little discretionary income. Homeownership is out of reach for many young people now. And families, with a low minimum wage, more often than not both parents need to work to cover expenses. The median individual income in Warren County, NY was about $35,000 in 2020; the median household income was about $65,000. By contrast, if minimum wage had kept pace with inflation the past 50 years, the income of a full time minimum wage worker would be over $50,000. With both parents working, you need to factor in child care costs as well, which is also expensive. And if you aspire to send those kids to college, higher education costs have skyrocketed, while financial aid program are considerably weaker than they were in the 70s.
I think it is disturbing how many households with a full time working adult are within federal poverty levels.
Prescient is maybe not the right word for predicting rise in populist anger in the immediate aftermath of the banking/mortgage/housing collapse of 2007-2009. People who are told to invest in their home, put their savings in an IRA that fluctuates with market forces and do everything they’re told is smart, only to find out that the extremely wealthy in a capitalist economic structure find ways to manipulate markets and overnight lose half their paper wealth - or more - are predictably likely to react against “the system” they happily engaged in when they thought they were geniuses as the markets went up.
Fair enough. The notion of the system being rigged, as Trump has declared and which is evidenced by nothing so much as the way his own family's wealth has increased, is surely true. The system is corrupt and few members of Congress stand apart from it. It was birthed in a worse corruption, by white men of property who excluded everyone else from the privileges they enjoyed and endorsed and in many cases participated in chattel slavery. "There is no distinctly native American criminal class, except Congress," as Mark Twain is said to have said.
The system is surely rigged. But that is the way of every system and when we say “the system” we are talking about numerous interrelated systems. The system of the universe is “rigged” by certain fundamental laws of physics that some find “unfair” and invent miraculous and omniscient gods who may intercede on behalf of properly observant acolytes. In return those gods chose some small number of them to rule over all others in their behalf and named them kings, queens leaders of men and chief among the class of priests.
While the leaders of our American Revolution were well placed among the wealthy and powerful they also agreed to a unique form of government rejecting the system of rule by ordained kings. They conceived a system of government instituted not in the stars but among the people whose just powers were derived from consent of the governed. 2 important things: just powers, and consent.
People like to talk about the necessity of political compromise. I think that is wrong. Compromise is bad, but necessary at times. Compromise means that people are willing to accept positions they find anathema in the interests of moving forward as a whole. Think 3/5 Compromise. It was terrible, awful, but agreed under threat of being crushed by a world power that had refined the strategy of divide and conquer to a well operating system. So, yes, there was poison baked into our system from the beginning, but we shouldn’t let that blind us to the great deal of good, of true genius that the wealthy and powerful men of the 18th century conceived as a basis for government: consent of the governed.
Consent, consensus, common ground of and among the governed. It doesn’t take a huge mental leap to conclude that a variety of people who were and are governed were not provided the opportunity of consent to our founding and even as we have over the centuries corrected much of that we still live with negative relics of the former injustice. We work to correct the system.
“But the system is broken,” “the 2 parties are the same,” “the system is rigged by the wealthy.” And they’re all working together, right? Um, except they aren’t.
There is even a name for what has happened to one of the major parties, it has become the Party of No. What happens to a system built on the fundamental idea of consent of the governed when half the people are convinced that their only position when out of power is to say no to every policy put forward by the other side?
So those who are trying to “unrig” the system are stymied by “no,” by lack of willingness to find consensus. In fact, they are told they must “compromise” with those who refuse to accept even that which all find equitable and acceptable. If they do find compromise it becomes evidence that “the 2 major parties are the same,” that “they are a distinct criminal class.”
So I find “compromise” to be unacceptable and people will probably see that as evidence that I am an extremist. The reality is that my position is the absolute center of the idea our nation was founded on, the central position of our system of government. The fulcrum, the jeweled bearing.
Maybe Chris Hedges talks about that stuff. I’ve never read him.
Are DeSantis and his disciples who advocate censorship of Shakespeare the same people who promote reading the Bible devotionally in the public schools and advocate using tax revenue to support private religious schools?
If so, to be consistent, they should consider censoring the Bible (I.e. the story of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah; and Jesus’ encounter with the Eunuch—to name a couple).
I write this from the perspective of a former public school board president, a former county library board member and president, proud grandfather to three openly gay grandsons, and retired clergy person.
I could write more, but it’s time to leave for worship.
