suicidalmarchingband
02-23-2004, 05:29 PM
This is an article from Le Monde Diplomatique, probably of most interest to Liberals and those on the left, that explores how the Republicans have marketed themselves as anti-elitist while serving corporate interests .
A WAR AGAINST ELITES
by Tom Frank
The aversion to Bush, at home and abroad, makes us forget how many people support this spokesman for another America sure of its superiority and its values.
THERE was a commercial that aired on Iowa television in which the-then front-runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Howard Dean, was blasted for being the choice of the cultural elites: a "tax hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left- wing freak show" who had no business trying to talk to the plain folk of Iowa.
The commercial was sponsored by the Club for Growth, a Washington-based organisation dedicated to hooking up pro-business rich people with pro-business politicians. The organisation is made up of anti-government economists, prominent men of means, and big thinkers of the late New Economy, celebrated geniuses of the sort that spent the past 10 years describing the low-tax, deregulated economy as though it were the second coming of Christ. In other words, the people who thought they saw Jesus in the ever-ascending Nasdaq, the pundits who worked himself into a lather singing the praises of new billionaires, the economists who made a living by publicly insisting that privatisation and deregulation were the mandates of history itself, are now running television commercials denouncing the "elite".
That’s the mystery of the United States, circa 2004. Thanks to the rightward political shift of the past 30 years, wealth is today concentrated in fewer hands than it has been since the 1920s; workers have less power over the conditions under which they toil than ever before in our lifetimes; and the corporation has become the most powerful actor in our world. Yet that rightward shift - still going strong to this day - sells itself as a war against elites, a righteous uprising of the little guy against an obnoxious upper class.
At the top of it all sits President George Bush, a former Texas oilman, a Yale graduate, the son of a former president and a grandson of a US senator - the beneficiary of every advantage that upper America is capable of showering on its sons - and a man who also declares that he has a populist streak because of all the disdain showered upon him and his Texas cronies by the high-hats of the East. Bush’s populism is for real. His resentment of the East-coast snobs is objectively ridiculous, but it is honestly felt. The man undeniably has the common touch; his ability to speak to average people like one of their own is a matter of public record. And they, in return, seem genuinely to like the man. Bush shows every sign of being able to carry a substantial part of the white working-class vote this November, just as he did four years ago (although 90% of black Americans voted Democrat in 2000).
There was a time, of course, when populism was the native tongue of the American left (1), when working-class people could be counted on to vote in favour of stronger labour unions, a regulated economy and various schemes for universal economic security. Back then the Republicans, who opposed all these things, were clearly identified as the party of corporate management, the spokesmen for society’s elite.
Rightwing populism takes two general forms. What we saw the most of during the 1990s was the populism of the market...
But market populism doesn’t play too well in hard times. It slowly retreats to the wings and yields centre-stage to the old, reliable populism of the backlash, the collection of gripes that faults leftists not because of their lack of faith in the free market, but because of the cultural monstrosities they have imposed on the good people of middle America: they have legalised abortion, stamped out prayer in the public schools and are now threatening to sanction gay marriage. Again the enemy of the common people is the liberal elite, and again they are identified as a class of intellectuals whose trademark sin is hubris, thinking they know better than everyone else. Again it is the little guy against a sneering, disdainful, cartoon version of the upper class; and again the main beneficiary is the Republican party.
This populism, ever present on the radio and on Fox News (4), is obsessed with the symbolism of the consumer culture. Instead of rebuking the powerful directly, it vituperates against the snobbish and delicate things that the powerful are believed to enjoy: special kinds of coffee, high-end restaurants, Ivy League educations, vacations in Europe, and always, always, imported cars.
Against these maddeningly sissified tastes, backlash populism posits a true-blue heartland where real Americans eat red meat in big slabs, know all about farming, drink Budweiser, work hard with their hands and drive domestic cars. (In November 2000 the Democrats lost in the heartland but won in cosmopolitan California, New York and Massachusetts.) Why the focus on consumer goods? It switches the political polarity of class resentment: the items identified with the elite are also identified with people who have advanced degrees, a reliably liberal constituency. Liberals become the snobs, and Republicans become the plain people in their majestic millions. That rightwing oil millionaires in Houston or Wichita might also vacation in Europe, drink fancy coffee and drive Jaguars is simply not considered, as if contrary to nature.
