Note: Hearing it was the 20th anniversary of the release of that horse opera I went back to see what I'd written about it. Here's something I think is worth going over again. You might want to read the brawl at the original posting which featured mostly the superior observations of RMJ and the opposite from you know who and one of his side-kicks and with minimal content from me. I found it interesting
Friday, November 18, 2016
I've Never Heard Liberals Say "Mansion Trash" or "Penthouse Trash" The People Who Really Gave Us Trump
I suspect that, unlike most of the people who throw around the term "trailer trash" and who use that form of housing as a term of disparagement, I've known a lot of people who lived in trailers. Most of them are quite decent people who have that most unforgivable of conditions even among the allegedly liberal, being poor*.
Having gone to college, knowing lots of college faculty, having spent time among the Ivy League class of people, I also have had a chance to see the clean, well coiffed and manicured wealthy up close and in their element and. as well, the academic and intellectual class. I will say that they've got nothing on the people who live in trailers by way of trashy behavior. If anything, more of the people I've known who live in trailers have higher morals than the wealthy and well-educated, a number of them have more sense, as well.
I can't talk about this without again bringing up the main character in Brokeback Mountain, Ennis Del Mar and that Annie Proulx not only put him, that most sympathetic of tragic figures among the liberal elite, in a trailer, And the admirable Ms. Proulx, not only put him in a dilapidated trailer, she made him what would be considered "trailer trash" from the start, having him urinate in the sink. I doubt anyone I know who lives in a trailer does that, though almost every man I've known who lives in a trailer has a wife who wouldn't put up with that.
But urinating in a sink, if it's your sink and no one else uses it, is a crime against your own sanitation, it isn't rank amorality and moral depravity of the kind our elites envelop the world in. Reading about how Charles Kushner, Ivanka Trumps father in law father got back at his own sister and brother-in-law for turning states witness against him.
Now he has stepped down as chairman of his company. His days as a political force both nationally and in New Jersey are over. Saddest of all, he has shattered his once close-knit family. The days when the Kushner clan—Charles and his three siblings and all their spouses and kids and grandkids—would travel to Miami together for Passover are long gone. He and his older brother, Murray, have not spoken in more than two years as a result of a bitter lawsuit over money Murray believed Charles owed him from deals they had done together—a lawsuit that Charles Kushner’s supporters claim opened the door for the U.S. Attorney’s investigation into his campaign-finance activities.
And, of course, to add to the horror, the federal witnesses he had attempted to retaliate against were his sister and brother-in-law, who were cooperating with that same investigation. Kushner paid a prostitute $10,000 to lure his brother-in-law to a motel room at the Red Bull Inn in Bridgewater to have sex with him. A hidden camera recorded the activity, and Kushner sent the lurid tape to his sister, making sure the tape arrived on the day of a family party.
As he sat in his office less than 24 hours after his guilty plea, the phone rang. The caller couldn’t have been more unexpected—it was Governor Jim McGreevey. Though Kushner had given the governor more than $1.5 million for his two races and was instrumental in his rise to power, the two had barely spoken in months.
I don't know anyone who lives in a trailer who has ever done anything worse than these guys and their tale of trashiness could be met with equally trashy stories from the millionaire and billionaire class thousands of times. You wonder why liberals don't put the blame for the creation and election of Trump where it really belongs, with this class of trash. Could it be because their alleged liberalism is a manifestation of upper class snobbery far more than any real devotion to economic justice? Could it be because it's far less risky to kick down than up? Or could it be that they're really just not liberal?
The rich class, beyond any doubt, contains a far, far higher percentage of people who engage in the trashiest of behavior than the poorer class, yet it's poor people who are blanketed with the behavior of the worst of them. Rich people hire lawyers and lobbyists and buy politicians and judges to make their trashiest behavior legal and allowed, they get praise for it in the well paid media, staffed by rich people - look at Trump. A real difference in what gets called "liberal" and what gets called "conservative" in the United States, Britain and elsewhere is in which poor people are the objects of their scorn and hatred. Conservatives in the United States focus theirs on Black People, Latinos, and others while treating poor whites as stupid people who can be manipulated into a resource, acting as their tools. Alleged liberals, those people who are always congratulating themselves on their brilliance, aid them by heaping scorn and derision on poor white people while sentimentalizing the poverty of Black People and Latinos. The liberal supported American media has been part of the right-wing's gaming of the stupidity and hypocrisy of alleged liberals to their political and, so, financial advantage. In this, the biggest dopes of all have been liberals of the type who have not learned a single thing in the past half-century of what happens when they play along with this.
As I said, to the fury of several people, after watching them for more than half a century, secular liberals are about the stupidest political identity, the kind who can go on with a rotten and stupidly self-defeating habit as it fails and fails again and again. They really are stupider than the Sneetches in Dr. Suess's story. They learned from getting cheated through their own stupidity. I see little sign that many liberals have or will.
