Class and the White Trash Revolution (WTR)
Middle- and upper-class America are desperately fighting the WTR, just as they have historically always fought off White Trash demands for justice and fairness. And it is true that there is no guarantee at this date that the WTR will not descend into fascism. Certainly, many of the same xenophobic and fascist elements are similar to the 1930s.
This is partially why the demonization of Trump supporters is something which should never be tolerated by any thinking or moral person – it only fuels the climate of ignorance and anger which fascism thrives upon.
This is a very interesting discussion of a new book out, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016) by Nancy Isenberg.
http://thesaker.is/white-trash-both-a-book-and-trump-revolution/
The article's author points out that Europe has had revolutions focused on their Trash issues, but the US never did, and adds:
The book elevates the importance that post-Civil War poll taxes were also unaffordable for White Trash. It is the banning of poll taxes with the 24th amendment in 1964, and not the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which finally gave poor, landless White Trash a true democratic voice.
The author also argues that countries that addressed those issues, such as Cuba, Iran, Yugoslavia, China, and the USSR now have much better conditions for all those who would have been their Trash.
It's definitely worth reading the whole article.
Comments
Only five states had poll taxes in 1964.
And the SCOTUS gave the 24th Amendment an important assist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_Stat...
Granted, five states is five too many, especially when all five were Jim Crow states until 1964.
A paradox
The only way that poor middle America is going to see real change is if the government makes economic justice a real priority and uses the power of government to deploy a strategy to achieve this goal. Unfortunately, the use of the government to achieve common goals has been done to enforce the strategy of the dominance of power. Therefore poor middle America is adverse to the single power that can save them. On top of this, America has seen growth caused by Frontier economics, and I mean this in a general sense, from the availability of land to the frontier of the growth of small manufacturing in the Midwest. This mechanism, Frontier Economics, is not going to happen to any significant degree in the future. Therefore we have to design a real civilization going forward. That process is an anathema to Middle America.
Trump will not succeed, except in the short run. His solutions are not based on any overall design of a new American society/economy, but on random ideas picked up from the blogosphere, bizarrely melded with traditional conservative ideas. For instance, the economics of guns-or-butter is constant, yet Trump is going to spend massive more money on weapons, while supposedly improving the lot of Middle America. Middle America shops at discount big-box stores that import almost of their merchandise from China. His policies will increase the cost of consumer goods, effectively lowering the living standards of these folks. Unless you attack the problem from the system standpoint you are doomed to fail in the long run. And the system standpoint requires more socialism; the use of the government to create economic justice. Socialism is an anathema to socially/politically conservative Middle America. Perhaps this is why the US oscillates from Republican dominance to Democrat dominance. Middle America looks to the Republicans to solve their problems with conservative ideas. When that fails, as it will inevitably, they turn to Democrats, who sound like they favor the people, but are functionally indistinguishable from the Republicans. Meanwhile America continues to ratchet down, except for the ultra wealthy who are riding the largest bubble in all of history.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Trump lives in another world, but he did realize parts
of the problem - and Bannon is odd, but apparently very populist. It's a long shot, but Trump wants to be reelected, and it won't happen unless he produces some clear improvements for us WT. Meantime, he has to drag the GOP along with him, and they've already more or less accepted no TPP, etc. and maybe infrastructure spending. It's clearly painful for them.
It is a long shot, but he's not stupid, and his self-interest depends on what he can accomplish. I think he has enough money to be able to think about a "legacy" now instead of more. Money is probably just a scorecard at this point.. FDR was rich, too, and didn't start out with the policies he ended up giving us. Can't give up hope yet.
This is the problem.
When the "Left" explicitly abandons the common people and in some cases declares them to be enemies, it is an opportunity for the Right to draw these people nearer to them on one or more specific issues, e.g. Brexit. Why wouldn't people support the only groups that say that they are on the peoples side?. But there are these decidedly Fascistic undercurrents at play which may lead to some very bad things. Until the Left gets back to its Classed base roots, the future is bleak.
"People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases."