The Unfortunate Middle Class

I got the rare chance Saturday evening to have dinner with two classical music professors, a PhD engineer, three attorney's and a master's student with a great intelligence and better sense of humor than mine. We compared notes on our "Not Me!" bracelets and hatred of the current misadministration between courses of Fresh Seafood Bisque served with a crisp Pinot Grigio and medallions of elk tenderloin with a brown sugar demi-glace, mashed Bourbon sweet potatoes and snow peas sautéed with sweet red peppers in sesame oil paired with a medium bodied red zin. We were fancy in dress, fancy in talk and able to afford a night out with pleasant company. We are not the rest of the world. We aren't even an appreciable minority any longer. Strangely, we weren't worried about the quality of our lives or the heaviness of our purses. We were conscientious and more worried about everyone else’s quality of lives and how to improve same.

I wouldn't say any of us are stuck up, conceited, rich, powerful, or better than anyone else in any way (well except Bush, but that goes without saying). We are just more fortunate. We grew up understanding regardless of our original humble beginnings (some at the table were formerly homeless, or infested with worms, or the children of poor immigrants or farmers) that education was the ticket out of lesser circumstance. We worked diligently and with a bit of luck and spirit were able to parlay those educations into a pricey night on the town and intelligent conversation.

And as part of the fortunate, educated middle class, we choose to talk about public policy and how to solve the ills of the world. And we mean it. We can afford to care about what happens in our community. We can afford to leave work early or show up late to go vote. We can afford to watch World New Tonight with Peter Jennings instead of rushing out to DHS subsidized daycare to insure Junior is okay and no one hit him today, we can read the New York Times and maybe get a word or two of the crossword (in pencil).

The demographics from the last election have borne out that poor and uneducated people voted for Bush. They signed up to vote for the first time at the NASCAR race in Talladega or at the local Baptist ministry. Now they vote as an extension of their quest to insinuate their masculinity against the rest of the world because they can't support their families and they are truly powerless, thusly, impotent. They vote for the guy with the best Rambo impersonation because that's how they have to live and how they would like to see themselves. Hard, unyielding and virile (at least according to all of the paternity cases they have filed against them). They listen to songs like “Against the Wind” and think it was written specifically for them.

They like to see themselves as the underdog in a world gone rotten. And they prove the rest of the world is rotten via the lack of quality in their own lives. They are the hand-to-mouth-paycheck-to-paycheck-push-you-out-of-the-way-at-the-Wal-Mart-for that-latest-Bratz-toy-'cos-they-can't-afford-to-send-thar-childens-to-college-Friday-night-high-school-football-watchin'demographic. And rather than take personal responsibility and work hard in school (because it might be uncool), they take the closest 9 to 5'er, work themselves near to death between worker's comp claims and complain it's the Mexicans, slant-eyes or niggers' faults because some asshole in DC gave a big fat tax break to the company so their jobs can go overseas. They don’t see their part in the whole mess.

Red Staters take great pride in being dumb. Naw, they ain't high fallutin'. They ain’t learned. They've gots to work 'fer a living. They can't afford to be civil. They can't afford to think or read or enjoy a bit of Bèla Fleck and the Flecktones with a nice late harvest Riesling. They're too busy living the life of freebirdin’ Riley.

I alternate between hating these willfully ignorant fuckers and wanting them to have better. Their lack of logic may drive me batty, but mostly it's their unwillingness to do better for their children. Ironically, they can still shout yeehaw and put “W” stickers on the back of their pickup trucks not realizing the correlation between their dumbass prez-nit and the fact that gas for that very same pickup has doubled in the last four years or that that pickup isn’t really Amerikain made- it’s Amerikain branded and made by the same slopes and beaners that stole their jobs by their logic. They don’t understand that each time they sing “We’ll Put a Boot In Yer Ass” they buy into (and fund) the same overreaching corporate propaganda machine that controls their wankee doodle dandy prez-nit. (What was the line about forgive them for they know not what they do?)

Tell me how the fuck that makes sense? That we must vote for the asshole nearest to 10 on a Dirty Harry spectrum because looking tough is more important than substance? That truth and discourse are not nearly as important as having bigger guns, muscles or mullets than some French fucks? And that civility is a sign of wussiness? Don't they understand that only stockholders make money and they ain't got no stock?

I read recently about the civil war and how the landed gentry pushed the poor whites into supporting and fighting in the civil war (and didn’t give them shit for it except some worthless Confederate dollars and lousy healthcare- sounding familiar yet???). If these Red Staters could read at all or think about something more awe-inspiring than Jeff Gordon's win at Daytona this weekend, they might realize that the old adage about history repeating itself rings very true today.

I guess what they say about ignorance being bliss is true….depending on your altitude.