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February 07, 2010
If only class war had remained a Marxist meme
To what class should Barack Obama be assigned? That is not an easy question to answer, because while it's clear that he is now at the top of the political and "intellectual" ruling class elite, his background cannot easily be characterized in ordinary class terms as we understand them (or, as we once understood them). To call his background "working class" would be dishonest, because he lacks the trappings of that. Much as he wants and pretends to have them. He certainly was not rich, but neither was he poor. That would place him in the "middle class" except that doesn't have quite the right ring to it -- because classes in this country are not defined solely in economic terms. Thus, if a guy who works a blue collar job for a living has a Ph.D. in History or Public Policy, it seems less than honest to refer to him as "working class." I have met many people in the San Francisco Bay Area who work with their hands despite advanced degrees. Cab drivers with Ph.D's are considered part of the Bay Area charm. Gay guys with genius IQs (smart enough to contribute great things to any number of fields) can be found working in "stereotypical" careers as hairdressers. Not that this should come as a surprise; one of the smartest guys I ever knew did nothing with his life but have sex and collect comic books. Yet it would never have occurred to me to assign him to the category of "lower class" -- much less "the poor." The old "upper class" that used to exist when I was a child has become largely a joke. They're still there, they still have old family names and inherited money, but forget about people looking up to them, them setting an example for the middle class, or any of that "noblesse oblige" stuff. They just sit on their money and hide from the world, hoping to avoid attention, and hoping they'll be left alone. The middle class is still quite large, but they are now so culturally diverse that it is misleading to use that term to define them as a cultural group. Maybe "culturally diverse" is the wrong term, because within that group we call the middle class, there are enormous, bitter cultural divides. Silly little things of the sort I laugh at -- like condoms and sex ed in the schools and whether the boy scouts should allow gays -- have become cultural battlefields. People hate each other over them, and they provide a perfect opportunity for one "side" to look down on the other. Even religion isn't religion anymore, but another battleground. Stuff that was once a fairly straightforward and non-controversial part of a normal education has been politicized. Evolution is routinely attacked as a form of "political correctness." Little wonder, because the parents who want condoms on bananas in class and gays in the Boy Scouts often enjoy baiting people so they can feel superior, and the people they bait bait back. So, while I don't know what class is anymore and cannot define it, I see class war everywhere. It frequently takes the form of "the elites" versus "us regular people." Part of what we call the American Dream involved class mobility. These days, I pity those who moved their way out of a genuine working class background into Ivy League degrees only to find that they are subject to derision. While this derision might not be as severe as it would if they were inner city welfare blacks caught "acting white," populism -- like most isms -- tends to work that way. I've said this before and I am sure I'll say it again. It really shouldn't matter where someone went to school or how much (or how little) money that person had, or whether he -- and more importantly his father before him -- worked with his hands. But matter it does -- to the people on both sides who fight these class wars. I find it refreshing that Sarah Palin is a down-to-earth real person, and not an Ivy League snot. I can't stand the fact that a degree from Harvard conveys a quasi divine right to tell people what to do and how to live their lives, and I like the fact that Sarah Palin very definitely does not want to do that. However, if I thought she did want to run people's lives, where she went to college would be a secondary issue. Similarly, if a hands-off libertarian type had gone to Harvard, I'd be be very quick to forgive. These things should not matter. Just as an Ivy League education should convey no right to rule, unless we're going to use a neo-Maoist litmus test, neither should the lack thereof.Easy for me to say, isn't it? I fled the Ivy League. Broke my mom's heart by choosing Berkeley over Penn and Princeton. I feel no duty to any class, and I wish class war would disappear. Perhaps I am a naive idealist, but as far as I'm concerned, class war is a Marxist meme, and you don't fight Marxist memes by imitating them, any more than you fight racism with racism. Wow, how did this get started? I'm on the verge of denouncing conservative Marxism or Marxist conservatism, when all I wanted to do was say something about Barack Obama's elusive "class issues" in light of this poignant piece by Sean Kinsell. For a little class background, Sean happens to hail from the "real" working class. His father wasn't a factory worker with a Ph.D. but the real thing. Unlike me, Sean did not condescendingly flee from something that was in his "blood"; he saw the Ivy League as something to aspire to, and he dislike the unthinking attacks on everything Ivy League: ...a lot of actual working-class people tend to perceive "public service" positions like his (Obama's) as out-of-touch condescension, geared less toward helping the disadvantaged to clear a path toward achieving their own goals than toward