Walter Benn Michaels explores the curious modern sociopolitical concept of "respect," which is being appropriated by both left and right as a convenient diversion from dealing with the increasing, crushing imbalance of class and wealth in society.

While noting -- and duly lauding -- the (relative) progress made against endemic racism, homophobia and misogyny, Michaels points out this progress, such as it is, has come because it does not threaten the overweening power and privilege of the elite. In fact, some maligned, repressed and persecuted groups of citizens are falling even farther behind: the poor, and those once called the working class.

...it would be a mistake to think that because the US is a less racist, sexist and homophobic society, it is a more equal society. In fact, in certain crucial ways it is more unequal than it was 40 years ago. No group dedicated to ending economic inequality would be thinking today about declaring victory and going home. In 1969, the top quintile of American wage-earners made 43 per cent of all the money earned in the US; the bottom quintile made 4.1 per cent. In 2007, the top quintile made 49.7 per cent; the bottom quintile 3.4. And while this inequality is both raced and gendered, it’s less so than you might think. White people, for example, make up about 70 per cent of the US population, and 62 per cent of those are in the bottom quintile. Progress in fighting racism hasn’t done them any good; it hasn’t even been designed to do them any good. More generally, even if we succeeded completely in eliminating the effects of racism and sexism, we would not thereby have made any progress towards economic equality.

True; and one perhaps not irrelevant fact that leaps to mind here is that Martin Luther King Jr. was not assassinated until he started talking about economic injustice faced by all citizens in a militarized state waging unjust wars around the world. Michaels continues:

An obvious question, then, is how we are to understand the fact that we’ve made so much progress in some areas while going backwards in others. And an almost equally obvious answer is that the areas in which we’ve made progress have been those which are in fundamental accord with the deepest values of neoliberalism, and the one where we haven’t isn’t. We can put the point more directly by observing that increasing tolerance of economic inequality and increasing intolerance of racism, sexism and homophobia – of discrimination as such – are fundamental characteristics of neoliberalism. Hence the extraordinary advances in the battle against discrimination, and hence also its limits as a contribution to any left-wing politics. The increased inequalities of neoliberalism were not caused by racism and sexism and won’t be cured by – they aren’t even addressed by – anti-racism or anti-sexism.

My point is not that anti-racism and anti-sexism are not good things. It is rather that they currently have nothing to do with left-wing politics, and that, insofar as they function as a substitute for it, can be a bad thing. American universities are exemplary here: they are less racist and sexist than they were 40 years ago and at the same time more elitist. The one serves as an alibi for the other: when you ask them for more equality, what they give you is more diversity. The neoliberal heart leaps up at the sound of glass ceilings shattering and at the sight of doctors, lawyers and professors of colour taking their place in the upper middle class. Whence the many corporations which pursue diversity almost as enthusiastically as they pursue profits, and proclaim over and over again not only that the two are compatible but that they have a causal connection – that diversity is good for business. But a diversified elite is not made any the less elite by its diversity and, as a response to the demand for equality, far from being left-wing politics, it is right-wing politics.

Here is another key problem of our day: almost everything that is called "left-wing politics" is actually a fairly brutal form of right-wing politics. Hence, all the nutty criticism of Barack Obama as some kind of "far-left" socialist, when he is of course an ardent, open champion of our financial and militarist elites. And the so-called "leftist" government of New Labour in the UK is another glaring example; this "party of the working class" has gone where even Maggie Thatcher feared to tread to coddling big business, waging aggressive war, and building up a police state-style apparatus of authoritarian power. For 30 years now, in both the US and UK, there has been nothing remotely resembling anything that could be called "left-wing politics," if "left-wing" can be understood as a concern for a more just and equal society; we have had -- and still have -- only far-right and center-right politics. Back to Michaels:

The recent furore over the arrest for ‘disorderly conduct’ of Henry Louis Gates helps make this clear. Gates, as one of his Harvard colleagues said, is ‘a famous, wealthy and important black man’, a point Gates himself tried to make to the arresting officer – the way he put it was: ‘You don’t know who you’re messing with.’ But, despite the helpful hint, the cop failed to recognise an essential truth about neoliberal America: it’s no longer enough to kowtow to rich white people; now you have to kowtow to rich black people too. The problem, as a sympathetic writer in the Guardian put it, is that ‘Gates’s race snuffed out his class status,’ or as Gates said to the New York Times, ‘I can’t wear my Harvard gown everywhere.’ In the bad old days this situation almost never came up – cops could confidently treat all black people, indeed, all people of colour, the way they traditionally treated poor white people. But now that we’ve made some real progress towards integrating our elites, you need to step back and take the time to figure out ‘who you’re messing with’. You need to make sure that nobody’s class status is snuffed out by his race.

The neoliberal ideal is a world where rich people of all races and sexes can happily enjoy their wealth, and where the injustices produced not by discrimination but by exploitation – there are fewer poor people (7 per cent) than black people (9 per cent) at Harvard, and Harvard’s not the worst – are discreetly sent around to the back door. Thus everyone’s outraged that a black professor living on prosperous Ware St (and renting a summer vacation ‘manse’ on Martha’s Vineyard that he ‘jokingly’ calls ‘Tara’) can be treated with disrespect; no one’s all that outraged by the social system that created the gap between Ware St or ‘Tara’ and the places where most Americans live. Everyone’s outraged by the fact that Gates can be treated so badly; nobody by the fact that he and the rest of the top 10 per cent of American wage-earners have been doing so well. Actually, it’s just the opposite. Liberals – especially white liberals – are thrilled by Gates’s success, since it testifies to the legitimacy of their own: racism didn’t make us all this money, we earned it!

