Here is one change that has happened over the last 60 years--a widening gap between blue-collar and white-collar workers. In 1962 my parents bought a brand-new house in a rapidly growing suburb on the north side of Cincinnati. The price of that new house was $16,000. And in those days, blue-collar- and white-collar workers still lived in the same neighborhoods, shopped at the same stores, and often went to the same churches. At the congregation a mile away from our house that we attended, the elders and deacons included both blue- and white-collar people. My high school classmates came from both groups; and if their parents had gone to college (mostly on the GI bill), they were the first in their families to do so.
Even in the late '70s, you could still buy a newly-built home for under $30,000; the run-down fixer-upper that my wife and I bought and rehabbed only cost us $17,000. The stagflation of the late '70s and '80s started a rise in the cost of housing that far outstripped the rise of wages, and over time separated the two groups of workers more effectively than any intentional program could have done.
Here is a though I have for those World readers who are of white-collar, executive, or professional status: At the congregation you attend, are there any blue-collar people sitting in the pews? And do you ever talk to any of them? Are any of them among your friends?
SAWGUNNER
I still recall seeing pix of South Carolina textile mill workers wearing shirts promoting NAFTA. Incentivizing off shoring of basic industries and then dropping tariffs on the goods made off shore was incredibly short sighted. I guess the plan was for these new factory workers to (1) remain in places like Guatemala or Honduras, and (2) purchase US made items with their pay from sneaker or Tee shirt factories.
Postmodern Redneck
I am older than Vance, born in 1950, but also of Appalachian heritage; my maternal grandfather was a coal miner in Hazard, KY, who died of injuries from a mine accident. I grew up about twenty miles or so south of Vance's Middletown neighborhood. I also spent 7 years as part of a group of students and former students of the old Cincinnati Bible College that operated a storefront mission church in the Eighth and State neighborhood of Cincinnati--an Appalachian slum, mostly inhabited by people like some of Vance's family, who came north but didn't "make it." The big problem for most of them in the 1970s was still alcohol rather than drugs, but the result was similar. I have read Vance's book, and I appreciate his journey.
But I am not so sure the current populism is the cause of the problem; I suspect it is a reaction to a culture that has grown up among our elites over the past century. In the past week I finished reading "The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class" by Fred Siegel (Encounter Books, 2013). Siegel traces the disdain of the educated elites for the people they saw as beneath them back before World War I, including intellectuals like H. L. Mencken, who came up with the epithet "Booboisie," and Sinclair Lewis, who mocked the middle class in his novels. Their attitude continued on through the Depression and picked up again after World War II. It is in full play among the Intelligentsia to this day. Terry MacAuliffe's comment, that parents should have no say about their children's education simply expresses the attitude of the Establishment toward the people they regard as their inferiors, cost him the VA governor's office; but it also gave away the attitude of much of the upper class. The current populism in our society may very well be a reaction to the abuse from our "betters."
I think you write a fair assessment of the. masses with its resentment to the elites who disdain them. That is a main reason Trump has won them over. Yet a dangerous allegiance, I believe.
As for Littlejohn's essay, a fair assessment. I've written a generally positive essay on Hillbilly Elegy in a book of essays generally negative, "Appalachian Reckoning."
JDEY4731
I find some problems with Littlejohn's assessment of populism. Isn't the latter the way of the common person in light of rising oppression by new forces that we as a nation haven't seen before--by way of big tech, for example, to deny to people the rights of the First Amendment--such as freedom of speech and the press? It will soon spread to restrictions on freedom of religion, I think. In the realm of religion and churches, it has been the independent evangelical and Baptist chs that have allowed greater religious freedom--better than the larger denominations and reformed churches, I believe.
joansredpen
"...the solution will not be smaller government but smarter and more moral government." And a smarter, more moral government, especially one by the people, can only begin with smarter and more moral voters.
Here we must recall the quote of Adams or Madison about how the Framers realized our new form of government would only work for a moral and religious people.
Here is one change that has happened over the last 60 years--a widening gap between blue-collar and white-collar workers. In 1962 my parents bought a brand-new house in a rapidly growing suburb on the north side of Cincinnati. The price of that new house was $16,000. And in those days, blue-collar- and white-collar workers still lived in the same neighborhoods, shopped at the same stores, and often went to the same churches. At the congregation a mile away from our house that we attended, the elders and deacons included both blue- and white-collar people. My high school classmates came from both groups; and if their parents had gone to college (mostly on the GI bill), they were the first in their families to do so.
Even in the late '70s, you could still buy a newly-built home for under $30,000; the run-down fixer-upper that my wife and I bought and rehabbed only cost us $17,000. The stagflation of the late '70s and '80s started a rise in the cost of housing that far outstripped the rise of wages, and over time separated the two groups of workers more effectively than any intentional program could have done.
Here is a though I have for those World readers who are of white-collar, executive, or professional status: At the congregation you attend, are there any blue-collar people sitting in the pews? And do you ever talk to any of them? Are any of them among your friends?
I still recall seeing pix of South Carolina textile mill workers wearing shirts promoting NAFTA. Incentivizing off shoring of basic industries and then dropping tariffs on the goods made off shore was incredibly short sighted. I guess the plan was for these new factory workers to (1) remain in places like Guatemala or Honduras, and (2) purchase US made items with their pay from sneaker or Tee shirt factories.
I am older than Vance, born in 1950, but also of Appalachian heritage; my maternal grandfather was a coal miner in Hazard, KY, who died of injuries from a mine accident. I grew up about twenty miles or so south of Vance's Middletown neighborhood. I also spent 7 years as part of a group of students and former students of the old Cincinnati Bible College that operated a storefront mission church in the Eighth and State neighborhood of Cincinnati--an Appalachian slum, mostly inhabited by people like some of Vance's family, who came north but didn't "make it." The big problem for most of them in the 1970s was still alcohol rather than drugs, but the result was similar. I have read Vance's book, and I appreciate his journey.
But I am not so sure the current populism is the cause of the problem; I suspect it is a reaction to a culture that has grown up among our elites over the past century. In the past week I finished reading "The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class" by Fred Siegel (Encounter Books, 2013). Siegel traces the disdain of the educated elites for the people they saw as beneath them back before World War I, including intellectuals like H. L. Mencken, who came up with the epithet "Booboisie," and Sinclair Lewis, who mocked the middle class in his novels. Their attitude continued on through the Depression and picked up again after World War II. It is in full play among the Intelligentsia to this day. Terry MacAuliffe's comment, that parents should have no say about their children's education simply expresses the attitude of the Establishment toward the people they regard as their inferiors, cost him the VA governor's office; but it also gave away the attitude of much of the upper class. The current populism in our society may very well be a reaction to the abuse from our "betters."
I think you write a fair assessment of the. masses with its resentment to the elites who disdain them. That is a main reason Trump has won them over. Yet a dangerous allegiance, I believe.
As for Littlejohn's essay, a fair assessment. I've written a generally positive essay on Hillbilly Elegy in a book of essays generally negative, "Appalachian Reckoning."
I find some problems with Littlejohn's assessment of populism. Isn't the latter the way of the common person in light of rising oppression by new forces that we as a nation haven't seen before--by way of big tech, for example, to deny to people the rights of the First Amendment--such as freedom of speech and the press? It will soon spread to restrictions on freedom of religion, I think. In the realm of religion and churches, it has been the independent evangelical and Baptist chs that have allowed greater religious freedom--better than the larger denominations and reformed churches, I believe.
"...the solution will not be smaller government but smarter and more moral government." And a smarter, more moral government, especially one by the people, can only begin with smarter and more moral voters.
Here we must recall the quote of Adams or Madison about how the Framers realized our new form of government would only work for a moral and religious people.