[Peace-discuss] Hey... and they didn't even ask Joe Sixpack!!

[C. G. Estabrook]

It's contempt for "the regular folks" (literally, those subject to a rule) that 
prompted the post.

And the leading misleaders are particularly good at corrupting "everyday words" 
(like "anti-war").

So I've used the (readily understandable) sociological term "tertiary 
bourgeoisie" in place of the purposely misleading "middle class." --CGE


Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
> Waaaaay too many things to set you straight on in this posting, Carl, 
> for me to provide a written response. Next time we're staffing a table, 
> we can get into it. Meanwhile, get out from behind yr books and talk to 
> the regular folks. Use eveyday words, and don't call them members of the 
> secondary bourgeoisie. 
>  --Jenifer
> 
> --- On *Mon, 10/20/08, C. G. Estabrook /<galliher at uiuc.edu>/* wrote:
> 
>     From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu>
>     Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Hey... and they didn't even ask Joe
>     Sixpack!!
>     To: jencart13 at yahoo.com
>     Cc: "Peace- Discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war..net>
>     Date: Monday, October 20, 2008, 1:09 PM
> 
>     The contempt of the tertiary bourgeoisie in America (about 20% of the
>     population) for the other 80% is sometimes hard to believe. ("Tertiary
>     bourgeoisie" = those who have passed through the "third level"
>     of formal
>     education = roughly the graduates of traditional four-year colleges.)
> 
>     Of course that contempt is manufactured -- strongly encouraged by that fraction
>     of 1% who make up the American owning (and ruling) class, whom the 20%
>     apparently desperately want to be like (or belong to, a revealing phrase).  And
>     the 20% are told if they want to belong to the club, they need to despise the
>     only real threat to the club, the other 80% (who have increasing reason to
>     resent their rulers in recent years, as inequality and the concentration of
>     wealth increase and in fact accelerate).
> 
>     The American ruling class has hated and feared Average Citizens (and democracy)
>     from the beginning.  I recently posted some examples from our "founding
>     fathers"
>     (and mothers).  It wasn't just Hamilton who held that "Your people
>     sir, are a
>     great beast!" It's remarkable that the 1% can seduce the 20% to their
>     way of
>     thinking, but it's not new.  About 1890 the American financier Jay Gould
>     said,
>     "I can always hire one half of the American working class to kill the
>     other
>     half." And the overwhelming majority of Americans were "working
>     class" -- i.e.,
>     people who had to sell their work of head and hands to the owners of factories
>     and fields in order to eat regularly.  (How many of us today have to rent
>     ourselves to the owners of capital to live?)
> 
>     The control of ideological institutions (universities, media) and governmental
>     mechanisms by the ruling class means that they can seduce away that 20% from
>     their real interests by teaching them to despise those who are below them on
>     the
>     socio-economic ladder -- a long-term version of Gould's hiring half the
>     working
>     class to kill the other half, and an effective way to prevent a united front
>     against themselves.  That's why so much of media propaganda is directed
>     toward
>     the 20%, the "middle class.'
> 
>     Many in the 80% don't vote because they know, correctly, that the election
>     isn't
>     about them.  Whoever wins, the conditions of their life will remain much the
>     same.  On the eve of the 2000 election, polls from Harvard's Vanishing
>     Voter
>     Project showed that 75% of the electorate regarded it as a game played by rich
>     contributors, party managers, and the PR industry and the media.  Very likely,
>     that is why the population paid little attention to the “stolen election”
>     that
>     greatly exercised educated sectors. And that opinion is at least as strong
>     eight
>     years later.  It's only the 20% who buy the assurances that Bush/Gore,
>     Kerry/Bush, & Obama/McCain are important decisions.
> 
>     If however you separate the candidates' names and party affiliations -- so
>     important to the 20% -- from general questions of how the society should be
>     run,
>     you find remarkably enough that a majority of Americans hold generally
>     social-democratic (roughly"New Deal") views -- all the more
>     remarkable because
>     they've almost never heard these views in the media or championed by a
>     major
>     party candidate.  As a result the official parties are generally to the right
>     of
>     the populace, while the propagandists try to convince the populace that one (or
>     the other) party represents their interests.  The burden of Obama's book,
>     Mendacity of Hope, was that he could do that job better than most, and to some
>     extent it seems that he can. But it's still a lie.
> 
>     Regarding people in the 80% not knowing, e.g., who the UKPM is, I'm
>     reminded of
>     Sherlock Holmes' answer when his friend Watson found out that Holmes
>     didn't know
>     that the earth went around the sun:
> 
>          "You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression
>     of
>     surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it."
>          "To forget it!"
>          "You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain
>     originally is like a
>     little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.
>     A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the
>     knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled
>     up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands
>     upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes
>     into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in
>     doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most
>     perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls
>     and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every
>     addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the
>     highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the
>     useful
>     ones."
>          "But the Solar System!" I protested.
>          "What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently;
>     "you say that we
>     go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of
>     difference to me or to my work"....
> 
>     Similarly, in spite of what the 20% believe about the importance of the
>     election, an American from the majority might with reason say that the outcome
>     "would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work"....
> 
>     Just after the 2000 election, Noam Chomsky wrote as follows:
> 
>         ...over 80 percent of the population feels that the government is “run
>     for
>     the benefit of the few and the special interests, not the people,” up from
>     about
>     half in earlier years ... similar numbers feel that the economic system is
>     “inherently unfair” and working people have too little say, and that
>     “there is
>     too much power concentrated in the hands of large companies for the good of the
>     nation.” Under such circumstances, people may tend to vote (if at all) on
>     grounds that are irrelevant to policy choices over which they feel they have
>     little influence. Such tendencies are strengthened by intense media/advertising
>     concentration on style, personality, and other irrelevancies (in the
>     presidential debates, will Bush remember where Canada is?; will Gore remind
>     people of some unpleasant know-it-all in 4th grade?).
> 
>         Public opinion studies lend further credibility to the simplest model.
>     Harvard’s Vanishing Voter Project has been monitoring attitudes through the
>     presidential campaign. Its director, Thomas Patterson, reports that
>     “Americans’
>     feeling of powerlessness has reached an alarming high,” with 53 percent
>     responding “only a little” or “none” to the question: “How much
>     influence do you
>     think people like you have on what government does?” The previous peak, 30
>     years
>     ago, was 41 percent. During the campaign, over 60 percent of regular voters
>     regarded politics in America as “generally pretty disgusting” ... the
>     country is
>     being driven even more than before towards the condition described by former
>     President Alfonso Lopez Michaelsen of Colombia, referring to his own country: a
>     political system of power sharing by parties that are “two horses with the
>     same
>     owner.” Furthermore, that seems to be general popular understanding.
>     <http://www.chomsky.info/articles/200101--.htm>  --CGE
> 
> 
>     Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
>     >
>     http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20081015/sc_livescience/americansflunksimple3questionpoliticalsurvey
>     > 
>     > 
>     > Yo, check this out, those of you who think that Average Citizens (aka Joe
>     > Sixpack et al) don't vote because there're no candidates that
>     support their
>     > views!! Folks more-or-less paying attention to a variety of news sources
>     were
>     > surveyed, but not those paying no attention what-so-ever... and still,
>     look
>     > at the numbers!!
>     > 
>     > No surprise to some of us... --Jenifer
> 
> 
> 
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