Thus the primacy of anti-discrimination not only performs the economic function of making markets more efficient, it also performs the therapeutic function of making those of us who have benefited from those markets sleep better at night.

Micheals then takes on the popular -- if incredibly tepid -- "progressive" reaction to the growing inequalities in the system. There is now a movement decrying -- again, rightly -- the cultural prejudices that the comfortable exhibit more and more openly against the poor. This is particularly acute in the UK, where all are invited to sneer at the "chavs" and their clothes, their accents, their tastes, etc. Now some earnest progressives are fighting back against this prejudice, as evidenced in the collection of essays published by the Runnymede Trust: Who Cares about the White Working Class?

Again, Michaels lauds the sentiment behind the collection: we should treat the mores and cultural expressions of the working class with the same kind of respect we are urged to show toward ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups. But, once again, says Michaels, these sentiments are fine as far as they go -- but they don't get at the heart of the matter:

In the event, however, what Who Cares about the White Working Class? actually provides is less an alternative to neoliberal multiculturalism than an extension and ingenious refinement of it. Those writing in this collection understand the ‘re-emergence of class’ not as a function of the increasing injustice of class... but as a function of the increasing injustice of ‘classism’. What outrages them, in other words, is not the fact of class difference but the ‘scorn’ and ‘contempt’ with which the lower class is treated. ... The focus of her outrage ... is not the fact that some people can afford [luxuries] and others can’t, but that the ones who can are mean to the ones who can’t.

...What left neoliberals want is to offer some ‘positive affirmation for the working classes’. They want us to go beyond race to class, but to do so by treating class as if it were race and to start treating the white working class with the same respect we would, say, the Somalis – giving ‘positive value and meaning to both “workingclassness” and ethnic diversity’. Where right neoliberals want us to condemn the culture of the poor, left neoliberals want us to appreciate it.

The great virtue of this debate is that on both sides inequality gets turned into a stigma. That is, once you start redefining the problem of class difference as the problem of class prejudice – once you complete the transformation of race, gender and class into racism, sexism and classism – you no longer have to worry about the redistribution of wealth. You can just fight over whether poor people should be treated with contempt or respect. And while, in human terms, respect seems the right way to go, politically it’s just as empty as contempt.

This dynamic surely played a part in at least some of the support that Barack Obama received in the last election from "progressives." For in his stated policy positions, Obama offered very little that was "progressive." He was for continuing the War on Terror on Bush's terms, winding down the war in Iraq more or less on the schedule Bush had negotiated, then expanding the war in Afghanistan and extending it into Pakistan. He threw his support behind Bush's plan to bail out Wall Street. He took to the bully pulpit to scold black fathers for their failings, and black people in general for blaming the system for their problems. He made campaign appearances with homophobic preachers, while throwing over his own pastor and long-time friend. He surrounded himself with advisers from Wall Street. He pledged to increase the size and reach and power of the War Machine. And so on and so forth. He was, if anything, well to the right of, say, Bill Clinton in 1992 -- and Bill Clinton in 1992 was the most right-wing Democratic candidate since Woodrow Wilson.

Obama's "progressivism" consisted almost entirely of the symbolism of his mixed-race heritage and personal history. There was very little in his actual policy positions to lead one to believe that he would be -- or wanted to be -- anything other than a dutiful servant of the power structure. But many people voted for him because they wanted to use the symbol of his person to make a statement about-- and a stand against -- racism in American society. Again, this is an understandable and laudable sentiment; who of enlightened mind does not want to take a stand against racism? But this symbolic act was, to use Michael's terms, empty of genuine political content. For as we have seen, Obama's rule has been characterized not by "change," but by a remarkable degree of "continuity" with his predecessor.

But as Michaels notes, race was ever one of the most potent tools for obscuring the harsh imbalance at the heart of American society:

Race, on the other hand, has been a more successful technology of mystification. In the US, one of the great uses of racism was (and is) to induce poor white people to feel a crucial and entirely specious fellowship with rich white people; one of the great uses of anti-racism is to make poor black people feel a crucial and equally specious fellowship with rich black people. Furthermore, in the form of the celebration of ‘identity’ and ‘ethnic diversity’, it seeks to create a bond between poor black people and rich white ones. So the African-American woman who cleans my office is supposed to feel not so bad about the fact that I make almost ten times as much money as she does because she can be confident that I’m not racist or sexist and that I respect her culture ... But, and I acknowledge that this is the thinnest of anecdotal evidence, I somehow doubt she does.

The American elite figured things out a long time ago: you can let people do anything they want, say anything they want, have a wide-open society -- as long as no one seriously threatens to upset the golden applecart of power and privilege.  Or to put it another way, you can have "left-wing politics," "liberal politics," "progressive politics," anything you please -- as long as what you actually practice is "right-wing politics."

We are seeing this dynamic in its rawest state with the health-care "reforms," which have turned into yet another gigantic boondoggle for powerful corporations, despite the clear wishes of a large majority of Americans for something totally different. But it is a current that runs through -- and defines -- the entire political system today.