Mr. Doolittle, I just love your sharp class awareness and of course, your ever-present human compassion. Fear, hypocrisy, ignorance, stupidity and outright selfishness fuels the sense of superiority and self-righteousness of some people who might otherwise consider themselves self-sufficient. The truth is, much of the services and comforts some of us believe we are entitled to, has been gained through the exploitation of the lowest paid workers, in this country and world-wide. We should be humbled and outraged, while we repeat the mantra "all men (and women, of course) are EQUAL.
The extreme far right *Christian * party wants to erase portions of our population.
Since they can't take them, line them up and gas chamber them, they will stop at no lengths to eradicate their right to exist through *laws* and hate/fear stoking of ignorant bigoted fools. All under the guise of Christianity and fear of what they refuse to comprehend.
Chris Hedges and I got into a bit of a public back and forth snit in a New York Times AMA chat with readers when Chris, an intensely moral and moralistic person, did not take kindly to my polite rebuttal that all fans of a popular rock band I followed were pathetic delusional hippie cultists looking for a substitute for God whose fandom for the ban = religion.
Let me just say that “you must be a lot of fun at parties” is a phase which was invented with Chris Hedges in mind.
Your comment also gets at something I think is a problem for people like Hedges who take moral stands on contemporary issues -- a lack of a sense of perspective, not to mention a sense of humor. That's really what I was trying to get at for pointing out that, for all his disdain of the liberal elite, Hedges enjoys the perks and privileges of a liberal elite life, however he describes himself. I believe this is true of other prominent moralizers, such as Noam Chomsky. They seem to lack any awareness of their own position at the top of the heap and everything they enjoy because of that, while guilt-tripping everyone else in the same boat.
Phish. He had taken it upon himself to write a series of articles declaiming the Fall of the West (how people violate each of the Ten Commandments today)and as a morality play he interviewed a few spun out fans whose life at that point (as with the Dead previously, yes) was following the band.
Phish worship, including seeking transcendence at live music concerts (certainly a source of what a person might interpret as awe, like say, the Grand Canyon) was a violation of the Commandment to take no other Gods before Jehovah, according to Hegdes.
Not that this kind of hippie bashing was original to even Phish already by 2002 when Hedges wrote this bilge; a few years before when the band was first blowing up in the mid-1990s, a documentary film “Bittersweet Motel” made a similar point, conflating the bands’ performances and music with the fact that there was a neo-hippie cohort which followed it and took mind-altering drugs at concerts, danced around and said dopey things on camera.
But Hedges spin was even more extreme: PHISH DESTROYS CHRISTIANITY AND RELIGION ITSELF; Youth seek substitute for God and serious matters of Morality for the false religion of drugs and rock and roll.
The real tell for me was my little part in this when a Times reporter allowed Hedges to respond to readers questions and comments on that Religion =/= Phish piece. I tried to get him to acknowledge that there were some people who enjoyed Phish concerts without treating it as a substitute for religion, etc., just giving the guy a chance to be a bit less dogmatic and condescending. But he wasn’t buying it even a bit, and doubled down in his response.
What A Dick. I agree wholeheartedly with your second comment BTW.
I can't imagine they will ever ban a creepy old man. That actually exemplifies this group.
Re: the liberal class. I was an Alinsky-style organizer back in the day, something the right likes to hate, even though we were populists. I guess only right-wing populists are acceptable to them. I think this country- both parties- abandoned working class people a long time ago, even though at different times they each give lip service to them. When Trump came on the scene, I thought his supporters were right to be pissed about their opportunities and their future and wrong to think he is in any way the solution.
I think the basic question people ask is: do I have at least the same opportunities and the same quality of life my parents had? And for some segments of the working class, the answer is no.
Definitely “no”.
<b>I think the basic question people ask is: do I have at least the same opportunities and the same quality of life my parents had? And for some segments of the working class, the answer is no.</b>
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but I believe I disagree with this. Maybe it’s just that I tend to see the glass as half full. I realize there are people in dire straits, as always.
From a material point of view, tho. My parents both worked and through much of my youth our family had one vehicle. One of them would get rides when they worked different shifts. I compare this to the present where I believe multi-vehicle homes are absolutely the norm.
So, maybe I’m looking at this from too narrow a perspective. Or too personal. But, the whole talk of nostalgically saying things were better “back in the day” bothers me. It kinda brings Trump’s American carnage talk to mind.
There’s a good book I read recently called “It’s Better Than It Looks” by Gregg Easterbrook. It’s available at the Crandall if you have any interest. Maybe it just fits my Pollyannaish nature, but I found it quite reassuring.
“These times like all times are good ones if we but know what to do with them.” Emerson.
