Liberal Talk Radio

It’s time for us progressives to admit that one of our shibboleths — the idea of the perfectly equitable society — has been tried and found wanting. The evidence of educational, social, and economic disparity is all around us. And the gap ain’t closin’ anytime soon.

While I hestitate to call modern America a “class-based” society (caste-based may be more accurate), it’s possible to see without removing too many scales from one’s eyes a range of socio-economic classes that are becoming increasingly impenetrable.

A quirk of this evolving mileau is that American castes are not necessarily based on income. Many of my friends have chosen to work in the arts or social services — it may shock you to learn that Matski himself pulls in less, much less, than a typical plumber or electrician. Yet I still consider myself to be a member of the elite. I myself might struggle to pay the bills every month, but my friends are management consultants or lawyers and when we splurge it’s tinto and tapas, not beer and brats.

It’s exactly this cultural split that’s been causing so much consternation among the Democratic nomenclatura. And there’s been a lot of talk about how the Upper East Side can reconnect with Downriver and Renton. Much of this talk focuses on how we can “dumb down” our message. John Kerry went duck hunting. Hell, Dukakis rode in a tank. As we know, part of the problem is that our candidates are so singularly lacking in charisma that one might believe they are bred that way to the specifications of the Democratic establishment.

But part of the problem is our own lingering self-doubt over whether or not our lifestyle choices are valid. Call it what you will: white guilt, Catholic guilt, Jewish guilt. Guilt = insecurity. And it’s this insecurity that is the root cause of so much of our difficulties. Love him or hate him, Bush has balls. Get over that — it’s the truth. We cannot make the mistake of underestimating our enemies. Hold your nose, choke it down with some sugar or whatever you need to do, but respect the man for his audacity. It’s a quality that Americans admire, to the tune of 62,000,000 votes.

Let me digress a little and tell you a story. A good friend of mine from a Purple county (Reagan Democrat country) in the industrial midwest, a man with a W sticker on his fridge, a churchgoing man who kneels to pray every night, a deer hunter who proudly displays a nine-point rack in his basement, a farmer — this man loves good beer. Maybe it’s no coincidence that he’s also married to a Mexican-American woman, his brother married a Korean-American, and his sister is engaged to a Mexican. How did the very stereotype of a Bush-voter adopt these internationalist and cosmopolitan affectations? Yours truly will take a little of the credit — my own travels as a young man inspired him to backpack through Europe, and ultimately to spend a year as an au pair to a wealthy family in Geneva. While it’s true that he is a W supporter, it’s not clear to me that his children will be.

My point is this: it’s possible to bring Reds and Purples along with us to the tapas bars and the fancy bistros. But it takes leadership and not cajoling. My friend saw how much fun I was having, drank some Pilsners with me, and decided it was something to try for himself. If I’d've looked down my nose at him, forced him to drink my expensive lager, I’d've lost a friend, and with it my hope for America.

So, we need to show some leadership here. We need to show the Reds and Purples that our lifestyle is 1) desirable and 2) attainable. And how do we do that? By having more fun than they do, and by not denying them or ridiculing the fun they have now. We cannot apologize for our lifestyles. We can’t pretend (and many of us who’ve chosen less remunerative careers are the worst about this), we simply can’t pretend that we’re somehow morally superior to Reds because we have the means to somehow live without profit being our sole driving force.

That’s the “desirable” part. The “attainable” part comes from continuing to promote a vision of society in which anyone can achieve their goals, no matter what their means. And that means we have to continue to uphold the cornerstones of our social policies, even as we begin to speak about them with different language. Universal health care, for instance, isn’t just “the right thing to do,” it also encourages achievement by shifting risk for bold personal choices to the Federal government. The same is true of Social Security and educational improvements. These are critical, essential underpinnings of economic growth and personal opportunity.

One of my favorite paintings is Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters. There’s a quiet nobility in the people portrayed here. They are poor, but proud, and glad to partake of a humble supper. But — listen to me here — Matski himself knows what welfare cheese tastes like. If there’s a true nobility in poverty, I never found it. It’s as ridiculous for us to romanticize the poor as it is to aggrandize ourselves. We know that we “educated elites” are healthier, eat better food, are less likely to be overweight, and live longer. So let’s just get over our guilt once and for all. Our lifestyles ARE better, game, set, match.

As a friend of mine puts it, “I’m a progressive because I want everyone to be rich.” (Thanks for that gem, Jen.) And that’s the difference between progressives and radical Republicans. The radicals (and they are all radical, these days) seem to believe that there is only a limited supply of wealth, education, and general happiness to go around. They’ve got theirs, now they want to keep it. And they’ve pulled the devil’s trick, convincing 62,000,000 that somehow maintaining privelege for a few benefits the many. They’ve done this by speaking of beer but drinking of wine. And so by this disingenuousness they will have managed to spend at least 12 years destroying the most sacred principle of our society — the idea that every single person has the opportunity to achieve whatever they desire in life.

These radicals are an elite, just as surely as we progressives are. Our leaders went to the same schools, hold equivalent positions in the workplace, and read the same textbooks (if not the same magazines). The main difference is that the Radical Republicans want their elite to be exclusive.

We progressives, on the other hand, must embrace our elite status. And we need to continue to extend a hand to those of us in need, as we have done so effectively for most of the last 60 years. Yes, we are an elite. But we are an inclusive elite. Our world is open to anyone with an open mind and a kind heart.