(Apologies for the earlier mix-up in the quotes.)

Comments (28)

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From This Side of the Pond said:

	3rd block quote repeats the second, needs trimming! on message: i h8 l v. r , grrrr
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August 27, 2009
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Christopher Stahnke said:

Left Lacks Mythology/Ideology The Left in America at least lacks both a mythological (emotional narrative/force) and ideological (intellectual force) basis for its leanings and policy positions at least I can't find any basis for Leftist positions no matter how you define "Left" other than Anarchists and Marxists who in America are a very tiny fraction of the left. One reason for upper and upper-middle class contempt for the poor and uneducated is based on the perceived fact that most of "them" are clearly not interested in education, knowledge or even political consciousness. It's just a fact that most people in the lower classes of whatever ethnic group have accepted popular culture and use it as another drug. They tend to eat the most poisoned food, watch the most poisonous programs and take the most poisonous illegal drugs. That's the reality I see out there. I the white lower classes I note that they'd rather lose massive amounts of money paying for medical care they cannot afford rather than back some form of socialized medicine that would dramatically enhance their lives and that of their children simply because they wish to identify with the tribe led by Limbaugh and the other cast of neo-fascist thugs that dominate Fox and talk radio. How can an upper-middle class leftist get particularly outraged at the plight of these people when so many of them are eating hardily at the opiate dispensed by the oligarchs. No revolutionary consciousness in the proletariat results in no possible action. The left, in my view, must start to take care of its own and assure its own survival and see itself as a class quite apart from mass-culture junkies.

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August 27, 2009
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Magmak1 said:

Send recipe Whatever you are consuming, consume some more of it. Then send the recipes or list of ingredients to others so they can consume it. Is it like that ambrosia we used to cook in jars of fruit? As someone wiser than I recently noted, "The natural aristocracy required to lead the emergent evolution of the human social system is a group of ideas, not a group of persons [or corporations]...it is an aristocratic spirit--a passionate love of excellence that nurtures emergent evolution...a love of excellence is to be distinguished from striving for perfection or righteousness."

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August 27, 2009 | url
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Jenny said:

	... Richard Seymour disagrees with you: http://leninology.blogspot.com...ystem.html
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August 27, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

Excellent. An excellent essay. The truth is that there is no more "left" in American politics -- what the Democrats have done is move far right of center, dragging their supporters with them by pitching everything as an Eternal Death Match of Donkey vs Elephant. So the average American person who considers himself a Democrat focuses more on NOT being a Republican, and less on what it means to be a Democrat. Of course, a focus on what it means to be a Democrat --whenever it's done-- yields the very thing Mr Floyd is talking about here, diversity in place of equality. This is a theme I've been harping on since Obama was nudged ahead of Swillary in the runup to the 2008 election -- people were stoked on Obama's skin color and his bi-racial parentage, which supposedly symbolizes a post-racism America. Never mind that Obama has been a servant of traditionally White Anglo-Saxon Protestant business interests since he finished law school. Please, please, please... never mind that! Please don't even see it or think about it! Nowhere is this ruse of diversity in place of equality more obvious than the Obamanauts who say that it's "racist" to criticize Obama, or to reference how Obama's black-ish skin tone was used as a divisive tool for the 2008 elections -- to gull the "liberals" and "progressives" into thinking they were voting for a shift away from the troggo policies of Bush/Cheney, because Obama is half-Black. Because Obama is half-Black. Think about that. Obama's skin color supposedly stands in for his policies? Not really. But that's how my "liberal" and "progressive" friends saw things and many of them still do see things that way, despite Obama's track record to date showing Bush/Cheney's Third Term in every way. The Americans who consider themselves on "the left" are very far right of center. And they don't even realize it. Delusion, idiocy, ignorance, fantasy... whatever the causes, the end result is the same -- the "liberals" and "progressives" are supporting Bush/Cheney-styled fascism when they continue to support Obama and the Donkey-led Congress. Perhaps in another 25 years, Americans will see this problem for what it is.

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August 27, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

	once again, "Jenny" lies to us Seymour's essay doesn't disagree with Floyd. It's not even about the same thing. Jenny's a fraud. But most who read her, they know this.
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August 27, 2009
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Yankee 30 said:

... The paltry, HOMOGENEOUS, predictable, left to right, political discourse could only be borne of profound insensitivity and/or indifference. The constituency is ignorant, racist, sexually confused and/or repressed and inherently violent. ...but there's still lots of stuff on the shelves. "...like one of those modern day super, mega-markets. They keep getting bigger and bigger and you wonder how there could possibly be so much food and… then you start moving up and down the aisles and you discover that there are entire aisles of nothing but potato chips, deep fried in palm oil. You see multiple aisles of nothing but soft drinks. You see ranks of cold cases stacked with processed foods and you turn over the package to read the ingredients and it’s as if everything is written in German because there are words with over 60 letters in them and you couldn’t begin to pronounce, much less understand them." Les Visible

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August 27, 2009
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Ovid said:

