@hightor,
hightor wrote:There's an underlying malaise all right — but it's nothing new. Chronic un- or under-employment, broken dreams, deteriorating neighborhoods, and environmental destruction have plagued inner city residents for generations. It's just that it's been democratically extended and introduced to other parts of the country, to other ethnicities
Sure. The reason middle-aged white men seem to be taking the degradation of economic opportunities for working class people particularly badly is probably in part because, well, black people, immigrants... they've been more used to it, comparatively. Probably had less illusions about how much of a fair shot they'd get in the first place, relatively speaking...
Could easily put it even more darkly, too: white working class men of a certain generation were never "in charge" -- they were also just working stiffs -- but they might all the more have gleaned a sense of pride and identity from being at least higher up the totem pole than "those other people," the blacks and the foreigners, and that's increasingly gone. They may have "just" been blue-collar workers, but drawn a sense of pride and identity from being the "head" of the family, cost-winners etc., and that's increasingly gone too.
Could go two ways with that, though. See it as a matter of a relatively privileged group (with the emphasis on relative) being taken down a peg; or see this "democratization" of precarity as a further loss to us all.
Have been seeing a lot of the former on Twitter, often from people who are happy to decry the gender and race privilege of those affected but seem oblivious to their own, no smaller, class privilege. It's also a take that both reflects and reinforces people's socialization within the logic of capitalism, pitting people against each other in unending, zero-sum competition.
It's a shame. The racism/etc of those white working class men who felt they were doing OK because at least they were above "those other people" served to divide the people, making it all the easier to pursue those corporate profits you mention. Gleeful responses to them being taken down a peg, having only themselves to blame, etc will work out the same way..
I wonder if there's an equivalent internationally. The erosion or dismantling of welfare state provisions in Europe has made some of the wealthiest populations of the world a little more like everyone else. Evening out the playing ground? But it also makes it that much less likely for populations anywhere to achieve that kind of accomplishments again in the future.
