White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

Yeah, they want to be servants to an absolute ruler in a white state. What else is new?

White Trash is the term that over-paid, under-worked urban parasites use to describe the farmers, truck drivers, firemen, and utility workers that keep them alive.

They do have a lot of sway. If they went out on strike, those urban lawyers and stockbrokers and artistes would soon be eating one another.

What contempt you have for working people.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

Science teaches us to doubt. 

  Claude Bernard

The myth of the "working class Trumper reactionary" has been deconstructed many times. 'Working people' didn't put him in office by themselves. It was as much anyone "working class" as it was pampered housewives from Pennsylvania, professional Twitter-bloggers, and well-paid engineers who seem to idealize truck drivers (aside from the part of the job that involves grueling hours for significantly less pay.)

Seems unlikely...

An artist works. Few artists are as respectable as a fireman, however:

'The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man ? that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense ? has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.'

Enough time has passed that mostly what remains is idealized memory of the glory of the steel, ships, automobiles, industries and factories where fields of pennyroyal grow, now.

The memory that hasn't remained as fresh is just how hard the "powers that be" can punch when the people that built it got uppity.

The boomers, I figure they must have had it pretty good, on average, or they wouldn't have forgot. They never got very uppity. Never had to.

ges popular myths about equality in the land of opportunity.

Trump all the way to the White House have been a permanent part of the Ame rican fabric, and reveals how the wretched and landless poor have existed f rom the time of the earliest British colonial settlements to today's hillbi llies.

y nineteenth century and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted white t rash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics - a widely po..."

Those occupations make pretty good money these days. There are more than a few millionaire farmers.

I don't have contempt for working people, unless they screw up. That's a du mb thing to say.

Another article on the topic:

"I talked to Trump voters in 2016, and many of them felt that Trump was not a nice person, even a jerk, but their fantasy was that he was one of those rich guys with a big ego who needed to be a hero. Progressives who merely mock this way of thinking rather than create a strategy to deal with it are going to get four more years of Trump."

Likely so, American progressives often don't make particularly good friends, either.

On Sunday, October 18, 2020 at 2:16:15 PM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wr ote:

es popular myths about equality in the land of opportunity.

Trump all the way to the White House have been a permanent part of the Amer ican fabric, and reveals how the wretched and landless poor have existed fr om the time of the earliest British colonial settlements to today's hillbil lies.

nineteenth century and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues n early as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted white tr ash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics - a widely po..."

Does she reference "Hilbilly Elegy", JD Vance and "Coming Apart" by C Murray? "Coming Apart" written in 2012 is still worth a read. As a related question, why is the stock market doing so well this year?

George H.

Chinas factories are making profits for large american companies, and the deficit spending is going to the pockets of tyhe rich too.

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  Jasen.

Perfectly Stated!

On Monday, October 19, 2020 at 9:12:59 PM UTC+11, snipped-for-privacy@columbus.rr.com wr ote:

Actually not.

It's certainly not what sane people understand by the term "white trash". A nybody who was gainfully employed in asteady job wouldn't be "white trash".

John Larkin may have a particular sensitivity to the term by virtue of his extended family background. He hasn't been all that forthcoming about what his cousins got up to when he was a kid. They may not have been Jukes and Kallikaks but he hasn't actually boasted about them - and he misses few opp ortunities to do boast.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Because interest rates are being forced down. It won't end well.

It's dangerous to let economists run an economy.

Aside from the implicit nonsense, this is explicitly false. The GOP didn't exist in the early 19th century.

.

enges popular myths about equality in the land of opportunity.

ed Trump all the way to the White House have been a permanent part of the A merican fabric, and reveals how the wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlements to today's hill billies.

rly nineteenth century and the Civil War itself was fought over class issue s nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics - a widely po..."

Yeah, well I don't understand economics.... (When not T-bashing the money illusion is OK.)

But cheap money seems to favor those with debt, So invest in companies with no debt if I'm worried about that? (Investing is rent seeking... it feels a little dirty to me. Same as amazon is dirty/evil... but I still order stuff.)

George H.

That's my point. Nobody does. Best to leave things alone.

I've noticed that Amazon refuses to post zero-star reviews.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

Science teaches us to doubt. 

  Claude Bernard

hip.

allenges popular myths about equality in the land of opportunity.

osted Trump all the way to the White House have been a permanent part of th e American fabric, and reveals how the wretched and landless poor have exis ted from the time of the earliest British colonial settlements to today's h illbillies.

early nineteenth century and the Civil War itself was fought over class is sues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted wh ite trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenic s - a widely po..."

r?

We all get at least one star here in the good ol' US of A. :^) GH

How does one tell the difference between a programmer and a normal person? Ask them both to count to 10. The programmers will start counting at zero. Normal people will start at one. Amazon is run by real people, not programmers.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

It's a whole lot more dangerous to leave the economy in the hands of people who think they understand economics.

The Great Depression made that pretty obvious.

What John Larkin thinks he knows about economics and economists isn't worth posting. Quite a few economists know a great deal about the economy. Quite a few peo ple with lots of money want the economy to work well for them, rather than for everybody involved, and spread a lot of propaganda devaluing what econo mists do know. It's the same principle as lies about climate change and Joh n Larkin is a sucker for them too.

Investing isn't rent-seeking. If you didn't invest there wouldn't be any re nt. Rent -seeking is more setting up deals whre you collect a lot of money without providng a service.

Sounds sensible. They exist to sell stuff and , zero star reviews won't do that.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

The inception of the Republican party and its early popularity was somewhat congruent with the early popularity of Marxism, the Party of Lincoln had to exist before Marx could give it the high praise that he did....

Interesting. I hadn't known about that. Marx didn't develop his silly ideas about "the leading role of the party" until rather later - they got him th rown out of the international socialist movement in 1871, on the grounds th at they were un-democratic and likely to lead to tyranny, as indeed they di d, but not for another fifty years or so.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

I've met rather few real Marxists in the US, even though "Marxist" in the US tends to be a catch-all term for anyone who figures it's a good idea to have a first-world healthcare system.

They do exist, you can find them in lil coffee shops down the street from Harvard U., most are young and having a certain number of tattoos seems to be a party requirement, these days.

No real Marxist would ever be caught dead inside a polling place. "Electorialism" is a dirty word, it's global revolution or nothing, electorialism? that's for right-wingers and liberals, and in those circles a "liberal" is another name for a status-quo-preserving sonofabitch who helps right-wingers do things they can't do themselves.