R Is Not Just for Republican

What is the “middle class?”

When I grew up in the 60s and 70s, the middle class was white-collared professionals, all of whom had a university degree. They were doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, accountants.

Most people were from solid working class – blue collars, skilled and unskilled, or low-level clerical. My parents were strictly blue-collar, but we were taught that you bettered your own social position by education. The 1970s saw record numbers of people going to universities thanks to the scholarships and financial aid schemes engendered under the Johnson and (yes), the Nixon Administrations, and social mobility was achieved thus.

I have a cousin who married a doctor. Her husband’s father was a self-trained carpenter from South Carolina who never learned to read or write, but he saw one of his sons become a doctor and the other finish at West Point.

Somewhere in the past 30 years, when we got conned into believing that just because we had a credit card in our pockets and could get a loan from the bank on the collateral of your house or whatever to buy the latest car or go on a lujo cruise, that we were middle class. In truth, most of us aren’t.

And in truth, for all the talking head pundits, Right and Left, go on about the “middle class”, who are REALLY working class, they’d have to fumigate themselves if they ever had occasions to walk amongst them.

An awful lot of the Obama-hate on BOTH sides of the political equation is down to one thing and one thing only: RACE.

The sooner that’s admitted, the sooner we can address the elephant in the room – and that elephant’s not necessarily a Republican.