... That analysis, like most "sociopolitical" analysis, is unnecessarily abstract. Just a little history is much more illuminating. After World War II, the United States became an Empire, just as Britain before it had been an Empire. In each instance, that Empire, unlike the American South or even the United States as a whole, was multi-racial. That has big implications. Nobody could ever defend the position that racism is the only evil in the world, or that all evil must take the same form. A multi-racial Empire cannot be driven by the same political slogans and policies as an ethnic Reich. As Sir Oswald Mosley told William Buckley near the end of his life, "if you are running, as we hope to run, a multi-racial empire, you obviously cannot have a racialist policy." http://www.oswaldmosley.com/william-f-buckley-interview.htm (O'neil and anyone else who doesn't know who those people are can use Wikipedia.) When the United States began to replace Britain running the world at the start of the Cold War, the apartheid policies of the United States immediately became a propaganda nightmare for the State Department. Consequently, the government began filing amicus curaie briefs with the federal courts in support of school desegregation. This is examined at some length in Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform by Derrick Bell (Hardcover - April 19, 2004) at 62-66. (You can preview those pages at Google Books.) So, the federal government adopted a racially progressive policy for tactical reasons of power and empire. That should surprise no one. Certainly Harry Truman was capable of sounding awfully racist, and no one would have mistakem Dean Acheson for a civil rights activist. Plus, it should be remembered, the GOP always sensed the unsteadiness of the alliance within the Democratic party of northern liberals and Southern Blue Dog backers of Jim Crow and all-out segregation. Earl Warren was a Republican, and Republicans knew that civil rights would tear the Democratic party apart. For them, that was good. Again, the Machiavellian political calculations have little to do with creating a just society. By the 70s, the old pro-apartheid cultural conservatives had lost the war to preserve a racialist society. In that regard, and only in that regard, that kind of conservative is correct in talking about "the liberal media." It's true enough that racialism by the 1980s lost the war for the popular culture that it had begun to lose with the start of the Cold War battle for the hearts and minds of the bulk of the world's people, who are not whtie. Why in the 1970s and 1980s did racialism lose the culture war? For a reason only slightly different from the Truman Administration's decision to support desegregation in the federal courts in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Racial economic policis result in barriers to trade and restrict capital mobility. The industrialized West, including the U.S., Western Europe, or Japan, has experienced a declining rate of profit in manufacturing since 1970s. Robert Brenner has analyzed this brilliantly in The Economic Consequences of Global Turbulence. Capitalism responded in several ways, including a shift to the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) economic sectors in the US and with increased capital mobility to cheap-labor nations in the Third World, most notably China since the 80s. Racialist movements are useful to the rich and large corporations, because they undermine progressive movements with populist appeals based on resentment and violence, but they ultimately cannot be allowed to succeed, because they are at bottom just as inconsistent with a neoliberal economic order based on free trade and capital mobility as the ethnic policies of Hitler were to the British Empire. The job of intel agencies is of course to manipulate politics in any way possible that advances their agenda. That agenda is to prevent left or progressive movements from endangering the existing neoliberal global economic and political order, and also to prevent right or racialist movements from endangering the existing neoliberal global economic and political order. To date their efforts must be candidly acknowledged as successful, but they are playing with fire. Of course, whether the world burns is not among their greater worries. That's our problem.

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Jimmy Montague said:

There has been no progress The US is just as much a racist nation now as ever. There's just as much gay-bashing, sexist crap going around as ever there was before. Difference is that we've made it a crime, which drives it down below the surface where it festers and rots until one day, like a noxious boil, it bursts and comes back to the surface in the form of mob violence. You will see this happen when -- as we here all predict -- the lid finally comes off and civil disorder replaces law and order on the streets of America. The blacks blame Whitey. Whitey blames Sambo and Pedro. Whitey and Sambo and Pedro all resent governmental intrusions into family matters. I don't hold that any of that stuff is justified. I only argue that it's real, it's present, and one day we all will suffer for it.

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August 27, 2009 | url
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scott douglas said:

	said it myself, many times Social liberalization, whatever it's benefits or ugly hangovers, is a tool of those elites who seek to economically stratify modern western society.
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August 27, 2009
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Jenny said:

	... Sean: I was referring to how Seymour and Floyd interpreted the article.
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August 28, 2009
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Duder said:

Sorry but Lenin's Tomb has it While Chris is essentially correct in his argument that the American "left" is nothing of the sort, Michaels essay on the unimportance of race and racism in contemporary America is utterly misguided and wrong. Michael is proven wrong by his own use of the Gates incident. The white police officer never had to give due to Gates' class position. He never apologized, never faced disciple for his actions, and the press cheerleaded him for his thuggishness. Additionally any look at the state of Black America today and the evils of the prison industrial complex will show racism well and alive in today's America. That public discourse refuses to acknowledge such a brutal reality in favor of triumphing the tiny (and shrinking) Black upper and middle class does not negate such a reality lived by millions of people. Any genuine left resurgence in a future America must have anti-racism side by side with anti-capitalism at its center or fail yet again.