making the public servant feel good about his own magnanimity. It's the modern version of the manor-house-ladies-visiting-food-and-moral-hectoring-on-the-cottage-dwellers routine.Sean sees Obama as an insecure poseur, and thinks that he should try being honest about his background: It never occurred to me in high school that I wouldn't be applying to Ivies like my more comfortably-off friends. (I have my parents to thank for that, BTW. They would have been perfectly justified in informing me that it was my responsibility to work my way through college. Instead, they took out parent loans so I could spend four years daydreaming about Japanese literature for a Penn degree.) I go back to my hometown, and much as I love spending time with my parents and other relatives, I'm an outsider there.He's right about Obama, and if the Just to get my bearings, I thought I'd look again at the various litmus tests. Not much has changed. My answers to this test supposedly indicated that I was overall 80% conservative and 20% liberal: Overall: 80% Conservative, 20% LiberalI am unable to locate that test online now, but I suspect the results would be unchanged. I found another test called Typology, and the results indicated that I belong to the "Enterpriser" group. While I probably belong to that "type," I am very suspicious about the way it is described in stereotypical terms that did not represent the answers I gave. I doubt its accuracy and reliability as a serious test. (But it's from the liberal left Pew Center, which has a long history of trying to write libertarianism out of the political equations, and is just as guilty as conservative organizers who relentlessly try to do the same thing.) Then there's the simple old "world's smallest political quiz," which I have taken before, and which continues to show me as solidly libertarian. (How solidly depends on my waffling answers to the question about the military draft; which I would support in the event of a serious war. If I say "NO" to the draft, then my little red dot moves all the way at the top of the chart's libertarian apex.) Lastly, there's the so-called "political compass test" which is long and irritating, and which seems designed from a left-wing perspective, and which made me out to be a borderline authoritarian, which I am not: As to my class, much as I find the subject annoying, I found a rather silly online test which asks about things like the quality of your teeth and what you like for leisure and travel, and here are my results:
More stereotypes. Class issues don't bother me? Really? Were I not too culturally fatigued to care, I would consider the test to be little more than a dissembled and manipulative ad hominem attack. UPDATE: Many thanks for Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all. Comments welcome, agree or disagree. posted by Eric on 02.07.10 at 11:31 AM
Comments
TO: Eric ....you're making this more difficult than it needs to be. He's a Marxist-Leninist Communist. His sole purpose is the destruction of the United States. If you doubt this, please show me any major effort he has attempted that has been 'good' for US. Regards, Chuck(le) Chuck Pelto · February 8, 2010 10:24 AM "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." A. Einstein. Please, Obama is a typical black leftist product of an affirmative action ivy league education. Not smart, but presents well. "Clean and articulate", J Biden. "The Magic Negro", LA Times. Obama is what happens when an affirmative action ivy league education meets Chicago thug politics with madison ave training. Obama thinks special treatment is accomplishment. EconRob · February 8, 2010 10:44 AM To be a conservative, you have to acknowledge, at least respect, an ever more irritating litany of memes and conspiracy theories, and you have to denounce "elitism," "intellectualism," "secularism," "RINOism" and all things Ivy League. If you believe that caricature, you're a rather unimaginative liberal class-warrior. Insufficiently Sensitive · February 8, 2010 10:51 AM i think Stalin established a category called "rootless cosmopolitans". they weren't as high on the list as counter revolutionaries or kulaks, but he got to them eventually. attackcartoons · February 8, 2010 10:55 AM Affirmative action has completely destroyed the meaning of an ivy league "education". The typical Asian is a genius. The typical black could not get into a state college on merit. Check out mychoices.net! Lester · February 8, 2010 10:58 AM yet I am not a conservative and I get a bit tired of the assumption that I am supposed to get behind what is called "conservatism," because, you know, with ideologues, it isn't enough to sincerely oppose statism and believe in the Constitution. That in a nutshell sums up my personal philosophy. I'm not a conservative, though I agree with some of the core political beliefs. On the other hand I'm most certainly not a liberal. At best I describe myself as a libertarian. Anonymous · February 8, 2010 11:08 AM yet I am not a conservative and I get a bit tired of the assumption that I am supposed to get behind what is called "conservatism," because, you know, with ideologues, it isn't enough to sincerely oppose statism and believe in the Constitution. That in a nutshell sums up my personal philosophy. I'm not a conservative, though I agree with some of the core political beliefs. On the other hand I'm most certainly not a liberal. At best I describe myself as a libertarian. Rich Vail · February 8, 2010 11:08 AM ANTI-MEMIST! I denounce you! richard mcenroe · February 8, 2010 11:31 AM It does get all rather tiresome. "What does it mean to be a man? These days, "What ideology can I espouse that will enable me to sneer at the most people."
