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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31526 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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While Trump is making a correct move by being among his voters and not hiding in an ivory tower McDonalds isn't exactly a great brand to be associated with. Why associate yourself with unhealthy, bland consumerist food? Mcdonalds should represent the opposite of what the right stands for. It is the antithesis of tradition, beauty, culture, small business and family.

Trump is associating himself with working at McDonald’s, not with it as a cornerstone of the American diet. One in eight Americans have worked at McDonald’s- statistically, Trump is showing that he’s not too good for an incredibly common American experience.

Now obviously it’s a campaign stunt. But it’s a clever campaign stunt that plays into his Everyman image.

But it’s a clever campaign stunt that plays into his Everyman image.

Has Trump ever had an "Everyman" image? As far as I can recall, Trump has always represented a billionaire business tycoon. Maybe he acts the same way an average person would act if they won the lottery (gold plated toilets, supermodel wives, etc.) but I don't think he was ever a true "Everyman" in the same way Homer Simpson is.

Trump has always had a bit of a plebian sense of wealth. The expression a decade ago was that Trump lived like how poor people thought the rich lived, as opposed to how the rich actually lived. In that sense, he's the 'what the Everyman would see himself doing if he had Trump's wealth.'

Michèle Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men, also found resentment of professionals — but not of the rich. “[I] can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told her. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.

There is a lot to this. Upvoted and AAQC'd, but I wanted to put one of the resident motteizean blue collar workers on record as saying- I see this attitude every day. You want to know why working class voters of all races, especially white ones, are turning against the DNC? Because their politicians come off as our hired bosses- managers, not owner-men, and especially as the HR people and managers of whatever the fuck who get left to deliver bad news when the actual bosses don't want to-, and the GOP pols come off as people who worked to build their own businesses.

Of course this is a false impression, and of course I have my own disagreements with democrat policies. But politics is vibes based.

Why is it a false impression though?

People who build their own business are more likely to be Republican than the PMC. It's not the whole story, obviously, but nothing is.

Nothing will turn a person Republican faster than owning their own business and seeing the heaping pile of shit that the government throws at you every chance they get.

It's a false impression because there are very few politicians of either description. Democrats running for office have mostly been in government service since they finished college and republicans running for office may have had careers beforehand, but usually as like, investment bankers and the like- few started businesses.

The pipeline to Congress favors types capable of setting their own hours. Most employers aren’t going to tolerate you disappearing for a couple of months because the state legislature is in session.

And state legislature pay is not great, so either you’re independently wealthy and don’t care, need to keep grinding while being in office, or you’re a scrub and the pay is an upgrade.

I once saw a lady who earnestly said she needed the money when she came before a local party endorsements committee for some small local office. And the pay was around $30,000.

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