I had been thinking I ought to read White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg ever since it was published in early 2016. Naturally, I was afraid that it would be just the usual liberal rubbish. But you never know: I might learn something!
Yes indeedy, the Better Sort of people have every been worried about
But who are they, these problems? How, for instance, do they fit into a three-layer social theory like Curtis Yarvin's Gentry, Commoners, and Clients.
Well, I have to admit they don't. They are lower-order people that aren't part of the system. They are "off the grid." And that is what is so threatening about them. They are living in the swamp, in the woods. They are people who upped and went "out west" and now they are living in despicable shacks up in the hills, multiple generations in one room and who knows who is shacking up with whom. Of course, they don't work. Instead they forage, or hunt, or steal, or... well, who knows exactly how they manage?
But what are we going to do about them? I guess when you are the ruling class, or the Gentry class that does the ruling class's bidding, the fact of an unorganized rabble out there that isn't connected into your power tributary system is clearly a problem. Suppose they get out of control?
Obviously the solution to the White Trash problem has changed over the years. Back in the day, they got shoved off the land they occupied as it got scarfed up by politically connected gentry. That was when agricultural land was the foundation of wealth.
At the turn of the 20th century Gentry people were into Darwinist eugenics. So the solution was the stop these defectives from breeding.
During the New Deal the solution was to try and round them up and put them into model communities funded by the government. Or build bloody big dams with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
In the Sixties, it was time to make fun of them with TV series like The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C, and The Beverly Hillbillies. Or was it? After all, by putting hillbilles into Beverly Hills, you get to hit two birds with one stone, White Trash and Movie Moguls.
ON the other hand, with NASCAR and 1970s TV series like Smokey and the Bandit we are starting to celebrate hillbilly values. Or with the movie Deliverance showing the country hicks as dangerous monsters threatening young male city-slickers.
Or, with the 1980s, we get Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker at their PTL Club evangelical TV show. And later reality shows like Here Comes Honey Bo Boo and Duck Dynasty.
The truth is that Our Betters really don't have a clue what to do with the out-of-control White Trash. And Isenberg reflects that truth. She's a professor at Louisiana State University and her book carefully hews to the liberal line.
So she's outraged by the snobby attitude towars mudsills and clay-eaters in the 19th century. She is appalled by eugenicists in the early 20th century. She is understanding about the New Deal effort to clean up the dirty whites. But then what?
Thing get complicated in the Civil Rights era. Because the victims du jour are now poor blacks, not poor whites. So the helpless victims of the New Deal era become the racist followers of Southern segregationists. And Sarah Palin, who came up from pretty humble beginnings to get elected Governor of Alaska and GOP vice-presidential nominee, is dismissed as an ignorant simpleton, the "first female redneck on a presidential ticket... [that] had attended six unremarkable colleges."
Look, I get it. You wanna get a book published by Viking; you gotta toe the ideological line. And these days, we Gentry chappies are concerned about our intersectional Little Darlings, from upper-class women sobbing about sexism in politics to blacks to helpless gays and transgenders, the homeless, and migrants.
So Isenberg gives us a helpful look at conventional Gentry wisdom about the white underclass. In today's Gentry firmament the white underclass is a bit of a bother. It is, you may think, a "glitch" in the Matrix, something that does not compute with your world view. You brush it aside as an annoying interruption of normally scheduled service. So you understand why President Obama talks about bitter clingers and Hillary Clinton about a "basket of deplorables." And why the media condemned the tiki-torch bearers of Charlottesville as white racists.
Nothing remarkable here. We humans have to brush off things that don't conform with our view of reality. Otherwise we'd never get to work in the morning. Indeed, scientists say, there is no reason to bother about any unexpected informaiton unless it looks like it is going to kill you.
And that is why everyone from professors to activists to the media are out to get Trump. Because if Trump suceeds then he is going to damage their nice comfortable world of sinecures and cultural hegemony.
But White Trash for me points out that all the upper class frenzy down the ages about the fractious lower class is just so much idle chatter. Instead the upper class should just do its job: don't get into stupid wars, don't loot the economy to reward your supporters; don't allow people to scam the system and erect privileges for themselves; don't fall down on the job in the next credit crisis.
Looking at the bigger picture I'd say that every time you have a big event, whether the Industrial Revolution or a big war or a big credit crisis then millions of people are going to be thrown out of the system; many of them will never get their lives together again. But it certainly helps to hand out money to the victims: keeps them from tearing the whole thing down.
Can we do anything else? Education? Training? Model communities? Maybe. But I'd say that 97 percent of all government programs is the Gentry wanting to feel good about itself.
