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As emotions run high it is easy for some of our class rhetoric to get a bit over-heated. The reality is a vast majority of Americans are middle class and without their support we are doomed.
Whose Class War? We Have Met the Middle Class and They are Us.
Analysis<P>
I was attending a Direct Action workshop with a friend at the Convergence Center this last Thursday when the facilitator began speaking about getting a coherent message out to the \"middle class.\" We began to discuss it when one of the participants stood up and said, \"I hate the middle class.\" He went on to say that while he felt we (the protesters) should be \"polite\" in explaining how things are and seek to educate \"them,\" we should not dilute \"our\" message. The participant stated, \"The middle class is destroying our planet and I hate them for it.\" <P>
The workshop facilitator had participated in every major protest action over the last year. He is a school teacher. He is \"middle class.\" I have been involved with micro radio since 1993. My wife and I own a home. We are middle class. This was true of my cohort at the training session; he is a journalist and his wife is has a technical job with a construction company. \"Middle class\" describes the National Lawyers Guild people and many of the Media Alliance folks as well. I described my experience to Lyn Gerry, one of the founders of Radio4all, the A-infos Radio Project, and a sincere long time anarchist. She flashed a smiled and said, \"Hey, I\'ve got a mortgage.\" She is middle class.<P>
The reality is a vast majority of Americans are middle class--the poor on one end, the rich on the other, and everyone else in the middle. Some also use the term to represent an attitude or a set of values that is at once complimentary or derogatory depending on your political orientation (as in \"middle class values\"). It is also used as an opposition to the working class, even though most of the working class are part of the middle class. What has happened is that \"middle class\" has come to mean different things to different people, making the term almost useless in any discussion beyond where it is tightly defined in academic or bureaucratic circles.<P>
As emotions run high it is easy for some of our rhetoric to get a bit over-heated. This is to be expected and I have certainly fallen into this trap. Is there a Class War in America? I believe there is. Actually, there are several. The Class War I embrace is being waged between the 5% of the population who controls 95% of the resources and everyone else. The other Class War is orchestrated by the top 5% and their dupes (especially in the media) that pit the destitute against the poor, the poor against the working class, the working class against the middle class, and the upper- and lower-middle class against each other (categories defined by the media). It is just a different flavor of the stage-managed race, gender, and cultural conflicts that keep us fighting and distracting each other while elites slowly reduce us into a capitalist feudalism. If we buy into these petty inter-class struggles we deny ourselves allies in the greater war against those who would subjugate us all. We expend our energy heaping invective and contempt on those who are not exactly like us. It is the lie that keeps the people from organizing to redistribute wealth and power and imposing a true democracy in America. It is part of the greater lie that pits us against the people of other nations in the battle over allegedly diminishing resources. There are plenty of resources; the problem is a few elite seem to feel that they need to control them all. There is plenty of housing, but people are homeless. There is plenty of food, yet people starve. Greed and power madness are destroying the planet, not some faceless entity called the middle class.<P>
The middle class has become a sociopolitical construct, a propaganda label like \"Baby Boomer\" or \"Generation X.\" Labeling a group \"middle class\" is a marketing tool, a way to build false affinities to facilitate prepackaged ideologies and consumerism. Calling someone middle class generalizes and dehumanizes those \"others\" who are not one of our self-defined group. The term middle class is now, for all intents and purposes, meaningless. It is a weapon to divide us and deny us potential allies. It is a social sedative that tries to make us believe we are doing okay because we are middle class, the American dream. Over and over again speakers at the counter convention panels have reminded us that most Americans (the middle class) are behind us, that they share many of our concerns and beliefs, that middle America would join us if we can only get past the neo-liberal corporate media blackout and talk to them.<P>
Any contempt for other non-elites (e.g., most of us) plays into the hands of the true elites and their cronies. It is an ugly mirror, an aping of the contempt the ruling class has for us \"little people.\" It is defeatist and elitist. And it is popular because, above all, it is safe. Easy on the brain. It requires little thought. It ensures that nothing will change. Because if we don\'t get the great middle of America into our cause, we have are doomed to exist in the margins the ruling class and their media lap dogs have laid out for us. We will simply be scapegoats, freaks and fodder for media infotainment.
