May 4, 2019: Working Class Hero, Despising The Heartland, When Smith-Blarney Speaks

“Keep you doped with religion

and sex and TV
and you think you're so clever
and classless and free
but you're still fucking peasants
as far as I can see

A Working Class Hero is something to be
A Working Class Hero is something to be”

                         ----John Lennon “Working Class Hero”

“Who really despises the American heartland?”, asks economist Paul Krugman in The New York Times. (1) The Republicans, that's who.

Oh yes, 'liberals' like Bill Maher routinely denigrate the 'flyover' states, claiming that all one sees from the height of fifty thousand feet are vast empty spaces. Farms, says Maher, are so boring. Maher isn't alone. Books like “What's Wrong With Kansas” have been painted the plains as the modern home of the Flintstones as the 'liberal elite' struggle to understand what is happening in America.

While denigrating the great Heartland, liberals fail to understand that it is from this America that gave birth to the very ideals and institutional reforms that they hold dear. What's happening in the

Heartland is that it has been left behind. Liberals, failing to come to grips with what has happened in the last half-century, are perplexed and deeply frustrated. A frustration that boils over, on occasion, into statements embodied in the remarks of comedian Bill Maher. 

But for true contempt, as Krugman points out, one must turn to the conservatives. Conservatives, always representing Wall Street and the moneyed interests have long held those that create the wealth in contempt. One has only to consult their tax policies—taxing work at higher rates than wealth—as evidence of this. Accordingly, they routinely disparage those that sweat for a living, from the urban working class to the farmers of the Midwest and South. As an example, Krugman presents tRUMP's nominee to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Stephen Moore.

“'If you live in the Midwest, where else do you want to live besides Chicago? You don't want to live in Cincinnati or Cleveland or, you know, these armpits of America.' So declared Stephen Moore, the man Donald Trump wants to install on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, during a 2014 event held at a think tank called, yes, the Heartland Institute.

“The Crowd laughed.

“Moore”, continued Krugman, “is an indefensible choice on many grounds. Even if he hadn't shown himself to be extremely misogynistic and have an ugly personal history, his track record on economics—always wrong, never admitting error or learning from it—is utterly disqualifying.

“His remarks about the Midwest, however, highlight more than his unsuitability for the Fed. They also provide an illustration of something I've been noticing for a while: The thinly veiled contempt conservative elites feel for the middle-American voters they depend on.” (2)

“This is not the story you usually hear”, notes Krugman. Indeed it is the liberals that are held to hold the heartland in contempt, a charge going back to the late sixties moniker “limousine liberal” and reinforced by “a story line pushed relentlessly by Fox News and other propaganda organizations, relying on out-of-context quotes and sheer fabrication.” (3) It is a charge that has become so pervasive that, noticed Krugman, the liberals themselves have come to believe it.

“Conservative contempt, by contrast, is real. Moore's 'armpit' line evidently didn't shock his audience, probably because disparaging view about middle America are widespread among right-wing intellectual and, more discreetly, right-wing politicians” (4)

Krugman makes it clear that the crisis is real. In what he calls the Eastern Heartland the very real social and economic crisis has translated persistently high unemployment “among working-age men” into “a surge in mortality from alcohol, suicide and opioids--'deaths of despair,' in the phrase of Anne Case and Angus Deaton.” (5) Indeed, comedian Bill Maher noted over a year ago the correlation of tRUMP support and areas of the country with the highest drug use.

Declining opportunities lead to social disruption as the metropolitan coasts are favored over rural America. One need look only to West Virginia, where disinvestment in the region has led to the highest opioid use in the country. A state that, like Alabama, gave tRUMP his highest majorities. Indeed, comedian Bill Maher noted over a year ago the correlation of tRUMP support and areas of the country with the highest drug use. It has come to this: it now takes the infusion of massive dose of opiates, along with fundamentalist religion and Faux News to hold up this “working class hero”; to mask the fraud that is our Caesar Disgustus and the ReSCUMlickan appeal to the working classes. We are still fucking peasants as far as they can see.

Incidentally Moore and Herman Cain have withdrawn their nominations to the Federal Reserve Board. Evidently Wall Street is beginning to fear the consequences of imposing ignorance on the system and vandalizing the financial system is apparently a bridge too far. When Smith-Blarney speaks even, it seems, this administration listens.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

______________

1. Krugman, Paul. “Armpits, White Ghettos And Contempt.” The New York Times. Friday, April 26, 2019. Page A27.
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ibid
5. Ibid