an idea

[Two Americas]

I stumbled on an idea that might be valuable for the Edwards supporters. I would like to get feedback from you folks on this.

Someone started a thread - "Would you lay down your life for your country?" - and I went there thinking that I would answer with an unqualified "yes." When I got there, everyone was answering no and that got me to thinking before I posted.

What I realized was that people don't mean the same thing when they say "the country" and that it tells us something about the person according to how they use the word. Also, how people use the words "we" and "they" is revealing as well.

In my experience, most blue collar people, poor people, and minority people don't say "we" when referring to the actions of the wealthy and powerful - the rulers. They say "they" when referring to them. Yet the activists all say "we." The say "we invaded Iraq," for example. I think that reflects and betrays an unconscious identification with the wealthy and powerful. At the same time, the activists refer to poor people and blue collar people as "they."

When the activists say "the history of the United States" they invariably mean the history of the wealthy and powerful. When the activists are criticizing the United States they invariably are criticizing the wealthy and powerful, but they think of the wealthy and powerful as "we" and they think of the history of the wealthy and powerful as "our" history.

I think that this seemingly very small issue has an enormous impact. THIS is why so many poor people and working class people distrust the Democrats, and why the Republicans can so easily pick people off. The activists - the small number of the most vocal and domineering people in the party who control the party narrative, all see the people as "they" and see the wealthy and the powerful as "we." That is a profound disconnection and is highly alienating and paternalistic on the most fundamental and basic level.

Look at the foreign policy and anti-war debates. Blue collar people are not fighting for the rulers - they all know that it is always a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. They are fighting for a different "country" for a different "us" - for their family, for their friends, for their neighbors, as a symbol of their commitment to the well being of others and their willingness to sacrifice themselves if need be. And the activists mock and ridicule that sublime and noble and self-sacrificing ethic. The grunts don't expect to have any influence over policy - they know they are peons and that the wealthy and powerful people control everything. They serve out of a higher motive the agreeing or disagreeing with the policies of the rulers. The people in the anti-war movement completely misread this. They are looking at it from an upper class perspective - the Bush people are like errant cousins, princes gone bad, who need to be replaced by better princes. But still, the identification on an unconscious level with the upper class is there, as is their contempt for the peons - the poor.