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August 28, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

Duder knows the score. So does Jimmy. Duder: Any genuine left resurgence in a future America must have anti-racism side by side with anti-capitalism at its center or fail yet again. BINGO, baby. BINGO. And anti-racism must be of the type that doesn't do what present "liberals" and "progressives" do -- allow a Black con artist to behave like a fascist, simply because he's Black. The end of racism includes being honest about frauds, crooks and con-men who are not white men. Thus it requires open, honest discussion about Barack Hussein Obama, Eric Holder, Sonia Sotomayor, Susan Rice... the list goes on. Being a "minority" shouldn't mean automatic exaltation, but to most present "liberals" and "progressives," it does... sadly. Duder's also correct on Richard Seymour, a "secret-handshake" pseudo-Marxist whose drivel and doggerel are used for a clubbish atmosphere at his blog. Real serious social organization that yields egalitarian government, that's not on Seymour's agenda. Rather, he's interested in academic-style "socialism" that is not much different from the pseudo-libertarian views of the Mises Institute gang... a desire to wrest political control from one set of crooks and put it in the hands of a different set. Seymour sees less. Not more. Jimmy: You will see this happen when -- as we here all predict -- the lid finally comes off and civil disorder replaces law and order on the streets of America. The blacks blame Whitey. Whitey blames Sambo and Pedro. Whitey and Sambo and Pedro all resent governmental intrusions into family matters. I don't hold that any of that stuff is justified. I only argue that it's real, it's present, and one day we all will suffer for it. Double-bingo, bingo-BANGO! We'd be more down the road toward it NOT happening if it were possible to openly discuss Obama's criminal service to corporate america. As long as it's taboo to do such things as criticize a Black politician like Obama, we're gonna have a bigotry shit-storm. I don't want to take my dirt nap for at least another 45 years, but I hope that this bigotry shit-storm follows my day of dirt napping.

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August 28, 2009
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No One of Consequence said:

There Is No "Left" an aristocratic spirit--a passionate love of excellence (Excessive bullshit clipped.) The “aristocratic spirit” is one of rapine, slaughter, and slavery. Proof of this is found in the written history of the entire human race. This country was founded to ELIMINATE aristocracy; claiming that aristocracies are seriously the best humans (instead of the worst, which is clearly the case0 isn’t just stupid or ahistorical, it’s quite literally anti-American. You’d have to hate the people of the U.S. to love a class of thieves and murderers reveling in undeserved power over others. The “left” is an empty concept anyway. The problem with the “left” formulation is that rightwing ideology is a lie. Rightwing ideology exists purely to get rightwingers stuff and presents neither a coherent philosophy or a logically consistent set of values. It’s just shit that gets human shits what they want. Thus, there is no contradiction when they scream “State’s rights!” on Monday then happily club states with unlawful uses of federal power on Tuesday. The point was to get that power acquired on Tuesday. The “left” then becomes literally everyone who’s left. It’s a bit like a cultist or a member of Scientology (a less-respectable cult than most) claiming that there are two types of people: belivers in his religion and everyone else. This makes for an illogical worldview since the vast majority of humankind isn’t a cultist. So it is with right wing thought. Everyone who isn’t a rightwinger covers nigh-infinite political ground and therefore conradict each other constatntly and therefore can’t be shoehorned into the “left” moniker. There are rightwingers and common people, but not right and left. And yes, neoliberals are rightwingers abusing the term “the left” as well. As for Obama, he’s the worst thing to happen to blacks since Bush. (Yeah, didn’t have to go far there.) His entire candidacy was a straight-up Wall St. marketing ploy and, as anyone could have predicted, his presidency a) increased racist attacks against people of color from white supremacists, b) hurt the socioeconomic status of people of color due to rightwing economic policies and -- adding insult to injury -- c) gave rightwing whites calling themselves liberal political cover. Check out any article in Black Agenda Report -- this was utterly predictable. And, of course, Obama won’t do a goddamn thing to protect minorities from bigoted rightwingers on the ground. The only time he mentions race is when he’s patronizingly telling someone how they need to work harder and take more responsibility for their situation. Oh, if only all other blacks in the U.S. would follow his lead and get down on their knees and bury their faces in the groin of the Daly machine until their slavishness is rewarded with the blessings granted from corrupt party hacks from on high.

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DeanTaylor said:

the "opulent minority" "The 'aristocratic spirit' is one of rapine, slaughter, and slavery.... This country was founded to ELIMINATE aristocracy." Or, so we were told in grade school... "Aristocracy," as a hereditary class, yes. But, as has been observed elsewhere, the "new" aristocracy, i.e., Madison's "opulent minority," (that is, "property" holders--i.e., land and human beings)--rushed to fill the void. As for rapine, (i.e., forcible seizure of another's property), those coerced into fighting the ostensible revolution were not only deprived of their military pay (some were actually executed by Washington for remonstrating against that injustice) their property was seized when they returned from battle for back debts--i.e., debts incurred while they were fighting the new aristocracy's "revolution" (q.v., Shay's Rebellion)! Slaughter: For example, look at the policies--quote-unquote--of Old Hickory towards Native Americans. He looked upon them as a kind of sub-human species--not entirely bestial, but certainly not someone he would want sitting next to him in Church service praying to the Good Lordy Lordy... Slavery: A google search indicates that twelve US Presidents owned human beings--eight of them did so while in office! There existed, in fact, an American aristocracy, and the vast majority of Americans were excluded from that elitist clique. 'Twas ever thus. Who ARE our heroes, then? They have names like John Brown, Thoreau, Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Joe Hill, Dr. King and the Freedom Riders, the students at Cal-Berkeley in the sixties, the Berrigan brothers, Daniel Ellsberg...but NOT the Founding Investors! The American worker as a class was treated more harshly--i.e., in many cases with sheer brutality--in this country than the "authorities" in Europe reacted to the burgeoning labor movement there. For example, in the infamous Ludlow [Colorado] Massacre of 1914, agents of the Rockefeller-owned mine had mounted a machine gun to the body of a touring sedan. The agents' protocol was to wait until the miners returned home after a twelve-hour hell in the mines, fire a few pistol shots into the tent camp--wives and children present--and wait for return fire from the miners. They now had "justification" to open fire with the Colt-Browning weapon-of-choice. http://www.nas.com/~lopresti/ps.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_massacre

