Re: Caste: Part 1 - Toxins in the Permafrost
Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:22 pm
I couldn’t read much of the New York Review that Robert Tulip linked to, but I see several problems. One is the quote above. I’m reminded of a married couple who had Obamacare, voted for Trump specifically because he promised to get rid of Obamacare, then were shocked and dismayed when they lost their health insurance. “But we’re good people! We expected those other people to lose insurance not us!” The caste system had infected their thinking to the extent that they just assumed no harm due to being members of the highest caste. Would that experience increase their sympathy for others who lost health insurance? Oh please. They became exalted victims and those others are undeserving bums. The author seems to think people like this cannot be criticized for any reason.“Be Happy for Coal Miners Losing Their Health Insurance,” the headline blared. “They’re Getting Exactly What They Voted For.”
The dismissal is curt and callous: clearly, Trump’s victory provoked some of his opponents to double down on their hostility toward his supporters. But the blog post also shows—more broadly—that being a liberal Democrat no longer means what it once meant. Sympathy for the working class has, for many, curdled into contempt.
...The spectacle of liberals jeering at coal miners reveals seismic changes in our larger public discourse. The miners were “getting exactly what they voted for”—exactly what they deserved, in other words. The belief that people get what they deserve is rooted in the secular individualist outlook that has legitimated inequality in the United States for centuries, ever since the Protestant ethic began turning into the spirit of capitalism.
Another problem is this elitist fantasy of equality. I couldn’t read that far so I’m probably misunderstanding, but this seems disturbing. Upholding the caste system is elitist; how can fighting against that also be elitist?Robert Tulip wrote:Martin Luther King also traded on this elitist fantasy of the ideals of equality, which is incompatible with the somewhat fatalistic outlook that sees people’s potential as constrained by caste.