toad · February 8, 2010 11:39 AM "Cab drivers with Ph.D's are considered part of the Bay Area charm" Having grown up in the Bay Area, I have to dispute this one. I've never come across a cab driver who had a PhD, even in some really useless "studies" field, and I doubt you have either, though I can believe you've come across cabbies who claim to (particularly if you spent a lot of time around Berkeley). "Gay guys with genius IQs (smart enough to contribute great things to any number of fields) can be found working in "stereotypical" careers as hairdressers" There's a bit of divergence between the lower and upper ends of that business, and you're probably not talking about people who work at Supercuts (at least not for long). A lot of hairdressers spill more money than the average PhD makes. "one of the smartest guys I ever knew did nothing with his life but have sex and collect comic books" Don't confuse Mensa members who are really good at going to school and Trivial Pursuit but lack any useful life skills with smart people. J · February 8, 2010 11:45 AM "Class" implies more than an economic category, more than ancestral provenance-- character, integrity, a personal ethos governing public morality in terms of "virtue". Maintain standards not iron-clad but honorable, trustworthy in the sense of adherence to principles over and above one's own immediate self-interest: "Bequeath posterity wise learning in good cause, an affirmation of discernment, trust. Who flees fatality pursues not Life." By accident of fate, Marcus Aurelius was born a slave; Lincoln a backwoods rail-splitter; George Washington a Virginia planter. Yet all were paragons of Class, exemplars of the Stoic virtues expounded by Cicero, Epictetus, and Seneca. Others that come to mind are Churchill, de Gaulle, Einstein... we recommend S.R. Letwin, "The Gentleman in Trollope" (1982), a masterful Easy enough to juxtapose Absolute with Relative in benighted contemporary terms. But Eubie Blake's old jazz-musician trope says it all: "If you have to ask what jazz is, then you'll never know."
John Blake · February 8, 2010 12:12 PM Beautifully written, Eric. Many thanks for this. Jay Manifold · February 8, 2010 12:16 PM "One of the smartest guys I ever knew did nothing with his life but have sex and collect comic books." Wait, you can do both? I've been had! Ted · February 8, 2010 12:36 PM An excellent column that I'm going to print out and give to some people. Jay Manifold: You can do both, just not at the same time (serious back injuries can result). alittlesense · February 8, 2010 01:02 PM Barry Soetoro has been playing the short con all his life -- Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law, Chicago, the Illinois Senate -- and he's succeeded by allowing his marks to treat him like a blank canvass opon which they're allowed to paint their favorite liberal fantasy...a black guy who is somehow BOTH exotic AND just like them. And it's always worked because he could pocket the swag and get out of town before each set of marks figured him out. Trouble is, now he's in over his head, the con is a bust, and the marks are onto him. And there's no where left to run... Uh, Clem · February 8, 2010 01:09 PM Barry Soetoro has been playing the short con all his life -- Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law, Chicago, the Illinois Senate -- and he's succeeded by allowing his marks to treat him like a blank canvas opon which they're allowed to paint their favorite liberal fantasy...a black guy who is somehow BOTH exotic AND just like them. And it's always worked; each time, he's been able to pocket the swag and get out of town before his marks figured him out. Trouble is, now he's in over his head, the con is a bust, and the marks are onto him. And there's no place left to run... Uh, Clem · February 8, 2010 01:11 PM "One of the smartest guys I ever knew did nothing with his life but have sex and collect comic books." QED. If he can successfully get through life doing nothing but the two things he most enjoys (and to top it, two things generally considered inversely correlated), he must be plenty smart. I'd ask him for advice, but he's probably to smart to waste time on the likes of me. Andre · February 8, 2010 01:15 PM "To" smart? Maybe he can offer me spelling advice. Andre · February 8, 2010 01:16 PM The issue is not class, but of the technocratic pretensions of progressivism. Leif · February 8, 2010 01:28 PM Obama's "class membership" is easy: he is an /intelligent/ (hard "G"), a member of the intelligentsia. Richard Pipes defined an /intelligent/ as