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Sean O'Neil said:

Dean nails it Dean: "Aristocracy," as a hereditary class, yes. But, as has been observed elsewhere, the "new" aristocracy, i.e., Madison's "opulent minority," (that is, "property" holders--i.e., land and human beings)--rushed to fill the void. Yep. Look at the shift from the 1776 Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation, to the 1787 Constitution. In that short intervening period of 11 years, a new aristocracy, the one described by Dean above, arose and took the place of the inherited aristocracy. I'm not sure I agree with No One of Consequence's assessment of "the Right" and "everyone else." That sort of nonsense reveals a partisan hatred of Republicans, and nothing more. It's an ahistorical and non-factual perspective, but it's definitely highly emotional and very partisan. Sounds like NOOC was raised from his/her youth to despise "the Right" and "Republicans," like most who identify themselves as "the left" in America do. It's absurd. There are as many decent people who identify with the values of the paleoconservative Republicans as who identify with the supposedly noble liberal Democrats. Decency doesn't divide as Democrat Decent, Republican Repugnant. Never has. Left to their own devices, unchecked, the Democrats would become the same as the hated "conservatives" or "Republicans." One look at Obama shows this. The DLC proves this.

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August 28, 2009
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Ovid said:

... From the Wikipedia entry for Richard Rodriguez, on the question of what it is to be a member of a "minority": London: You've said that it's tough in America to lead an intellectual life outside the universities. Yet you made a very conscious decision to leave academia. Rodriguez: My decision was sparked by affirmative action. There was a point in my life when affirmative action would have meant something to me — when my family was working-class, and we were struggling. But very early in life I became part of the majority culture and now don't think of myself as a minority. Yet the university said I was one. Anybody who has met a real minority — in the economic sense, not the numerical sense — would understand how ridiculous it is to describe a young man who is already at the university, already well into his studies in Italian and English Renaissance literature, as a minority. Affirmative action ignores our society's real minorities — members of the disadvantaged classes, no matter what their race. We have this ludicrous bureaucratic sense that certain racial groups, regardless of class, are minorities. So what happens is those "minorities" at the very top of the ladder get chosen for everything.

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August 28, 2009
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ks said:

	Oh please.... What a ridiculously specious and self-serving statement from Richard Rodriguez. He's just spouting a hybrid "right wing" version of the nonsense that Chris Floyd and Walter Michaels essays brilliantly laid bare above.
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August 28, 2009
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No One of Consequence said:

... I’m in complete agreement, Dean. And I’d add that the rapine issue is particularly notable since, classically, rapine included actual acts of rape (carrying off women) and had the British remained in control, slavery would have ended -- but, barring that, institutionalized rape continued for nearly two centuries. I already call our leadership the aristocracy in conversation with friends, but I do note, with irony, that the Framers were supposed to be acting against the same. They were so certain of their own elite status that they took little action from preventing men like themselves from becoming what they fought against. WRITTEN BY SEAN O'NEIL, AUGUST 28, 2009 I'm not sure I agree with No One of Consequence's assessment of "the Right" and "everyone else." That sort of nonsense reveals a partisan hatred of Republicans, and nothing more. It's an ahistorical and non-factual perspective, but it's definitely highly emotional and very partisan. And that’s bullshit. I’m plenty passionate, but if you believe rightwing ideology contains a consistent philosophy, I’d love to hear it. You’d be the first to posit one in human history. The tenets of rightwing thought consistently change as needed to maximize the personal benefits of their adherents, consciously or otherwise. (The “states rights” meme whithers and dies, for example, as soon as a rightwing president enters office.) “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -- John Kenneth Galbraith It is true that a person need not employ rightwing thought for all issues, but it is very clear that it is not employed as a framework of understanding political reality but as a means of acquisition. Persons attempting to use it as a legitimate framework stumble constantly over its contradictions. Sounds like NOOC was raised from his/her youth to despise "the Right" and "Republicans," like most who identify themselves as "the left" in America do. Actually, most of the people I know identified themselves as conservative growing up. You are employing foolish and utterly baseless assumptions instead of analysis. I expected better on this site. It's absurd. There are as many decent people who identify with the values of the paleoconservative Republicans as who identify with the supposedly noble liberal Democrats. And at no point did I criticize Republicans per se in my post. Sean is so eager to argue with a progressive that he’s willing to invent one and pull arguments out of his ass to quarrel with. Please masturbate in private, Sean: I am not here to help you with your personal issues. As a matter of fact, my views on politics were greatly and positively informed by Kevin Phillips who worked not only for the Republicans but for a president whose policies were directly and viciously poisonous to me and mine. Despite that, Mr. Phillips’ political thought is clearly a different creature entirely than that passing for philosophy among his more famous party-mates and he no longer has a comfortable place in their party. Decency doesn't divide as Democrat Decent, Republican Repugnant. Never has. Left to their own devices, unchecked, the Democrats would become the same as the hated "conservatives" or "Republicans." One look at Obama shows this. The DLC proves this. Oh please. This does nothing but support my point. If Sean had bothered to read my post instead of indulging his fantasy, he’d note that an abolition of the variable notion of what consists of the “Left” (a term beloved of the MSM which happily lumps old and pseudo-Libertarians, anarchists, every kind of liberal, and classical conservative into one big pile, like gentiles or gaijin) has the effect of placing the Democratic party squarely in the rightwing of U.S. politics. Indeed, Clinton was far more effective than Bush Sr. at pushing not only rightwing policies, but fueling rightwing popular movements. Clinton pushed through NAFTA despite every non-rightwing political group under the sun pushing against it. Sean’s assertion that Dems will push right “left to their own devices” is wrong (though less horribly wrong than the things said above). Indeed, the Dems are, both measured historically and against the U.S. population and other Western leaders worldwide -- a rightwing party, and our so-called fellow travellers “on the Left” conveniently forgot the same as soon as our last primary rolled around. But hey, by dismissing all candidates with actual progressive politics as “unelectable,” a practice heartily endorsed by many “lefty” bloggers (not Chris, obviously), the Dems got to have themselves a “historic election” involving a black man and a woman.* How fucking droll. I’m sure that’s a great comfort to those of us dying due to lack of health care. (*The fact that one of the progressives running was a black woman wasn’t notable, apparently. Perhaps that was too much at once.)

