Stop Me Before I Vote Again

" I tend to think it’s a good idea to refrain from blaming the commoners until the commoners have something like freedom of choice and a set of robust alternatives'
exactly

That's a gem alright. The scolding, hair shirt style doesn't change any minds and given the daily vicissitudes of working life, it's added insult to the injuries.

Creating the division between "commoners" and... whom, exactly?

Solidarity through division?

Probably not what y'all are saying, but it's something to think about. Creating a division between yourselves and the "commoners" is not a good starting point, IMO. Its long-term effect strikes me as equally or more negative compared to telling people the ugly truths they'd prefer to avoid.

But maybe I'm missing something here.

Right wing PR flacks like Bill Kristol love to patronize--without coming across as patronizing--airheaded "Joe Sixpack" front candidates, because in reality they're cynically disimissive of ordinary folks as per teachings of their Neocon granddaddy.

It's kind of sad to see so many different subcultures playing along with pundit stereotypes about who gets to be "common" and who doesn't? Given that nine-tenths of college graduates will end up working shit jobs and up to their necks in debt (if they're lucky) it doesn't really make a hell of a lot of sense nowadays. If indeed it ever did.

I guess, as a starting point, all parties involved could start out shelving certain terms during discussions. Agreeing that "college educated" and "high school dropout" are not meant to be used as insults when the speaker is losing points in a discussion, and so on.

As I said elsewhere, it's kind of stupid in the long run for us to live all of adult life like we never left High School, basing whole concepts of personality on things as random and subjective as what variety of "stuff" we like to consume for fun. It's got fuck-all, in the end, to do with the things we need to have/preserve/create to live sane and happy lives.

(I mean, I really fucking hate the barrage of butt-rock they play where I work, but that doesn't mean my co-workers are terrible people undeserving of love, et al.)

CF, I find your question and interpretation very confusing. The quoted writer makes the differentiation between commoners and overclass clear. The admonition is against divisiveness through moralizing. He acknowledges his place amongst the commoners, with the sole and nonexclusive difference that he's got the skills to slice through propaganda. The entire point of the post is a rejection of claims to a moral high ground; we are, after all, stuck in the same boat.

I think what MD wrote is spot on. To a large extent we are all prisoners of the system. The clothes I wear, the food I eat and the tires I put on my car all have blood on them, and I don't see how I can function in this system without those things, given my present circumstances. When in jail, you follow jailhouse rules, or you die. People from the middle and upper classes usually have greater power and choice within the system than the working class does, yet both the right and what passes for the left are prone to laying blame for the system's failures on the working class and poor, even though they themselves are its principle architects and apparatchiks. It is instructive to see a certain brand of NY Times-subscribing liberal sneer at people who serve in the military, but who is more culpable morally, the hipster who voluntarily supports the propaganda networks that lied us into multiple wars, or the poor sap who is forced to join the military to support his family as there aren't enough jobs around? It is this disdain for the lower classes and the poor choices they are often forced to make that pisses me off more than anything about a lot of liberals.

The Republicans at least have the good sense not to demonize working class white people as ignorant "trash," which has been one of the primary secrets of their success. They are adept at paying lip-service to working class issues and playing the populist while "liberals" can seem to do nothing but sneer at them and put them down as booze, meth and Christ-addled trailer trash and rednecks. "Average Joes" are understandably turned off by this and they are not deluded into thinking the Democratic party or liberals give a fuck about them, because they don't. They have no illusions about the Republican party either; it is simply perceived to be the lesser of two evils for reasons that make sense to them.

When I first read this I thought it was a trolling post.

The clip makes Dawson appear jejune. Reading around his blog gave me a different, more positive sense of his project.

But the term 'commoners' is a poor choice in such an earnest context.

Can the clip be read without postulating an overclass, the 'commoners' and a cognoscenti ('us')? Not IMO.

Al -- I understood the gist of your post and Mr Dawson's thoughts because I have read you and him here, and have that context in mind. I was merely saying that talking about "commoners" seems to set up a division that might rankle one of the non-cognoscenti. Say, for example, if one of the non-cognoscenti read Dawson's quoted text.

I think ms_xeno hits the note I was trying unsuccessfully (in tin ear fashion) to hit.

I think it's important to remember or bear in mind that sometimes someone --take me, for example-- might post a blast toward the non-cognscenti for the purpose of blowing off steam. I have no problem acknowledging that if I want to inform someone, I need to be gentle around his/her points of ignorance or mis-perception. I'm not always trying to inform, though. Perhaps others are likewise.

