Note: If you are an oppressed person who has said something like
this about your oppressors, this post is not about you. This is not an attempt
to get you to alter your reaction to ignorant oppressive actions or statements
nor is it an attempt to criticize that reaction, whatever it might be.
Okay, you forgot your anti-elitism hat today. It happens to
me, too. I get it. It’s a heavy hat. It’s really very frustrating out there; everyone
has been constantly lied to and too many seem to have bought into countless
false narratives without much reflection. True, you’re probably privileged by a
somewhat respectable education, but still, it can be hard to believe so many
people don’t think the same way you do. And what’s worse, folks seem to have a
knee-jerk reaction to disregard what you say, and after all, you’re (mostly)
only trying to help them. “What the fuck?!” is right. I wouldn't accuse you of having a similar knee-jerk reaction to what they think
because well, you’re right and they’re not. Right? Okay, so take a breath,
spend some time in front of the stupid tube, and take the rest of the afternoon
off. You deserve it after all that truth-telling.
Just don’t forget to put your hat back on tomorrow.
Chances are, if you are relating to all this, you are a liberal complaining about poor GOP voters (though no one ideology has a monopoly on forgetting their anti-elitism hat, to be sure). For instance, when the election cycle heats up your liberal tweeps may start saying things like, “Why are poor folks always voting against their own interests?!” As brilliant as you are, you probably know the answer to this question, but just in case, I’ll remind you:
Because it’s impossible for folks to vote in their own interests. That’s why.
Oppressed folks are usually more aware, than even you are--in
all your overly informed brilliance--just how much between a rock and a hard
place they are. If you are able to look past all the partisan hackery, you see that
hiding behind all those “R’s” an “D’s” are really just a bunch of class enemies
who have one set of tricks or another to make life easier for rich folks and
much harder for everyone else. And oppressed folks are usually really good at
seeing past all the hackery; hell, they might even be better at it than you. Should
I decrease government and get screwed over by unfettered big business? Or should I
increase government and get screwed over by…government, and the big business
that controls it? Whenever they can you let them get away with it, Democratic
politicians demean poor folks and use government as a weapon against them. Is
it really surprising that poor folks would vote against them or -- ::gasp:: -- not
vote at all?
You may also from time to time forget how difficult it is to
get factual information, even in this day and age. If you forget, you might
slip and say something really ignorant like, “the information is out there is
you just bothered to look.”
Well, if you’re anything like me, you have the privilege to
sit at a computer at work and check the blogosphere more or less once an hour.
You have news alerts sent to your smart phone and you have a nice, stimulating
political argument on Twitter once a week. Maybe you went to college and got
all read up on the social theories and economic shenanigans and know exactly
how to parse out the truth from mainstream “news” sources. All these
opportunities to get “oh-so-informed” about everything and anything can make it
easy to forget that most people don’t have time to go scouring the internet for
the details about Obama’s “Jobs Plan” and the latest analysis of the analysis
of Limbaugh’s comments about that Republican governor who’s about to be famous
for six days. Turns out a lot of folks don’t have easy access to a computer, even if they
do have the time. And if they have a computer and have the time, they don’t
know where to look, because they’re been actively being prevented from finding out.
And to cap it all off, if they do manage to stumble upon the truth (maybe they
have a reality splintering experience while perusing your blog), how much of
that knowledge is going to lead to a real improvement in their lives? Maybe they
don’t get a kick out of being a wonkish know-it-all on Facebook like you and me.
Without a political movement to be active in (something you could spend some
time building, you know), all that knowledge is just, well, depressing. This is
where an understanding of self-efficacy is critical; people need to believe
again that what they think, what they say, what they do, and what they know actually matters, and the means to
make that matter is provided by communities of resistance, but by an
individual’s lack of “stupid.”
Oh yeah, and...maybe folks are just really tired and stressed
out and need what little spare time they have to unwind. That’s not a crime,
you know. In fact, working class folks spending time the way they want to spend
time might even be called revolutionary.
You may also be misled into thinking you are more
informed that you actually are. Despite your noble resistance, MSNBC and the New
York Times have been stroking your ego so vigorously that they may have caused you
to forget that being well informed and being well-versed in the talking points
is not exactly the same thing. For instance, you may have some vague opinion
about QE3, being the supremely informed citizen that you are. But, you probably don’t have a very thorough understanding of what QE3 is. Almost
no one does. In fact, most of the policy-makers, politicians, and even economists, pushing for
it don’t know what it is or what it will mean. Not that you are stupid or uninformed. You are just a lot more like everyone
else then you think you are when you forget your anti-elitism hat—you are being
actively deceived and actively prevented from know what is going on.
And last but not least, you could maybe, possibly just be
dead wrong.
I know, I know, super unlikely...but you have to admit: it’s a possibility. Regardless of how uber-left or fantastically intelligent and critically-mind you consider yourself to be, you grew up swimming in the garbage just like the rest of us.
Despite your best efforts, you have absolutely swallowed some of that garbage.
So maybe somewhere in your gut you have some ideas about what is properly
“intellectual” for political conversation. Or maybe you have some sort of dogma
that serves you so well most of the time, until it doesn’t (for instance, your
reasonable affinity for science may have morphed in a militant faith in “Science!”).
You have been programmed into unthinking respect for folks that have been
trained to speak “the code;” you know, that collection of words and phrases
that David Brooks and Thomas Friedman use weekly to make it seem like what they
are saying is thoughtful or intelligent. Given all this, you are likely to make
the mistake of thinking you know more about oppressed folks’ lives then they
do. You don’t.
But I’m sure you knew that already.