Analysis<P>
I was attending a Direct Action workshop with a friend at the Convergence Center this last Thursday when the facilitator began speaking about getting a coherent message out to the \"middle class.\" We began to discuss it when one of the participants stood up and said, \"I hate the middle class.\" He went on to say that while he felt we (the protesters) should be \"polite\" in explaining how things are and seek to educate \"them,\" we should not dilute \"our\" message. The participant stated, \"The middle class is destroying our planet and I hate them for it.\" <P>
The workshop facilitator had participated in every major protest action over the last year. He is a school teacher. He is \"middle class.\" I have been involved with micro radio since 1993. My wife and I own a home. We are middle class. This was true of my cohort at the training session; he is a journalist and his wife is has a technical job with a construction company. \"Middle class\" describes the National Lawyers Guild people and many of the Media Alliance folks as well. I described my experience to Lyn Gerry, one of the founders of Radio4all, the A-infos Radio Project, and a sincere long time anarchist. She flashed a smiled and said, \"Hey, I\'ve got a mortgage.\" She is middle class.<P>
The reality is a vast majority of Americans are middle class--the poor on one end, the rich on the other, and everyone else in the middle. Some also use the term to represent an attitude or a set of values that is at once complimentary or derogatory depending on your political orientation (as in \"middle class values\"). It is also used as an opposition to the working class, even though most of the working class are part of the middle class. What has happened is that \"middle class\" has come to mean different things to different people, making the term almost useless in any discussion beyond where it is tightly defined in academic or bureaucratic circles.<P>
As emotions run high it is easy for some of our rhetoric to get a bit over-heated. This is to be expected and I have certainly fallen into this trap. Is there a Class War in America? I believe there is. Actually, there are several. The Class War I embrace is being waged between the 5% of the population who controls 95% of the resources and everyone else. The other Class War is orchestrated by the top 5% and their dupes (especially in the media) that pit the destitute against the poor, the poor against the working class, the working class against the middle class, and the upper- and lower-middle class against each other (categories defined by the media). It is just a different flavor of the stage-managed race, gender, and cultural conflicts that keep us fighting and distracting each other while elites slowly reduce us into a capitalist feudalism. If we buy into these petty inter-class struggles we deny ourselves allies in the greater war against those who would subjugate us all. We expend our energy heaping invective and contempt on those who are not exactly like us. It is the lie that keeps the people from organizing to redistribute wealth and power and imposing a true democracy in America. It is part of the greater lie that pits us against the people of other nations in the battle over allegedly diminishing resources. There are plenty of resources; the problem is a few elite seem to feel that they need to control them all. There is plenty of housing, but people are homeless. There is plenty of food, yet people starve. Greed and power madness are destroying the planet, not some faceless entity called the middle class.<P>
The middle class has become a sociopolitical construct, a propaganda label like \"Baby Boomer\" or \"Generation X.\" Labeling a group \"middle class\" is a marketing tool, a way to build false affinities to facilitate prepackaged ideologies and consumerism. Calling someone middle class generalizes and dehumanizes those \"others\" who are not one of our self-defined group. The term middle class is now, for all intents and purposes, meaningless. It is a weapon to divide us and deny us potential allies. It is a social sedative that tries to make us believe we are doing okay because we are middle class, the American dream. Over and over again speakers at the counter convention panels have reminded us that most Americans (the middle class) are behind us, that they share many of our concerns and beliefs, that middle America would join us if we can only get past the neo-liberal corporate media blackout and talk to them.<P>
Any contempt for other non-elites (e.g., most of us) plays into the hands of the true elites and their cronies. It is an ugly mirror, an aping of the contempt the ruling class has for us \"little people.\" It is defeatist and elitist. And it is popular because, above all, it is safe. Easy on the brain. It requires little thought. It ensures that nothing will change. Because if we don\'t get the great middle of America into our cause, we have are doomed to exist in the margins the ruling class and their media lap dogs have laid out for us. We will simply be scapegoats, freaks and fodder for media infotainment.
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