Ya gotta feel sorry for the Left. So lost and leaderless they have to trot out 92 year old Pete Seeger and unheard-of-since-Alice’s-Restaurant Arlo Guthrie to draw attention to their participation in OWS. It’s fine that Pete and Arlo get to be relevant one more time, but it says too much about the vacuum that has become the American Left.
That’s not to say that a little class warfare isn’t called for at the moment. There’s been background white noise about corporatism/corporatists and wealthy elites and oligarchy running the show for a few years now. These things need to come out of the shadows and camp out in the park every now and then.
Of course, if the Left are leaderless and clueless, the corporatist elitist oligarchs are dumb as a box of rocks. Their string pulling puppet mastery isn’t new, but the veil of populism that hid the political/economic manipulation is disappearing. More to the point, the elite have become so consumed in their lust for money, honey and power they have forgotten, or failed to ever recognize, the buffer to their excess provided by the middle class.
The poor are powerless and always have been. Class warfare might be a natural offshoot of their position in society, but they are materially and emotionally ill equipped to rise up against institutionalized power. Not so the middle class.
The middle class has been nurtured on the illusion of power, of having a say. In truth, it’s an addiction to external stimulus and materialism that carries the middle class. Owning a home, a couple of cars, enough electronic devices, going on vacation, all inform the psyche that the American myths are real whether they are or not. Those myths, hopes or fantasies if you prefer, are in turn critical to the elite’s ability to control the masses.
The recently dispossessed middle class, remembering the illusion of power and material possession, present a danger to the status quo that the generationally powerless cannot muster. Until now, the middle class have sided, emotionally if not politically, with the elite. It is the middle class and their offspring who, until now, stood to be the benefactors of that one-in-a-million realization of the American dream.
As the consolidation of wealth and power erode the material possessions and illusions of power once held by the middle class, the emotional alliance between elite and middle class threatens to shift. The inherent danger of class warfare comes not from the defunct and befuddled Left but from the potentially violent fear of the once middle class realizing that they too are disposable in the eyes of the elite.
Contributor, aka tidbits. Retired attorney in complex litigation, death penalty defense and constitutional law. Former Nat’l Board Chair: Alzheimer’s Association. Served on multiple political campaigns, including two for U.S. Senator Mark O. Hatfield (R-OR). Contributing author to three legal books and multiple legal publications.