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August 29, 2009
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No One of Consequence said:

... Reposted for clarity. No preview button and different commands make for bad posts. WRITTEN BY SEAN O'NEIL, AUGUST 28, 2009 I'm not sure I agree with No One of Consequence's assessment of "the Right" and "everyone else." That sort of nonsense reveals a partisan hatred of Republicans, and nothing more. It's an ahistorical and non-factual perspective, but it's definitely highly emotional and very partisan. And that’s bullshit. I’m plenty passionate, but if you believe rightwing ideology contains a consistent philosophy, I’d love to hear it. You’d be the first to posit one in human history. The tenets of rightwing thought consistently change as needed to maximize the personal benefits of their adherents, consciously or otherwise. (The “states rights” meme whithers and dies, for example, as soon as a rightwing president enters office.) “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -- John Kenneth Galbraith It is true that a person need not employ rightwing thought for all issues, but it is very clear that it is not employed as a framework of understanding political reality but as a means of acquisition. Persons attempting to use it as a legitimate framework stumble constantly over its contradictions. Sounds like NOOC was raised from his/her youth to despise "the Right" and "Republicans," like most who identify themselves as "the left" in America do. Actually, most of the people I know identified themselves as conservative growing up. You are employing foolish and utterly baseless assumptions instead of analysis. I expected better on this site. It's absurd. There are as many decent people who identify with the values of the paleoconservative Republicans as who identify with the supposedly noble liberal Democrats. And at no point did I criticize Republicans per se in my post. Sean is so eager to argue with a progressive that he’s willing to invent one and pull arguments out of his ass to quarrel with. Please masturbate in private, Sean: I am not here to help you with your personal issues. As a matter of fact, my views on politics were greatly and positively informed by Kevin Phillips who worked not only for the Republicans but for a president whose policies were directly and viciously poisonous to me and mine. Despite that, Mr. Phillips’ political thought is clearly a different creature entirely than that passing for philosophy among his more famous party-mates and he no longer has a comfortable place in their party. Decency doesn't divide as Democrat Decent, Republican Repugnant. Never has. Left to their own devices, unchecked, the Democrats would become the same as the hated "conservatives" or "Republicans." One look at Obama shows this. The DLC proves this. Oh please. This does nothing but support my point. If Sean had bothered to read my post instead of indulging his fantasy, he’d note that an abolition of the variable notion of what consists of the “Left” (a term beloved of the MSM which happily lumps old and pseudo-Libertarians, anarchists, every kind of liberal, and classical conservative into one big pile, like gentiles or gaijin) has the effect of placing the Democratic party squarely in the rightwing of U.S. politics. Indeed, Clinton was far more effective than Bush Sr. at pushing not only rightwing policies, but fueling rightwing popular movements. Clinton pushed through NAFTA despite every non-rightwing political group under the sun pushing against it. Sean’s assertion that Dems will push right “left to their own devices” is wrong (though less horribly wrong than the things said above). Indeed, the Dems are, both measured historically and against the U.S. population and other Western leaders worldwide -- a rightwing party, and our so-called fellow travellers “on the Left” conveniently forgot the same as soon as our last primary rolled around. But hey, by dismissing all candidates with actual progressive politics as “unelectable,” a practice heartily endorsed by many “lefty” bloggers (not Chris, obviously), the Dems got to have themselves a “historic election” involving a black man and a woman.* How fucking droll. I’m sure that’s a great comfort to those of us dying due to lack of health care. (*The fact that one of the progressives running was a black woman wasn’t notable, apparently. Perhaps that was too much at once.)