someone who was not only well-educated, but who had an "oppositional view of the Old Regime". In his own example, two siblings might have the same upbringing, the same education, the same connections in society: but if one went into the Imperial Civil Service and the other dropped out and hung around with anarchists and such, only the latter was an /intelligent/. David · February 8, 2010 01:29 PM (Here via Instapundit, by the way.) Surely Paul Fussell has already taxonomized this? Mr. Obama wishes very much to be Class X. Markham S. Pyle · February 8, 2010 01:36 PM Markham, Fussell was careful to call it "Category X," because its members had escaped their classes. You bring up a useful way of looking at these things, though: in Fussell's terms, I think people want to take Obama as a high prole when he was actually middle. (Sarah Palin gets that sort of thing a lot, too.) Sean Kinsell · February 8, 2010 01:49 PM J: Fair enough, but it's also a bad idea to assume that people only choose underachieving lives out of incompetence rather than preference. Sean Kinsell · February 8, 2010 01:53 PM TO: Sean Kinsell & J Fair enough, but it's also a bad idea to assume that people only choose underachieving lives out of incompetence rather than preference. -- Sean Kinsell I recall one general meeting of a local chapter of Mensa where they had an attorney talking about some legal issue or other. As with most such gatherings, there's usually at least ONE person who enjoys taking pot-shots at the speaker. And this meeting was no exception. The attorney got a bit testy and commented, "If you're so smart, why aren't you RICH?" At which point several of the attending members replied, "Because we've got more personal integrity than some shyster lawyer." The speaker left.... Regards, Chuck(le) Chuck Pelto · February 8, 2010 02:35 PM The one question that stumped me was... You'd like to go on vacation in? None of the places really appealed to me. What about the beach or a national park or Alaska? There's much more to see than Disney or Paris. Roux · February 8, 2010 02:49 PM Diligence, luck, and a good plan all rank higher than intelligence to a successful life. Wisdom ranks higher than any of them. There is a definite element of 'If the Left does it, the Right has to follow'. There were people who blamed the US for the Arms Race. But if the US had not fought back, the Soviets would have simply ran over us. I think the solution is turn the other cheek. The answer is not to stop fighting the class war, but to render it irrelevant. Some of your post is good, and some is typical Libertarian complaint. 'Those conservatives are mean about not letting me into their club even tho' I think they're kinda stupid'. I'm a Conservative. You think some things I worry about are laughable. Fine. I think some of your positions are simplistic. Most of the time we agree, but when we don't, we don't. I'm not going to toss my views aside just so you can turn the Conservatives into Libertarians. Eric R. Ashley · February 8, 2010 02:59 PM And oh yes, another part to the Left-Right "I'm smarter than you cause I went to Ivy" war....Reagan's line about his plan to deal with the Sovs. "They lose, we win." I propose a plan to destroy the Left. This needs to be the aim of the Right. One aspect of this is to depoliticize much of life. Eric R. Ashley · February 8, 2010 03:10 PM I do think that the class lines have broken down in large measure, especially (as you note) to the extent that middle class means just about nothing specific anymore. RigelDog · February 8, 2010 03:23 PM "These days, I pity those who moved their way out of a genuine working class background into Ivy League degrees only to find that they are subject to derision." Did you have someone in mind here? I'm on the margins of academia, and in academia no one with an Ivy League degree is subject to derision. They are all worshiped. Those of us without such degrees get stomped on. JFP · February 8, 2010 03:57 PM @alittlesense: Actually, that was "Ted"'s comment. Though something of the sort occurred to me as well ... Jay Manifold · February 8, 2010 05:08 PM Obama's class status? Milovan Djilas has the answer. Obama and most of his pals are memebers of the American version of Djilas' New Class. These are the people who run a socialist state and, for all practical purposes, own the assets of such a society. The "progressives" (that is actually reactionaries) have not quite got to the end of the process yet, here in the US of A, but they are working hard on it. Seizing one-sixth of the economy thorugh nationalizing