Yes indeedy, the Better Sort of people have every been worried about
Waste people. Offscourings. Lubbers. Bogtrotters. Rascals. Rubbish. Squatters. Clay-eaters. Tackies. Mudsills. Scalawags. Briar hoppers. Hillbillies. Low-downers. White niggers. Degenerates. White trash. Rednecks. Trailer trash. Swamp people.And the Better Sort has been worried about them for centuries.
But who are they, these problems? How, for instance, do they fit into a three-layer social theory like Curtis Yarvin's Gentry, Commoners, and Clients.
Well, I have to admit they don't. They are lower-order people that aren't part of the system. They are "off the grid." And that is what is so threatening about them. They are living in the swamp, in the woods. They are people who upped and went "out west" and now they are living in despicable shacks up in the hills, multiple generations in one room and who knows who is shacking up with whom. Of course, they don't work. Instead they forage, or hunt, or steal, or... well, who knows exactly how they manage?
But what are we going to do about them? I guess when you are the ruling class, or the Gentry class that does the ruling class's bidding, the fact of an unorganized rabble out there that isn't connected into your power tributary system is clearly a problem. Suppose they get out of control?
Obviously the solution to the White Trash problem has changed over the years. Back in the day, they got shoved off the land they occupied as it got scarfed up by politically connected gentry. That was when agricultural land was the foundation of wealth.
At the turn of the 20th century Gentry people were into Darwinist eugenics. So the solution was the stop these defectives from breeding.
During the New Deal the solution was to try and round them up and put them into model communities funded by the government. Or build bloody big dams with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
In the Sixties, it was time to make fun of them with TV series like The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C, and The Beverly Hillbillies. Or was it? After all, by putting hillbilles into Beverly Hills, you get to hit two birds with one stone, White Trash and Movie Moguls.
ON the other hand, with NASCAR and 1970s TV series like Smokey and the Bandit we are starting to celebrate hillbilly values. Or with the movie Deliverance showing the country hicks as dangerous monsters threatening young male city-slickers.
Or, with the 1980s, we get Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker at their PTL Club evangelical TV show. And later reality shows like Here Comes Honey Bo Boo and Duck Dynasty.
The truth is that Our Betters really don't have a clue what to do with the out-of-control White Trash. And Isenberg reflects that truth. She's a professor at Louisiana State University and her book carefully hews to the liberal line.
So she's outraged by the snobby attitude towars mudsills and clay-eaters in the 19th century. She is appalled by eugenicists in the early 20th century. She is understanding about the New Deal effort to clean up the dirty whites. But then what?
Thing get complicated in the Civil Rights era. Because the victims du jour are now poor blacks, not poor whites. So the helpless victims of the New Deal era become the racist followers of Southern segregationists. And Sarah Palin, who came up from pretty humble beginnings to get elected Governor of Alaska and GOP vice-presidential nominee, is dismissed as an ignorant simpleton, the "first female redneck on a presidential ticket... [that] had attended six unremarkable colleges."
Look, I get it. You wanna get a book published by Viking; you gotta toe the ideological line. And these days, we Gentry chappies are concerned about our intersectional Little Darlings, from upper-class women sobbing about sexism in politics to blacks to helpless gays and transgenders, the homeless, and migrants.
So Isenberg gives us a helpful look at conventional Gentry wisdom about the white underclass. In today's Gentry firmament the white underclass is a bit of a bother. It is, you may think, a "glitch" in the Matrix, something that does not compute with your world view. You brush it aside as an annoying interruption of normally scheduled service. So you understand why President Obama talks about bitter clingers and Hillary Clinton about a "basket of deplorables." And why the media condemned the tiki-torch bearers of Charlottesville as white racists.
Nothing remarkable here. We humans have to brush off things that don't conform with our view of reality. Otherwise we'd never get to work in the morning. Indeed, scientists say, there is no reason to bother about any unexpected informaiton unless it looks like it is going to kill you.
And that is why everyone from professors to activists to the media are out to get Trump. Because if Trump suceeds then he is going to damage their nice comfortable world of sinecures and cultural hegemony.
But White Trash for me points out that all the upper class frenzy down the ages about the fractious lower class is just so much idle chatter. Instead the upper class should just do its job: don't get into stupid wars, don't loot the economy to reward your supporters; don't allow people to scam the system and erect privileges for themselves; don't fall down on the job in the next credit crisis.
Looking at the bigger picture I'd say that every time you have a big event, whether the Industrial Revolution or a big war or a big credit crisis then millions of people are going to be thrown out of the system; many of them will never get their lives together again. But it certainly helps to hand out money to the victims: keeps them from tearing the whole thing down.
Can we do anything else? Education? Training? Model communities? Maybe. But I'd say that 97 percent of all government programs is the Gentry wanting to feel good about itself.
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