I put any hope for liberalism learning and not acting so stupidly on those who put egalitarian democracy and justice before their own preening self-congratulation. The kind of people who wouldn't think in terms like "trailer trash" or find it fun to say it because they know it is wrong and the don't want to hurt people.
* I used to wonder what the difference between living in a trailer was and living in one of the "tiny houses" that may still be a fad among such wealthy people. I suspect the difference is in the price per square foot. When I first started reading about the "tiny house movement" my first thought was of small houses that would be good for poor people to live in, then I saw the bijoux boxes that, somehow, seem to get bigger and bigger in the "tiny house movement" little custom made mansions that have more to do with Thomas Jefferson's useless garden folly than with Thoreau's cabin or the Mad Houser's outlaw huts for the destitute. I can't think of anything more trashy than some of the Faberge class tiny houses I've seen. They turn my stomach in a way that reading about Ennis Del Mar pissing in his sink doesn't.
Update: An example is demanded. Well, here's what the oh, so amusing Rude Pundit had to say recently.
My friend Duke from West Virginia said something that had crossed my mind but had shoved aside as bitterness: "Fuck the white working class. Obama gave them health insurance and a chance to get new jobs and they hated him. Fuck them."
Without thinking, I immediately agreed, and as soon as I did, it made total sense. "You're right. Democrats need to abandon the white working class." By "abandon," I mean not trying to desperately court the votes of people who always vote against their best interests and against those who are trying to help them. See, Democrats don't have a working class white people problem. Working class white people have the problem. When you vote against those who are trying to help you for the very people who have harmed you, then you are not dealing with rational thought.
Yeah, that's patronizing and elitist. But nearly half of the voters in a presidential election chose the man who regularly lied to them. So you'll have to forget it if you want me to romanticize and normalize their ignorance.
By the way, that ignorance is a product of years of Republican fuckery at the local level to assure them that they do not get educated. That long game has finally paid off big time.
Just who does he think has benefited from large numbers of the white underclass believing this is how liberals think about them for most of the past fifty years? And why does a smart guy like him figure that pattern won't continue?
Poor white people will make common cause with poor Black People and poor Latinos before such liberals give up their preening conceit.
Update 2: I've pointed out who voted for Trump, white people in our age group whose median income is about $72,000 a year. Higher in income and older and whiter than those who voted for Hillary Clinton. If you want to blame anyone for electing Trump, Simps, it's more likely to be people who were grooving with you in college than not.
Having gone to college, knowing lots of college faculty, having spent time among the Ivy League class of people, I also have had a chance to see the clean, well coiffed and manicured wealthy up close and in their element and. as well, the academic and intellectual class. I will say that they've got nothing on the people who live in trailers by way of trashy behavior. If anything, more of the people I've known who live in trailers have higher morals than the wealthy and well-educated, a number of them have more sense, as well.
I can't talk about this without again bringing up the main character in Brokeback Mountain, Ennis Del Mar and that Annie Proulx not only put him, that most sympathetic of tragic figures among the liberal elite, in a trailer, And the admirable Ms. Proulx, not only put him in a dilapidated trailer, she made him what would be considered "trailer trash" from the start, having him urinate in the sink. I doubt anyone I know who lives in a trailer does that, though almost every man I've known who lives in a trailer has a wife who wouldn't put up with that.
But urinating in a sink, if it's your sink and no one else uses it, is a crime against your own sanitation, it isn't rank amorality and moral depravity of the kind our elites envelop the world in. Reading about how Charles Kushner, Ivanka Trumps father in law father got back at his own sister and brother-in-law for turning states witness against him.
Now he has stepped down as chairman of his company. His days as a political force both nationally and in New Jersey are over. Saddest of all, he has shattered his once close-knit family. The days when the Kushner clan—Charles and his three siblings and all their spouses and kids and grandkids—would travel to Miami together for Passover are long gone. He and his older brother, Murray, have not spoken in more than two years as a result of a bitter lawsuit over money Murray believed Charles owed him from deals they had done together—a lawsuit that Charles Kushner’s supporters claim opened the door for the U.S. Attorney’s investigation into his campaign-finance activities.
And, of course, to add to the horror, the federal witnesses he had attempted to retaliate against were his sister and brother-in-law, who were cooperating with that same investigation. Kushner paid a prostitute $10,000 to lure his brother-in-law to a motel room at the Red Bull Inn in Bridgewater to have sex with him. A hidden camera recorded the activity, and Kushner sent the lurid tape to his sister, making sure the tape arrived on the day of a family party.
