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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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The Devil in the Definitions:

We talk about class a fair bit, but it's hard to define many of them. Most of these terms are relative, and the exceptions numerous. I've been thinking about what the "working class" is, and how to distinguish it from the middle classes. It can't just be money, a successful plumber might make four times what a librarian or a teacher makes, but he is working class and they are some sort of middle class. An artist might be much poorer than most working class, but they are not working class.

My current formulation is something like this: In the west, the Working Class are those workers whose jobs do not require any college, and which do not raise their social status among the educated middle classes.

What do you think separates the classes? Am I off base here?

It used to be clearer, and the American flattening of class structure makes it more difficult: everyone is middle-class now, from the plumbers to the President; see the difference between Bush Senior's patrician aura and Bush Junior's "aw shucks" persona, even though Barbara Bush had to do the traditional "what's your favourite recipe?" bit, as though she herself stood at the kitchen counter making biscuits with her own hands (a generation or two earlier it would have been "we have servants to do that") - Hillary was honest but like most things she does, did it in a brusque, impatient and dismissive way.

The Obamas were able to get away, without comment, that they got the White House chef (and not Michelle) to make Barack's favourites if he felt like a snack. But that's the idea - they may be rich and high-status but they're just folks. This fits in with the myth that America is a 'classless' society and Jack is as good as his master. Americans (so it is said) don't envy the rich or want to overthrow them because they believe they too can become 'one of those guys' with some luck/hard work/talent - America is the land of opportunity, after all, and doesn't have the same suppressive structures of class and hierarchy as the Old Countries that keep you locked into a rut.

Plumbers and skilled tradesmen would be lower middle-class (if they run their own business). You're right that it's not about money and that it is about education, but there's also the subtle Blue Tribe/Red Tribe division (not politics, but the way Scott originally defined it - you can have Democrat voters who are blue collar union workers). It's about culture and tastes and heritage, in other words; smart and talented members of the lower classes can climb the ladder and be accepted into the class above, but that generally means going to college and getting initiated into the customs of the upper-middle and upper classes. Learning how to fit in and be a 'good fit for the company culture'. That's what is behind a lot of the laments about "my kid went off to college and came back completely changed", and it's not just about political attitudes - you adapt and change now that you're on the path to the middle class, and if you don't, you'll never get the same opportunities even if you get the degree in the end, because you'll always stick out as 'not one of us'.

EDIT: See, for example, all the to-do about Trump not being a real billionaire, and this criticism wasn't confined to the simple charge of "he doesn't have that amount of money". All the nice Blue Tribe types who would claim to be against class on the grounds of it being systemic oppression, and that everyone is equal, and ordinary people are as good as anyone, and so forth to tedious length, wrote snobby little pieces about "ugh, he eats his steak well-done, that's not the proper way to eat steak, and goodness gracious me he wants ketchup? Ketchup? Could he be any more low-class?"

That kind of attitude then makes it harder to take you seriously that you love, adore, and want to represent and fight for the rights of the class of people who have a bottle of ketchup on the table as a condiment. That's a class judgement, and has nothing to do with "did you go to college, how much money have you?"

This is an aside, but I find that I really don't understand what a "McMansion" is supposed to be. I understand the general definition ("new money" house that is huge and expensive, but using a gaudy mis-match of different, usually faux-classical, styles and often cheap materials), and have a coherent image that pops into my head when I hear people use the term, but at least half the examples of "McMansions" I see people use just look like big houses to me. I don't see anything in that picture of Trump's childhood home that screams "McMansion." Is it literally any suburban mansion built after the Warren G. Harding administration? Or are my low-class tastes showing and the fact that I think it looks like a nice house is exactly what makes it a McMansion?