Ronald Reagan figured out a way to develop support for the right among the working class. It was brilliant in its simplicity: Lie. Pretend you already did.
He spoke in his speeches about a silent majority of conservative Americans who wanted fewer social services, lower taxes, and a dogwhistle in every segregated garage. He repeated his line over and over. Repeat something often enough, it goes from a lie to “something people are saying.”
His “Silent Majority” never existed, other than some paid employees stuffing envelopes for his campaign. The news media helped, reporting on the content and message of a political campaign to prove their impartiality, having already fallen victim to the continued repetition of the phrase “liberal media.”
No one loved the lie of the “liberal media” more than the media. They liked kowtowing to their corporate overlords in conservative lock step while being praised-through-insult for occasionally saying maybe the poor ain’t so bad.
“Is there a liberal bias in the media?” they would ask, again and again with self-deprecating concern, all the while disproportionately reporting crime by minorities, calling peaceful demonstrations “riots” if a trash can got tipped over and calling domestic terrorism “lone gunmen” if they happened to be white.
(You may have noticed this is a rant. Sorry, I am ranting.)
This partnership, between the conservative media eagerly reporting on its own “liberal bias” and the conservative politicians reporting on an imaginary blue collar base, has lead to the biggest gas-lighting operation in history: the erasure of the American working-class liberal.
Or progressive. I understand the terminology has changed and what we used to call ‘liberal’ is now ‘moderate’? When I was younger, ‘liberal’ meant pro-worker, pro-social-justice. I don’t really know what it means now when I hear people using it in conversation. So okay, I’ll start saying “Progressive.”
Regan’s little gaslighting trick is making a big comeback these days, though it never really went away. Class consciousness is on the rise, people are organizing at last, and somehow we end up with Ted Cruz wearing denim now and calling his “feed the poor to the rich” party “The working people’s party”? Excuse me while I push this vein back into my temple.
And our mainstream media in its conservatism embraces this with talk of “economic anxiety” leading to conservative votes, all too eager to assume and cater to a white audience. “Where are the white people we can talk to?” they seem to ask when looking for a “working class” perspective for an interview. It’s certainly very clear that right-wing politicians use “blue collar” as a dogwhistle for “white men below a certain income level,” ignoring the real diversity of America’s workforce.
Are you going to tell me the black woman behind the counter at nearly every store I go to is not “working class”? Why don’t I see someone like that in TV interviews seeking to show the “economic anxiety of the working class?” It’s always some very well paid skilled trade fellow … because those hard-sought-after-jobs tend to be held by white men.
What happens when you narrow your definition of “working class” to focus only on select members? White people are more likely to be conservative, as conservatism at its heart is the philosophy of maintaining status quo at the expense of the marginalized and for the benefit of the powerful. Since in our culture white people have more power, they are more conservative. That makes sense. Now, even if there are progressive white working class people — I know, I came from that world — they are a smaller percentage than progressive working class people of all races.
Most blue collar people are progressive. Even most white blue collar people. But you wouldn’t know it, and the blue-collar liberal ends up thinking of themselves as alone in a sea of red. Middle class and well-off conservatives in ball caps rush out cosplaying blue collar and the minority of blue collar people who agree with them become loud, feted by the news media slavering to show their unbiased reporting. Hell, even the people who really don’t care either way or haven’t examined their political opinions get swept in, assumed conservative by zip code.
Also, we need to amplify black and brown voices, not ignore them and assume we’re talking to white folks. We need to speak up about our views and encourage others to, not dismiss someone as “you’re just young.” That’s another thing – more young people are progressive, because they are also struggling to make ends meet, and their perspective is continually belittled. Listen to the young.
We need to make it so that people like me, when I was a pinko-commie poor kid from the projects, don’t feel erased in every conversation.
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