How Does a Politician Do "Commoner Politics?"

One thing that has struck me since January 20, 2021, is that the Biden agenda has nothing for the Common Man -- or Woman.

Fighting climate change? Jobs for Gentry. Screw the middle class. Nothing for the lower class,

Fighting systemic racism? Jobs for Gentry. Screw the white middle class. Reparations for the lower class, but don't hold your breath.

Unlimited immigration? Nannies for the upper class; cheap labor for Big Business. Lower wages for the middle class, and no jobs at all for the lower class.

OK, great. The Democrats don't give a damn about Commoners, the folks that obey the law, go to work, and follow the rules.

That's because progressive politics, ever since Marx, is all about using the Subordinates as the clients -- Little Darlings -- of the Gentry educated class.

And since politics is division, and requires an enemy -- well, the Commoner middle class is it. It's a bit weird, because to make it work you have to sell the idea that the ordinary middle class is a powerful force of white supremacists and systemic patriarchs that are "white oppressing" the world.

If only! As I like to say, the fact is that the ordinary middle class is not that interested in power. 

So what do we do about it?

To misquote Marx, " It is high time that Communists Commoners should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism White Oppressors with a manifesto of the party any future Commoner party itself.

 Now, I think that Donald Trump made a decent start on this. But, if anything, the guy was too positive. When you are talking about Making America Great, that identification with the nation state is good, and we need more of it.

But hey, politics is division, it is about putting your opponents on the back foot. Naming and Shaming. And all that.

So I think that it is time to take the offensive on the Green New Deal. If I were a politician I would be talking about how there is nothing for ordinary people in it. The Green New Deal is all about jobs and power and prestige for the educated ruling class, the folks that will be making all the decisions and the regulations. It will be cool for the special interests and the renewable energy contractors that make tons of money out of the renewable energy projects, the high-speed rail projects, the greening of the nation's housing stock. But for ordinary people it will mean nothing but higher energy prices, more oppressive regulation, and probably a future of poverty.

Really, the Green New Deal is like World War II. We spent a ton of money; we drafted all the young men; we created a lot of work for chaps like Henry Kaiser to build Liberty ships, all very important, assuming that the Nazis were the worst thing in the world. But the average person just had to suck it in and go with the program, or else.

Let's agree with the need for World War II. Anyway, it ended after four short years. But the Green New Deal is going to go on for decades. The question is: how long are you willing to wait for a resumption of normal life?

Actually, the experts have pronounced on this, in particular with Edward C. Banfield's The Unheavenly City, which did not go down well with liberals. His idea was that the poor are "present oriented." Their only concern is with the next meal or the next rent check. The higher up in class you go, the more "future oriented" you become.

So, for the middle class,

[he or she] plans to get ahead and does what is necessary to improve his lot in life and to ensure his children achieve more than he did.

But the upper class lives in a different world.

The upper class individual occupies the farthest end of the future-oriented spectrum; he conducts himself and his affairs with an eye toward his heirs and family name. 

So you can see that the Green New Deal is purely an upper-class endeavor. It is all about saving the world for our grandchildren.

Jolly nice, but meanwhile the lower class has to find that rent check, and the middle class has to save the down payment on that dream house in the suburbs. 

Notice that Donald Trump's line of Making America Great Again fits exactly into the world of the ordinary middle class. The middle class chappie or chappette wants a world in which it is possible "to improve his lot in life" and create a better life for her children.

Now I think the beautiful thing is the your average New York Times reader and NPR listener has No Idea about this.

Our liberal friends all agree that we have to save the planet. Why not? Especially as liberals will be the ones to get all the Green New Deal administrative and policy jobs.

Our liberal friends all agree that limiting immigration is the cruelest thing in the world. Of course they do. It's not their jobs that will be affected. Not until they lose their administrative position, because systemic racism, and it's time to Learn to Code and compete in the job market with a million South Asians.

Our liberal friends all agree that "systemic racism" and "white supremacy" and "whiteness" are the worst things in the world. Actually, this is where they really ought to get a clue. Don't they realize that the only privilege in America is "liberal privilege," and that if we start on a full-scale War on Whiteness then white liberal jobs in government and academia will be, if not the first, then the second to go? No, they don't. But they will, sooner than they think.

Like I said. All this stuff is low-hanging fruit. Donald Trump picked the lowest-hanging fruit, but there is lots more fruit in easy reach for any damn politician with a half a brain.

So get going, guys and gals!