The all-Americans despise the affected elites, with their highfalutin ways and that’s why they vote for plainspoken men like George Bush, or his dad, or Ronald Reagan, or Richard Nixon, that ultimate victim of East Coast disdain. Each of whom, once elected, did his level best to shower the nation’s elite with policy gifts of every description.
http://mondediplo.com/2004/02/04usa
A WAR AGAINST ELITES
by Tom Frank
The aversion to Bush, at home and abroad, makes us forget how many people support this spokesman for another America sure of its superiority and its values.
THERE was a commercial that aired on Iowa television in which the-then front-runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Howard Dean, was blasted for being the choice of the cultural elites: a "tax hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left- wing freak show" who had no business trying to talk to the plain folk of Iowa.
The commercial was sponsored by the Club for Growth, a Washington-based organisation dedicated to hooking up pro-business rich people with pro-business politicians. The organisation is made up of anti-government economists, prominent men of means, and big thinkers of the late New Economy, celebrated geniuses of the sort that spent the past 10 years describing the low-tax, deregulated economy as though it were the second coming of Christ. In other words, the people who thought they saw Jesus in the ever-ascending Nasdaq, the pundits who worked himself into a lather singing the praises of new billionaires, the economists who made a living by publicly insisting that privatisation and deregulation were the mandates of history itself, are now running television commercials denouncing the "elite".
That’s the mystery of the United States, circa 2004. Thanks to the rightward political shift of the past 30 years, wealth is today concentrated in fewer hands than it has been since the 1920s; workers have less power over the conditions under which they toil than ever before in our lifetimes; and the corporation has become the most powerful actor in our world. Yet that rightward shift - still going strong to this day - sells itself as a war against elites, a righteous uprising of the little guy against an obnoxious upper class.
At the top of it all sits President George Bush, a former Texas oilman, a Yale graduate, the son of a former president and a grandson of a US senator - the beneficiary of every advantage that upper America is capable of showering on its sons - and a man who also declares that he has a populist streak because of all the disdain showered upon him and his Texas cronies by the high-hats of the East. Bush’s populism is for real. His resentment of the East-coast snobs is objectively ridiculous, but it is honestly felt. The man undeniably has the common touch; his ability to speak to average people like one of their own is a matter of public record. And they, in return, seem genuinely to like the man. Bush shows every sign of being able to carry a substantial part of the white working-class vote this November, just as he did four years ago (although 90% of black Americans voted Democrat in 2000).
There was a time, of course, when populism was the native tongue of the American left (1), when working-class people could be counted on to vote in favour of stronger labour unions, a regulated economy and various schemes for universal economic security. Back then the Republicans, who opposed all these things, were clearly identified as the party of corporate management, the spokesmen for society’s elite.
Rightwing populism takes two general forms. What we saw the most of during the 1990s was the populism of the market...
But market populism doesn’t play too well in hard times. It slowly retreats to the wings and yields centre-stage to the old, reliable populism of the backlash, the collection of gripes that faults leftists not because of their lack of faith in the free market, but because of the cultural monstrosities they have imposed on the good people of middle America: they have legalised abortion, stamped out prayer in the public schools and are now threatening to sanction gay marriage. Again the enemy of the common people is the liberal elite, and again they are identified as a class of intellectuals whose trademark sin is hubris, thinking they know better than everyone else. Again it is the little guy against a sneering, disdainful, cartoon version of the upper class; and again the main beneficiary is the Republican party.
This populism, ever present on the radio and on Fox News (4), is obsessed with the symbolism of the consumer culture. Instead of rebuking the powerful directly, it vituperates against the snobbish and delicate things that the powerful are believed to enjoy: special kinds of coffee, high-end restaurants, Ivy League educations, vacations in Europe, and always, always, imported cars.
Against these maddeningly sissified tastes, backlash populism posits a true-blue heartland where real Americans eat red meat in big slabs, know all about farming, drink Budweiser, work hard with their hands and drive domestic cars. (In November 2000 the Democrats lost in the heartland but won in cosmopolitan California, New York and Massachusetts.) Why the focus on consumer goods? It switches the political polarity of class resentment: the items identified with the elite are also identified with people who have advanced degrees, a reliably liberal constituency. Liberals become the snobs, and Republicans become the plain people in their majestic millions. That rightwing oil millionaires in Houston or Wichita might also vacation in Europe, drink fancy coffee and drive Jaguars is simply not considered, as if contrary to nature.
The all-Americans despise the affected elites, with their highfalutin ways and that’s why they vote for plainspoken men like George Bush, or his dad, or Ronald Reagan, or Richard Nixon, that ultimate victim of East Coast disdain. Each of whom, once elected, did his level best to shower the nation’s elite with policy gifts of every description.
http://mondediplo.com/2004/02/04usa