Despite horrific socio-economic inequality, execution-style killings of black people on an almost daily basis, and the fact that over 30 million Americans still cannot visit a doctor when they get sick, liberal “elites” in Washington, D.C. and Manhattan think everything is just swell. There’s a new “genre” of elite “hot takes” suggesting that we should not be alarmed: no, this is not 1968.
From Jonathan Chait:
But the old, tattered ideal of unity may be healthier than it seemed. The demonstration in Dallas was the very model of a functioning liberal society — a peaceful protest against police conducted under the protection of the police themselves.
Yup, “functioning liberal societies” all over Western Europe, the Great North and Oceania require protests — at which domestic terrorists respond with violence — due to militarized police departments brutally executing the citizens they are tasked with protecting.
And, Matthew “Different Places Have Different Safety Rules And That’s OK” Yglesias has also chimed in:
And, fair enough. If you’re a sycophant pining for influence during an Establishment-friendly Hillary Clinton administration, “two minor wars” (not sure the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq would deem the conflict “minor”) and “some mass shootings” (yeah, don’t get too upset about Orlando, I guess!) are not all that awful.
What is really being said by Johathan and Matthew, though, is “we don’t want or need radical change.” Jonathan is a limousine liberal who earned the praise of Hillary Advisor Neera Tanden for bashing Bernie Sanders supporters on Twitter and in his little-read New York Magazine columns. Matthew Yglesias grew up in Greenwich Village, attended an “expensive private high school,” and partied with Ivanka Trump.
Of course, Jonathan and Matthew think everything is OK. Their stock portfolios are probably propped up by the excesses of our despicable for-profit military- and health care-industrial complexes. They own fancy homes in fancy neighborhoods, well-policed by respectful officers whose concern is making sure the sidewalk cafes and organic grocery stores are undisturbed by those experiencing homelessness.
Their reality is not my reality — it is not America’s reality.
In my reality, I struggle to pay for a shitty apartment, worry about being screwed by the health insurance company one day and the student loan servicer the next day, and watch with a broken heart as the communities I once served as an educator are brutalized by out-of-control police officers. Just take a look at this video.
Jonathan and Matthew, I’m quite sure, have never experienced the kind of economic deprivation and insecurity that plagues the bottom 80 percent of Americans. Matthew, I’m quite sure has never been arrested at gunpoint and brutalized, despite flippantly talking up cocaine in a way that would get any black teenager arrested the next day at school.
So, we have our Great Liberal Elite “Wonks” telling us everything is Ok in the United States — surely, this is not 1968 all over again.
But, what if with stagnant wages, insane education and housing costs, health care that is unaffordable to all but those with the very best insurance, police departments armed with high-tech weapons of war — well, what if 2016 is worse than 1968? Is it? That’s not a judgement for me to make.
Nevertheless, it’s fair to say that Very Serious People in Manhattan and DC fail to understand the extent of the suffering of workers, black people, the striving middle-class, and those abandoned by globalization.
And, when that happens, you get Donald J. Trump or Micah Xavier Johnson. You get extremists — on all sides. You get frustration, despair, hopelessness.
Perhaps those who have never suffered — from marginalization, racism, economic insecurity — a day in their life, should shut the (heck) up, when those individuals actually experiencing racism and violence say things, today in America, are really, really bad.