The strange phenomenon of candidates running for office in the United States vociferously wooing “the middle class” raises the inescapable question who does not belong to it.
The “one percent”? Surely not – by definition they don’t have enough votes to make a difference. Let us call them upper middle class, so we can include them.
The working class? It is never mentioned by the candidates themselves, though the press talks about white- and blue-collar workers – black, Latino and white – whose votes in various regions are solicited.
The poor are mentioned by the candidates, not because they have votes but because everybody agrees that poverty is an undesirable condition that should be eliminated as soon as possible. It is generally assumed that the poor, who are unfortunately still with us, want to belong to the middle class and that therefore whatever is good for the middle class is good for them. On the face of it, the primary beneficiaries of Obama’s healthcare legislation are the poor but, in electoral terms, it is not the poor he is wooing but the “middle class”.
The idea that anybody could be proud of being a member of anything but the middle class, upper or lower, is profoundly un-American.
Of course there are profound differences between Republicans and Democrats about the way they look at these matters. These were discussed in an article by John Barber about Ayn Rand in The Globe and Mail on Saturday, September 8. He points out that many Republicans are disciples of Ayn Rand, the high priestess of unfettered capitalism, who considered altruism a “contemptible evil.” However, John Barber reports that the Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, until recently a solid disciple, had a last-minute, quite remarkable conversion: “The truest measure of any society,” he said at the Convention, “is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.”
At the Democratic convention, Obama said: “This country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. We, the people, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights, that our destinies are bound together, that a freedom which asks only what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.”
In this context, the question of class does not arise.
The reason why nobody seems to be asking for a definition of “middle class” is that Americans believe in the myth of a classless society.
That is why they might as well call everybody “middle class.”
The Middle Class, like the American dream, is in the eye of the beholder. However, not every American (or even 99%) consider themselves or wish to be considered “middle class”. The strength of evangelical influence in US politics is that their motives are not “short term” economic gain, but epiphany and rapture. They do not define themselves in economic terms and are not driven by “middle class” economic ambitions.
Do Canadians not also believe in the myth? By necessary implication, if there is a middle class there is an upper class and a lower class. Do Canadians believe that there are lower-class Canadians? The discussion brings to mind the words that W. S. Gilbert put in the mouth of Don Alhambra, in Act II of The Gondoliers:
“In short, whoever you may be,
To this conclusion you’ll agree,
When everyone is somebodee,
Then no one’s anybody!”
True, but my impresson is that in English Canada social sensibilities have been substantially influenced by England’s though the class structure is American. Our unions are relatively more important than their American counterparts, and we have the NDP.
Believe we are more realistic as well as generous (in spirit if not in dollars) about the state of most of our aboriginal population, rural poor, and newly arrived refugee and disadvantaged family class immigrants Our “elite” classes tend to be more inclusive and diverse. Then there is Conrad Black!?? But would an American of similar “elite” mindset appear on a TV comedy program (Rick Mercer) from prison and entertain the middle class viewers as Black did?
. . . or, as Harold (the butler) points out in the 1971 movie A New Leaf (Elaine May, Walter Matthau), “In a country where every man is what he has, he who has very little is nobody very much.” The 1% “don’t have enough votes to make a difference”, by definition, in a country where “one man, one vote” is the rule,- but that criterion has very nearly been replaced in the US by “one dollar, one vote”. . .
If this were Facebook, I would be emphatically “liking” what Curmudgeon says about this issue.