When I was young the campuses and cities were ablaze from protests over the Vietnam war and civil rights. Sometimes literally ablaze. When I got a little older and that war was over and civil rights at least on a path toward justice and John, Bobby and Martin had been eulogized and buried, the fear was from nuclear war and nuclear power plants.
“It’s always something.” Gilda.
There is a lot of data on wage stagnation; the various Federal Reserves have generated a lot of information on how wages have not kept pace with inflation for decades (with a few sectors being the exception). NYS is better than most states, but the minimum wage for our neighbors next door in PA is $7.25 an hour, which mirrors the Federal minimum wage. If it had kept pace with inflation since 1968, the minimum wage would be more than 3 times that; close to $25 an hour. What hit the working class particularly hard was the erosion of unions. In addition to low wages, we see loss of benefits- no more defined benefit pensions unless you are certain public sector employees or have a super strong union. Health care costs as well have risen for workers. And rising cost of living expense really hits home when you have little discretionary income. Homeownership is out of reach for many young people now. And families, with a low minimum wage, more often than not both parents need to work to cover expenses. The median individual income in Warren County, NY was about $35,000 in 2020; the median household income was about $65,000. By contrast, if minimum wage had kept pace with inflation the past 50 years, the income of a full time minimum wage worker would be over $50,000. With both parents working, you need to factor in child care costs as well, which is also expensive. And if you aspire to send those kids to college, higher education costs have skyrocketed, while financial aid program are considerably weaker than they were in the 70s.
I think it is disturbing how many households with a full time working adult are within federal poverty levels.
Prescient is maybe not the right word for predicting rise in populist anger in the immediate aftermath of the banking/mortgage/housing collapse of 2007-2009. People who are told to invest in their home, put their savings in an IRA that fluctuates with market forces and do everything they’re told is smart, only to find out that the extremely wealthy in a capitalist economic structure find ways to manipulate markets and overnight lose half their paper wealth - or more - are predictably likely to react against “the system” they happily engaged in when they thought they were geniuses as the markets went up.
A better descriptor might be “duh.”
Fair enough. The notion of the system being rigged, as Trump has declared and which is evidenced by nothing so much as the way his own family's wealth has increased, is surely true. The system is corrupt and few members of Congress stand apart from it. It was birthed in a worse corruption, by white men of property who excluded everyone else from the privileges they enjoyed and endorsed and in many cases participated in chattel slavery. "There is no distinctly native American criminal class, except Congress," as Mark Twain is said to have said.
The system is surely rigged. But that is the way of every system and when we say “the system” we are talking about numerous interrelated systems. The system of the universe is “rigged” by certain fundamental laws of physics that some find “unfair” and invent miraculous and omniscient gods who may intercede on behalf of properly observant acolytes. In return those gods chose some small number of them to rule over all others in their behalf and named them kings, queens leaders of men and chief among the class of priests.
While the leaders of our American Revolution were well placed among the wealthy and powerful they also agreed to a unique form of government rejecting the system of rule by ordained kings. They conceived a system of government instituted not in the stars but among the people whose just powers were derived from consent of the governed. 2 important things: just powers, and consent.
People like to talk about the necessity of political compromise. I think that is wrong. Compromise is bad, but necessary at times. Compromise means that people are willing to accept positions they find anathema in the interests of moving forward as a whole. Think 3/5 Compromise. It was terrible, awful, but agreed under threat of being crushed by a world power that had refined the strategy of divide and conquer to a well operating system. So, yes, there was poison baked into our system from the beginning, but we shouldn’t let that blind us to the great deal of good, of true genius that the wealthy and powerful men of the 18th century conceived as a basis for government: consent of the governed.
Consent, consensus, common ground of and among the governed. It doesn’t take a huge mental leap to conclude that a variety of people who were and are governed were not provided the opportunity of consent to our founding and even as we have over the centuries corrected much of that we still live with negative relics of the former injustice. We work to correct the system.
“But the system is broken,” “the 2 parties are the same,” “the system is rigged by the wealthy.” And they’re all working together, right? Um, except they aren’t.
There is even a name for what has happened to one of the major parties, it has become the Party of No. What happens to a system built on the fundamental idea of consent of the governed when half the people are convinced that their only position when out of power is to say no to every policy put forward by the other side?
So those who are trying to “unrig” the system are stymied by “no,” by lack of willingness to find consensus. In fact, they are told they must “compromise” with those who refuse to accept even that which all find equitable and acceptable. If they do find compromise it becomes evidence that “the 2 major parties are the same,” that “they are a distinct criminal class.”