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August 29, 2009
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cripes said:

Diversity is a trap... ...in the hands of the corporate state propaganda machine. It is a relief to see this discussion even being held, since so many "progressives" reflexively think they are progressive simply by backing a "minority" candidate. Latinos and African-americans, too, made the same mistake in backing troglodytes like Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzalez. I painfully remember the delusional talk then, and again with Obama, that any candidate from the race must be supported, it sets role models for the kids (groan), they'll be able to do more once they are secure in their appointment/office and have the power to "do good," ad infinitum. All childish nonsense. No. Strivers from every ethnic background, especially ones from oppressed minorities, rise to prominence WITHIN the power structure BECAUSE they have so vigorously EMBRACED its terrible ideology. Their main prupsoe in life is to identify with their masters, and put as much distance between their charmed lives and their lesser "racial" kin as possible. Was it not so in the colonies of european empires a hundred years ago and still true today? They serve as excellent buffers between the aristocrats and the simmering rage of oppressed masses, black, white, brown, yellow, whatever. Their acsension to visible power confuses the powerless in both camps, fuels incipient rascism and obscures class exploitation. So, sure, there's still rascism in america and the world. But equality for the rich of every color is no substitute for economic and social justice for the rest of us.

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August 29, 2009
Votes: +1

Sean O'Neil said:

Alas, No One of Consequence is confused by his own post! Well, I suggest that we give the Irony Award to No One of Consequence. The exhaustive defensive remarks don't really serve the purpose you intend. I was only suggesting that you were mistaken on saying that the world is conservative republicans vs everyone else. Anyone with a functioning sense of political and psychological awareness would agree. Which leaves me wondering why you're defending that erroneous statement so exhaustively. Must be the irony talking. Either that, or the massive projection in every accusation you level toward me.

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August 29, 2009
Votes: -1

Joe Ermigiotti said:

... My problem with “progressivism” is basically the notion that it’s even possible to create a just and equitable society through electoral politics. There’s just a giant logical contradiction here. Once you empower one group of people to rule over everyone else, the idea of egalitarianism pretty much flies out the window. I don’t care how many letters you write to your congressman (I want to shit every time I hear some earnest liberal tell someone to write a letter to their congressman). If you need any evidence of this, just look at the orgy of corruption that passes for a government in any major American city. It’s more like a contest to see who can loot the till the fastest, and then, when they run out of money for legitimate things, they go hat in hand to the state or federal government. To be fair, “righties” have their own delusion, namely, their belief in the idea of “limited government.” To my mind, the more useful distinction is between statists and anti-statists, rather than left vs. right. That said, I do agree that there’s a difference between a Dennis Kucinich and a Barack Obama, and the fact that Obama’s (half) blackness provided the perfect cover for his blatantly cynical campaign was particularly infuriating. I read an article shortly after the inauguration of the Chosen One that summed it up perfectly. It was a profile of Juanita Nelson. I’d never heard of her, but the piece described her as an 85-year-old black woman who’s been active in civil rights her whole life, an anti-war tax resister, and an avid non-voter. She compared the celebrations after Obama’s victory to the ones in Harlem after Joe Lewis beat Max Schmeling. According to Nelson, Lewis said, “I don’t know what they’re so excited about. They ain’t no better off than they were last night.”

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August 29, 2009
Votes: +2

Jenny said:

	... So what's the answer here? I'd figured you'd all be for the Rodriguez quote because obviously affirmative action helps minorties become sucessful(aka capitalists) and we can't have that of course.
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August 30, 2009
Votes: -1

No One of Consequence said:

... I was only suggesting that you were mistaken on saying that the world is conservative republicans vs everyone else. I never said anything about conservative republicans in my initial post. Sean is apparently obsessed with them, which is why he projects them into whatever he reads here. Sean refuses to, or cannot, read -- and he leveled accusations against me based on his projections of my upbringing. Amazing, how someone I don’t know and never met can declare how I grew up. Clearly, he also fails to understand the definition of irony. Chris deserves better trolls.

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September 01, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

... You are a liar, and a rebounding, redounding one. Well done. And I'm a "troll"? Hilarious. You're the one avoiding identifying him/herself. And reversing statements by disavowing them as if they were never made. No, that's not trolling, not at all. So tell us, again, how the world divides into "right wingers" ("conservative republicans") and everyone else. Please. Don't make me say "pretty please," I'm never that polite to jerks, trolls, or liars.

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September 01, 2009
Votes: -1

Sean O'Neil said:

... I give meat to the bones of your skeletal lie, Trollmaster: Rightwing ideology exists purely to get rightwingers stuff and presents neither a coherent philosophy or a logically consistent set of values. It’s just shit that gets human shits what they want. Thus, there is no contradiction when they scream “State’s rights!” on Monday then happily club states with unlawful uses of federal power on Tuesday. The point was to get that power acquired on Tuesday. The “left” then becomes literally everyone who’s left.

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September 01, 2009
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No One of Consequence said:

... And reversing statements by disavowing them as if they were never made. Sean: Repost the line where I mentioned Republicans. Sean cannot. He is a liar -- and he’s a troll since he’s fully aware that he’s lying. All he has to do is literally look upthread to prove me wrong -- and he doesn’t. He pulls a quote out of my original post out of context that doesn’t prove any point at all. Most importantly, it doesn’t include the text he accuses me of using. He’s a troll, a random asshole polluting this site.

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September 01, 2009
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