health care is just one step. They also have nationalized part of the automobile industry and already are starting to drive their private sector competitors out of business. Obama is a member of the New Class of government officials, workers in Non-governmental organizations, "Progressive" think tankers, and several other catagories of people. Michael Lonie · February 8, 2010 09:22 PM I am tired of the elite vs regular people angle. This is much more about what are the proper powers of government. This is what animates tea party people and they are right. This is what gets 60% support. The federal government currently, and at great taxpayer expense, does a whole lot of things it shouldn't be doing. Most places also need less state government. There is no doubt we need to reform many things as well. Let's tear the edifice that various (mostly Democratic) Congresses have erected. Let's fix this so we have better financial, better food and drug, better whatever regulation we decide is proper. But let's make it smaller and have fewer government employees. The problem we will always face is that politicians of either party once in office have a hard time making their new jobs less important. We need to make sure the GOP candidates know their mission. Think Big · February 8, 2010 09:57 PM Those quizzes fail partly because they focus so much on freedom for gay people. The most statist and socialist people I know are all gay. This kind of boggles my mind, because you'd think after living an entire life where others are stifling and restricting you, that you would believe in freedom, but no. They certainly want same sex marriage, but that's the only freedom they believe in, because they think it's ok to "protect people from themselves". When I try to point out that's what the social conservatives want as well, but it falls on deaf ears. Apparently it's ok to control others and hold them down for the "common good" for things you don't care about or support, but not for things you don't. I don't know, the older I get the more the statists and technocrats piss me off. :) plutosdad · February 9, 2010 10:43 AM Hmm that 3rd paragraph kind of got away from me. plutosdad · February 9, 2010 10:44 AM "Mr. Obama wishes very much to be Class X." While we want him to be ex-. Andre · February 9, 2010 11:46 AM John Blake: "Marcus Aurelius was born a slave..." Umm, nonsense. He was born a wealthy patrician. His father, who died when he was three, had served as praetor; his grandfather, who raised him, was consul three times; his uncle had been consul; his aunt was the consort of Emperor Antoninus Pius, his predecessor. ES: See this post by Charles Murray. Short version: per data from the General Social Survey, from 1973 to 2008, all segments of the white American population moved from center to slightly right of center, except Intellectual Upper, which moved well to the left. "Class" is today more marked by educational lineage and "style" than by wealth, ancestry, or religion. Note that as of today, the Supreme Court has six Catholics, two Jews, a black, two Italian-Americans, and a Hispanic - and eight Ivy League law school grads, including all of the above. And no, this is not "traditional" - no Ivy Leaguer sat on the Court till 1888, and only 30 IL appointments have ever been made; but no non-IL grad has been apppointed since 1981. Rich Rostrom · February 9, 2010 03:56 PM BO, and many of the media and governmental elite, are what I would call our mandarins. In imperial China, a mandarin was a bureaucrat. From the 6th through the 19th centuries, they were selected through the imperial examination system. The examinations were nation wide and covered the "Five Studies": military strategy, civil law, revenue and taxation, agriculture and geography, and the Confucian classics. Theoretically, any male adult in China, regardless of his wealth or social status, could become a high-ranking government official by passing the imperial examination. In reality, since the process of studying for the examination was time-consuming and costly, most of the candidates came from the land-owning gentry. However, there are many examples of individuals who moved from a low social status to political prominence through success in the imperial examinations. They even had a form of affirmative action. The examination system distributed its prizes according to provincial and prefectural quotas.
Fat Man · February 10, 2010 12:54 AM Post a comment
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In common with other post-modernists, Barack Obama has no class.