"I'm open to everything. When you start to criticize the times you live in, your time is over." --karl lagerfeld

One reason I use the word "commoners" is that I'm 99 percent sure that's about as close to the manner in which the overclass thinks of us as you can get.

There's also a rather huge percentage of the population that's got nothing other than the means of daily survival, expensive and shitty as they are... Hell, I believe the majority of 401k accounts are worth less than $10,000, and 401k holders are an elite within the commoners.

It's an interesting enough perspective. But it's been a long time since I've blamed my fellow workers for the fact that the choices presented to us all are so limited and shitty. Working class folks don't make those decisions, though way too many of us actively buy into the bullshit. But for me, what it comes down to is what Milton said, that the ruling elite pluck choices and information away from the working poor, and then curse the victim of their policies for their shortcomings.

I've never felt guilty about shopping anywhere i needed to, for me socialism has never been about what's possible in terms of consumption, it's been about seizing control of production, seizing the state, and making both the strides and the mistakes we need to make as a class in power. Thus far, we've not managed to find that in ourselves. And even when we have, we've been easy to push aside. Hell, we can barely hold on to the organizations we actually own. But that's how the Old Moor said it would work, and probably for centuries. I think most folks want this to be a period of flowers, but the reality is that our generation isn't much more than fertilizer. I can live, and die with that.

My initial reaction to the posted item:
<<
With your Honors' indulgence, I wish to take umbrage on behalf of my cousins, those fat people clustered around the Belgian waffles out at the Galleria.
They've made many informed choices, and many bad ones.

Uncle Buck used to say "We've all had it too good."
He also used to say, with unsettling eagerness, "Did somebody say there's wine in the house?"

In October 2004, an attractive lady at the gym tells me, "We'll bote our balues and trust God." (Catalonian-American)
Me: "But everybody votes their values, don't they? And as for trusting God, what other choice is there? Aren't you really just voting against abortion rights and entrusting your social security to the Republican Party? Why not trust abortion to God?"

She also let me know that her "cultural Catholic" parents in Spain didn't know God the way she knew God over at our local Church of Evangelical Dispensation. (I think they must have a good time at the services over there. She seemed really 'up'.)

A recent interlocutor told me, "They've screwed it up so bad, people wouldn't be willing to fight WW III against the devil." I let it drop. After all, they have screwed it up, and he knows what I think already. He's a retired Air Force cousin, itching for WW III and not particular about who's playing devil.

Commoners: they have agency and I suspect they resent condescension. Don't take any Limbaugh off them.

Let's save the pity for ourselves or forego it altogether.

But ... oh yeah ... who was Mr. Dawson talking about? Maybe I misunderstood.
>>

Then I visited the linked blog and really liked what I found. I think what is essential to understanding the excepted material is the context provided by 'Jean's' comments to Dawson and what kind of person one construes 'Jean' to be after reading his or (more plausibly to me) her comments.

MD's observation applies to everybody, not just commoners. Those of us who occupy relatively cushy niches in the social fabric get a kind of mirror-image of the bad choices argument. If we have something bad to say about the SAT or intellectual property, we're quickly reminded by some helpful soul that we owe our cushy spots to these iniquitous institutions. The implication is that we're not allowed to recognize or talk about how iniquitous they are unless we're willing to do a St Francis schtick and run bare-ass out of town.

"run bare-ass out of town. "

something to be said for that

as a declasse commercial ogre

a poor specimen
of the anti- st francis strata
inspite of myself

and as one who has lived many moons
among the micro-babbit
big ticket sales tribe
let me say if u are made of average fiber
you become a pliable outcast
among your "others"
and yet far more gregarious
with the immediate pack members
both thrust at you and embraced
far mor gregarious
then one's
self preened value/choice contours
might suggest

and is that so wrong ???
the self as ally of thine enemy

love thine enemy as thine neighbor
you thine swine

god bless us all
after every purchase

Speaking as a frozen Belgian waffle, I'd give my organic strawberry topping to be counted as a "commoner."

The only social stratum that does not consider general affability a virtue is the merit class. They always want to see your papers before they'll unbend -- to the extent that they can unbend. The giveaway is, how early in the conversation is the question raised: "What do you do?"

My own stock answer is, "as little as possible." I have found that few people are actually bold enough to follow up on this one.

W H Auden used to tell inquisitive strangers on airplanes that he was a "mediaeval historian", which back in those days was guaranteed to shut the impertinent stranger right up. It probably wouldn't work now. They'd ask you what university you were "at", without missing a beat.