White working-class Americans are justified in their resentment about the
way in which their
needs and concerns are airbrushed from the national conversation or
discussed in ways that bear
little relevance to the root of their plight. Politicians too often cast
the issue in populist
terms of rich and poor, explains Michael Zweig, the director of the centre
for study of
working-class life at the State University of New York’s Stonybrook
campus. “Most people want to
be rich and most of them don’t know what rich is. A poll in 2000 showed
that 19% of Americans
thought they were in the richest 1% and a further 21% said they expected
to be in the richest 1%
in the next 10 years.”
The US Needs To Talk About Class, But Politicians Don’t Have The
Vocabulary
by Gary Younge
Published on Monday, April 14, 2008 by The Guardian/UK
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/14/8281/
The 90-minute drive from Pittsburgh to Uniontown winds and dips through
rural western
Pennsylvania, flanked by bare trees waiting to be clothed by a late
spring, and drops you at the
Appalachians. Historically at least, Uniontown (population 12,500) is an
all-American town. Like
the country, it was founded on July 4 1776. Thanks to its mills and coal
mines it boasted more
millionaires per capita than any other town in the US at the opening of
the last century. The
town centre is littered with tributes to its favourite son - George
Marshall, the architect of
the Marshall Plan that distributed American aid after the second world war
to rebuild the
European economy and stem the advance of communism. The Big Mac was
invented and test-marketed here.
The imposing stone architecture and grand theatre in its small downtown
are testament to the
town’s former grandeur. But the down-at-heel stores and empty streets lay
bare its current
desperate state. Uniontown could do with a Marshall Plan of its own. More
than one in five
families here live below the poverty line; the household median income is
less than half the
national level; over the past 70 years the town’s population has shrunk by
almost half. The food
banks in Fayette county, the poorest county in the state outside of
Philadelphia and home to
Uniontown, keep adding new clients and opening new pantries.
“Back in the 50s and 60s there were people, people, people all over town,”
explains mayor Ed
Fike. “We had stores like Sears, Roebuck, Murphy’s, Kaufman’s. Now all of
those stores have gone
and so have the mines and mills. If you can find work it’s in Kmart,
Wal-Mart, Target - minimum
wage jobs in retail. People are struggling.”
With little more than a week to go before the Pennsylvania primaries, the
economy is the biggest
priority for voters and, barring a deterioration in Iraq, that is where it
will stay until the
presidential elections in November. The issue for the Democrats is not
whether Hillary Clinton
will win here, but by how much.
The race is tightening. Barack Obama stemmed his decline over comments of
his pastor with a
landmark speech on race, sparking a national conversation. But America
doesn’t need another
national conversation on race - it already has too many and most of them
are asinine. It needs a
dialogue that could lead to a better conversation. Obama’s speech
contributed to that.
But as repossessions rise, jobs are shed and the price of fuel and basic
foodstuffs rocket, one
waits in vain for the candidates to deliver a keynote speech on class of a
similar standard.
White working-class Americans are justified in their resentment about the
way in which their
needs and concerns are airbrushed from the national conversation or
discussed in ways that bear
little relevance to the root of their plight. Politicians too often cast
the issue in populist
terms of rich and poor, explains Michael Zweig, the director of the centre
for study of
working-class life at the State University of New York’s Stonybrook
campus. “Most people want to
be rich and most of them don’t know what rich is. A poll in 2000 showed
that 19% of Americans
thought they were in the richest 1% and a further 21% said they expected
to be in the richest 1%
in the next 10 years.”
Couch the conversation in more meaningful ways, and people might engage,
argues Zweig, enabling
them to make better sense of other core issues such as immigration, the
outsourcing of jobs,
healthcare and, indeed, race itself. “If you put class in terms of power
you can start to get to
the source of the problem,” Zweig suggests. “Is it workers who are taking
our jobs in Thailand?
Who is running public policy of the country? Who’s got power over whom?
What do we have to do to
challenge them?”
For the time being enlightened conversation on the issue seems unlikely.
Obama, who unlike
Clinton does not have an office in Uniontown, has proved himself to have a
tin ear when it comes
to addressing these voters, which is why he has struggled to win them
over.
Their scepticism towards him is not primarily racial but cultural. Last
week at a private
fundraiser in San Francisco, Obama was asked why he wasn’t doing better
among working-class
voters in places such as Uniontown, which is 84% white. “You go into these
small towns in
Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the midwest, the jobs have
been gone now for 25
years and nothing’s replaced them,” he said. “And it’s not surprising then
they get bitter, they
cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or
anti-immigrant
sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Clinton immediately seized on his remarks, handing out “I’m not bitter”
stickers in North
Carolina and casting Obama as a cultural elitist. “As I travel around
Pennsylvania,” she said.
“I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive …”
The Republican nominee
John McCain branded him “out of touch”. But their capacity to feel these
people’s pain is
matched only by their ability to inflict it. Clinton sup****ted the North
American Free Trade
Agreement that led to outsourcing to Mexico; McCain offers nothing but
more of the same market
fundamentalism.
That does not make such a conversation about class any less vital. It
would carry the dual
benefit of being both timely and strategically savvy. Timely, because the
economic problems of
many Americans are particularly acute right now. One in 10 of those with
mortgages is in
negative equity; one in 16 is behind on their payments. Consumer
confidence is at the lowest
level on record; unemployment is climbing at a steady pace. All of this
will get worse before it
gets better.
