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Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: CG6468 on June 03, 2013, 10:52:00 AM

Title: The classes and gaps that divide us
Post by: CG6468 on June 03, 2013, 10:52:00 AM

Quote

The classes and gaps that divide us
T.R. Fehrenbach, Express-News Columnist

Updated 10:52 pm, Sunday, May 12, 2013

“We are two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy, who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.”

Benjamin Disraeli,Victorian prime minister of Great Britain


The concept of “two nations,” the rich and the poor, has become a political and social cliché. It replaced the “noble” and the “common sort.” In the United States, however, until recently it has never been fashionable to define social classes in harsh terms — or even admit these exist.

An overwhelming majority of Americans — 85 percent — believe they are “middle class,” which is of course nonsense. Most of the supporting classes have been promoted, in the fashion that janitors became building superintendents.

The majority of professional politicians know differently, but they are unlikely to say it. The media then often ignore who or what forms the political parties and political bases that they represent.

Both major parties are loose — and often not very friendly — alliances of social groups.

Democrats attract the young (millesimal), the Hispanics, African-Americans, unmarried females, public-payroll intellectuals (e.g., educators), public-sector unionized workers, extreme ecologists (Greens), and welfare cases. These groups form a majority of urban America.

As the party has shifted and changed, it has lost most of its old, true-middle-class, conservative groups (white Southerners, small business) and established itself on the East and West coasts in rather radical reform.

The core Democrat (except for professionals) is not so much “liberal” as believing that he needs and deserves help from government.

It is my opinion that such groups are no great foundation for a rich and powerful nation or an effective functioning government. The groups provide too little to and demand too much from society and government.

The red-dyed Republican tends to be a church-goer (any denomination), business type, entrepreneur (once he's made a buck and hopes to keep it), contently married woman, rural resident (white), farmer, engineer, hard scientist (like physicist), dubious about the state, and to a large extent, a federal income-tax payer. These do not make a solid base for governance unless well-led, recalling Reagan as opposed to the Nine Dwarves who ran for president last year.

Food for discussion (http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/columnists/tr_fehrenbach/article/The-classes-and-gaps-that-divide-us-4506014.php)

Title: Re: The classes and gaps that divide us
Post by: Dori on June 03, 2013, 11:00:59 AM

It's not the divide between the rich and poor that is tearing this nation apart.

It's the divide between the political classes and it's deliberate.