So I find “compromise” to be unacceptable and people will probably see that as evidence that I am an extremist. The reality is that my position is the absolute center of the idea our nation was founded on, the central position of our system of government. The fulcrum, the jeweled bearing.
Maybe Chris Hedges talks about that stuff. I’ve never read him.
It is a tragedy. They are vulnerable people as is and he just makes it worse. Keep shining your light on these important issues.
Are DeSantis and his disciples who advocate censorship of Shakespeare the same people who promote reading the Bible devotionally in the public schools and advocate using tax revenue to support private religious schools?
If so, to be consistent, they should consider censoring the Bible (I.e. the story of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah; and Jesus’ encounter with the Eunuch—to name a couple).
I write this from the perspective of a former public school board president, a former county library board member and president, proud grandfather to three openly gay grandsons, and retired clergy person.
I could write more, but it’s time to leave for worship.
I believe they only advocate the idea of reading the Bible.
Mr. Doolittle, I just love your sharp class awareness and of course, your ever-present human compassion. Fear, hypocrisy, ignorance, stupidity and outright selfishness fuels the sense of superiority and self-righteousness of some people who might otherwise consider themselves self-sufficient. The truth is, much of the services and comforts some of us believe we are entitled to, has been gained through the exploitation of the lowest paid workers, in this country and world-wide. We should be humbled and outraged, while we repeat the mantra "all men (and women, of course) are EQUAL.
The extreme far right *Christian * party wants to erase portions of our population.
Since they can't take them, line them up and gas chamber them, they will stop at no lengths to eradicate their right to exist through *laws* and hate/fear stoking of ignorant bigoted fools. All under the guise of Christianity and fear of what they refuse to comprehend.
I’m surprised Defendant Trump isn’t running on building gulags since he successfully built that wall with the payment from Mexico. 😉
This is not ok. Any parent of a child who struggles, struggles too. May they make it to the polls and on the school boards.
Chris Hedges and I got into a bit of a public back and forth snit in a New York Times AMA chat with readers when Chris, an intensely moral and moralistic person, did not take kindly to my polite rebuttal that all fans of a popular rock band I followed were pathetic delusional hippie cultists looking for a substitute for God whose fandom for the ban = religion.
Let me just say that “you must be a lot of fun at parties” is a phase which was invented with Chris Hedges in mind.
That's very funny. And let me guess: the Grateful Dead?
Your comment also gets at something I think is a problem for people like Hedges who take moral stands on contemporary issues -- a lack of a sense of perspective, not to mention a sense of humor. That's really what I was trying to get at for pointing out that, for all his disdain of the liberal elite, Hedges enjoys the perks and privileges of a liberal elite life, however he describes himself. I believe this is true of other prominent moralizers, such as Noam Chomsky. They seem to lack any awareness of their own position at the top of the heap and everything they enjoy because of that, while guilt-tripping everyone else in the same boat.
Lots of virtue signaling, I agree.
Phish. He had taken it upon himself to write a series of articles declaiming the Fall of the West (how people violate each of the Ten Commandments today)and as a morality play he interviewed a few spun out fans whose life at that point (as with the Dead previously, yes) was following the band.
Phish worship, including seeking transcendence at live music concerts (certainly a source of what a person might interpret as awe, like say, the Grand Canyon) was a violation of the Commandment to take no other Gods before Jehovah, according to Hegdes.
Not that this kind of hippie bashing was original to even Phish already by 2002 when Hedges wrote this bilge; a few years before when the band was first blowing up in the mid-1990s, a documentary film “Bittersweet Motel” made a similar point, conflating the bands’ performances and music with the fact that there was a neo-hippie cohort which followed it and took mind-altering drugs at concerts, danced around and said dopey things on camera.
But Hedges spin was even more extreme: PHISH DESTROYS CHRISTIANITY AND RELIGION ITSELF; Youth seek substitute for God and serious matters of Morality for the false religion of drugs and rock and roll.
The real tell for me was my little part in this when a Times reporter allowed Hedges to respond to readers questions and comments on that Religion =/= Phish piece. I tried to get him to acknowledge that there were some people who enjoyed Phish concerts without treating it as a substitute for religion, etc., just giving the guy a chance to be a bit less dogmatic and condescending. But he wasn’t buying it even a bit, and doubled down in his response.
What A Dick. I agree wholeheartedly with your second comment BTW.
Original article: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/16/nyregion/with-idols-on-high-a-fan-falls-a-quest-for-rapture-leads-a-phish-head-astray.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Unfortunately, the live event transcript where Chris blew my rebuttal off is shown on the Times archive website, but the link is dead.