Moreover, most people are heading into this bust without having enjoyed
any of the benefits of a
boom. Since the last recession the median wage has declined slightly. A
Pew survey to be
released on Wednesday reveals that most people feel they have been stuck
in place or fallen
backward over the past five years - the most gloomy short-term appraisal
of personal advancement
in almost 50 years. Thanks to the credit crunch, the days when people
softened the blow by
borrowing massively on their homes and credit cards are over. Americans
are heading for a huge
slump in their standard of living.
Savvy, because the biggest increases in unemployment or slumps in house
prices (and in some
instances both) are occurring in many of the swing states - namely
Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Colorado, Nevada and Michigan.
Walk around Uniontown for a day and you will find little in the way of
bitterness or optimism.
But you will find many who are despondent and even more who are desperate.
“They can put a man
on the moon but all they can do for poor people is give out blocks of
cheese?” asked Cindy
Digga, resources consultant at the Fayette county community action agency.
“Don’t you think
America should be able to do better than that? The American dream’s still
possible. It just
depends in what part of America. Here in Fayette county, it feels like
we’ve been forgotten.”
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Finally, the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 set Clausewitz on the path of
recognizing war as a
political phenomenon. Wars, as everyone knew, were fought for a purpose
that was political,
or at least always had political consequences. Not as readily apparent
was the implication
that followed. If war was meant to achieve a political purpose, everything
that entered into
war — social and economic preparation, strategic planning, the conduct of
operations, the
use of violence on all levels — should be determined by this purpose, or
at least accord
with it. Even though soldiers had to acquire special expertise, and
function in what in some
respects was a separate world, it would be a denial of reality to allow
them to carry on
their bloody work undisturbed until an armistice brought their political
employer back into
the equation. Just as war and its institutions reflected their social
environment, so every
aspect of fighting should be suffused by its political impulse, whether
this impulse was
intense or moderate. The appropriate relation****p between politics and war
occupied
Clausewitz throughout his life, but even his earliest manuscripts and
letters show his
awareness of their interaction.
The ease with which this link — always acknowledged in the abstract —
can be forgotten in
specific cases, and Clausewitz’s insistence that it must never be
overlooked, are
illustrated by his polite rejection toward the end of his life of a
strategic problem set by
the chief of the Prussian General Staff, in which every military detail of
the opposing
sides was spelled out, but no mention made of their political purpose. To
a friend who had
sent him the problem for comment, Clausewitz replied that it was not
possible to draft a
sensible plan of operations without indicating the political condition of
the states
involved, and their relation****p to each other: ‘War is not an independent
phenomenon, but
the continuation of politics by different means. Consequently, the main
lines of every major
strategic plan are largely political in nature, and their political
character increases the
more the plan applies to the entire campaign and to the whole state. A war
plan results
directly from the political conditions of the two warring states, as well
as from their
relations to third powers. A plan of campaign results from the war plan,
and frequently - if
there is only one theater of operations - may even be identical with it.
But the political
element even enters the separate components of a campaign; rarely will it
be without
influence on such major episodes of warfare as a battle, etc. According to
this point of
view, there can be no question of a purely military evaluation of a great
strategic issue,
nor of a purely military scheme to solve it.’
Everyman’s Library, 1993 ISBN: 0679420436 On war /by Clausewitz, Carl
von, 1780-1831.
Knopf, 1993. From the introduction by Peter Paret, Pg7
_____________________________________________________________________
The U-2 is a jet-powered reconnaissance aircraft specially designed to fly
at high altitudes
(i.e., above 70,000 ft [21 km]). It was used during the late 1950s to
overfly the Soviet
Union, China, the Middle East, and Cuba; flights over the Soviet Union,
the primary mission
for which the plane was designed, ended in 1960 when a U-2 flown by CIA
pilot Gary Powers
was shot down over the Soviet Union. This event was a major political
embarrassment for the U.S.
http://www.espionageinfo.com/Te-Uk/U-2-Spy-Plane.html
Soviet Prime Minister Khrushchev's reaction to the overflights which
were discovered
just before a summit conference in Paris with President Eisenhower: "It
was as though the
Americans had deliberately tried to place a time bomb under the meeting" .
. ."How could
they count on us to give them a helping hand if we allowed ourselves to be
spat upon without
so much as a murmur of protest?" The only solution was to demand a formal
public apology
from Eisenhower and a guarantee that no more overflights would take place
. . .
But the apology Khrushchev was looking for would not come. Despite
having trespassed
on the Soviet Union for the past four years with scores of flights by both
U-2's and heavy
bombers, the old general still could not say the words, it was just not in
him. . . A time
bomb had exploded, prematurely ending the summit conference. . .
Back in Wa****ngton, the mood was glum. The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee was
leaning toward holding a closed door investigation into the U-2 incident .
. . In public,
Eisenhower maintained a brave face. He "heartily approved" of the
congressional probe and
would 'of course fully cooperate,' he quickly told anyone who asked. But
in private he was
very troubled. For weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His
major concern was
that his own personal involvement in the overflights would surface,
especially the May Day
disaster. Equally, he was very worried that details of the dangerous
bomber overflights
would leak out. The massed overflight may in fact, have been one of the
most dangerous
actions ever approved by a president.
pg. 51-55 ~Body of Secrets; Anatomy of the Ultra Secret National Security
Agency
James Bamford
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of
the progress of
human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims,
have been born of
earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating,
all-absorbing, and for the time
being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does
nothing. If there is
no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and
yet depreciate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want
rain without
thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its
many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may
be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and
it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and
you have found out the
exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and
these will continue
till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The
limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of
these ideas, Negroes
will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as
they submit to those
devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men
may not get all they
pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we
ever get free from
the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal.
We must do this by
labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the
lives of others."
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
Frederick Douglass, 1857
- - - - - -> More political discussion continues at
http://www.politicsusaweb.com/
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