As he sat in his office less than 24 hours after his guilty plea, the phone rang. The caller couldn’t have been more unexpected—it was Governor Jim McGreevey. Though Kushner had given the governor more than $1.5 million for his two races and was instrumental in his rise to power, the two had barely spoken in months.
I don't know anyone who lives in a trailer who has ever done anything worse than these guys and their tale of trashiness could be met with equally trashy stories from the millionaire and billionaire class thousands of times. You wonder why liberals don't put the blame for the creation and election of Trump where it really belongs, with this class of trash. Could it be because their alleged liberalism is a manifestation of upper class snobbery far more than any real devotion to economic justice? Could it be because it's far less risky to kick down than up? Or could it be that they're really just not liberal?
The rich class, beyond any doubt, contains a far, far higher percentage of people who engage in the trashiest of behavior than the poorer class, yet it's poor people who are blanketed with the behavior of the worst of them. Rich people hire lawyers and lobbyists and buy politicians and judges to make their trashiest behavior legal and allowed, they get praise for it in the well paid media, staffed by rich people - look at Trump. A real difference in what gets called "liberal" and what gets called "conservative" in the United States, Britain and elsewhere is in which poor people are the objects of their scorn and hatred. Conservatives in the United States focus theirs on Black People, Latinos, and others while treating poor whites as stupid people who can be manipulated into a resource, acting as their tools. Alleged liberals, those people who are always congratulating themselves on their brilliance, aid them by heaping scorn and derision on poor white people while sentimentalizing the poverty of Black People and Latinos. The liberal supported American media has been part of the right-wing's gaming of the stupidity and hypocrisy of alleged liberals to their political and, so, financial advantage. In this, the biggest dopes of all have been liberals of the type who have not learned a single thing in the past half-century of what happens when they play along with this.
As I said, to the fury of several people, after watching them for more than half a century, secular liberals are about the stupidest political identity, the kind who can go on with a rotten and stupidly self-defeating habit as it fails and fails again and again. They really are stupider than the Sneetches in Dr. Suess's story. They learned from getting cheated through their own stupidity. I see little sign that many liberals have or will.
I put any hope for liberalism learning and not acting so stupidly on those who put egalitarian democracy and justice before their own preening self-congratulation. The kind of people who wouldn't think in terms like "trailer trash" or find it fun to say it because they know it is wrong and the don't want to hurt people.
* I used to wonder what the difference between living in a trailer was and living in one of the "tiny houses" that may still be a fad among such wealthy people. I suspect the difference is in the price per square foot. When I first started reading about the "tiny house movement" my first thought was of small houses that would be good for poor people to live in, then I saw the bijoux boxes that, somehow, seem to get bigger and bigger in the "tiny house movement" little custom made mansions that have more to do with Thomas Jefferson's useless garden folly than with Thoreau's cabin or the Mad Houser's outlaw huts for the destitute. I can't think of anything more trashy than some of the Faberge class tiny houses I've seen. They turn my stomach in a way that reading about Ennis Del Mar pissing in his sink doesn't.
Update: An example is demanded. Well, here's what the oh, so amusing Rude Pundit had to say recently.
My friend Duke from West Virginia said something that had crossed my mind but had shoved aside as bitterness: "Fuck the white working class. Obama gave them health insurance and a chance to get new jobs and they hated him. Fuck them."
Without thinking, I immediately agreed, and as soon as I did, it made total sense. "You're right. Democrats need to abandon the white working class." By "abandon," I mean not trying to desperately court the votes of people who always vote against their best interests and against those who are trying to help them. See, Democrats don't have a working class white people problem. Working class white people have the problem. When you vote against those who are trying to help you for the very people who have harmed you, then you are not dealing with rational thought.
Yeah, that's patronizing and elitist. But nearly half of the voters in a presidential election chose the man who regularly lied to them. So you'll have to forget it if you want me to romanticize and normalize their ignorance.
By the way, that ignorance is a product of years of Republican fuckery at the local level to assure them that they do not get educated. That long game has finally paid off big time.
Just who does he think has benefited from large numbers of the white underclass believing this is how liberals think about them for most of the past fifty years? And why does a smart guy like him figure that pattern won't continue?
Poor white people will make common cause with poor Black People and poor Latinos before such liberals give up their preening conceit.
Update 2: I've pointed out who voted for Trump, white people in our age group whose median income is about $72,000 a year. Higher in income and older and whiter than those who voted for Hillary Clinton. If you want to blame anyone for electing Trump, Simps, it's more likely to be people who were grooving with you in college than not.
Update 2025: You don't have to take my word for it, you can hear and watch the opera. Annie Proulx did a really, surprisingly good job with the libretto, which is a far different thing from writing a prose story. I have no doubt at all that of all his many works this is the one work of Charles Wuorinen that will enter into the repertoire. If he has "a" masterpiece this is it.