ANS -- A pair of articles: Shame and Pride

Here is a pair of articles from Doug Muder.  They go together. 
They are about how the Right uses both our shame and our pride against us. 
Apparently it has some "bad words" in it: be warned!

Find them here: http://weeklysift.com/2011/10/10/turn-the-shame-around/  and
http://weeklysift.com/2011/10/17/suck-it-up-using-our-pride-against-us/  


--Kim

Turn the Shame Around

For the longest time I didn't get Occupy Wall Street, but then Herman Cain helped me out: He said something so monumentally wrong that my reaction against it pointed me in the right direction.

Here's Herman:

Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself! … It is not someone's fault if they succeeded, it is someone's fault if they failed.

That's when I got it. An unjust system's first line of defense is shame. As long as we're ashamed to admit that we're victims, as long as we're ashamed to identify with the other losers, we're helpless.

It would be great to have a 10-point plan that solves everything. It would be great to have a party that endorses that plan and a get-out-the-vote movement to put that party into office. But none of that is going to happen until large numbers of us cast off our shame, until we turn the shame around: We need to stop being ashamed that we couldn't crack the top 1%, and instead cast shame on an economic system that only works for 1%. The people who defend that immoral system and profit from it ­ they should be ashamed, not us.

That's what Occupy Wall Street is about. OWS isn't about plans and parties and votes. That all comes later. OWS is about casting off shame and learning to identify with the other losers.

I didn't get OWS because (like a lot of other people) I kept trying to fit it into the wrong model. It's not the 20th-century labor movement, marching for a minimum wage and a 40-hour week. It's not Rosa Parks demanding her seat on the bus. It's not last spring's occupation of the state capitol in Madison, demanding  the restoration of collective bargaining rights, a reversal of education cuts, and maybe even the recall of Gov. Walker.

Those were fine movements, but they're not this movement. This is more like feminism in the late 60s or gay rights in the 80s.  Specific demands will play their role eventually, but consciousness-raising has to come first.

Remember what we were told in those days? Feminists were women who had to work because they were too ugly to get a man. Gays were perverts too limp-wristed to defend themselves. They were losers. If you resembled them or sympathized with them, you were supposed to be ashamed.

Somebody had to be the first to go out in public and absorb that scorn. I remember my shock the first time I saw Dykes on Bikes, or a troop of guys in drag chanting "We're here. We're queer." I remember trying to imagine how much courage that took, and what else must be possible if this was possible.

But other than a vague sense that they ought to be treated more like human beings, I don't remember their demands. I wonder if they remember.

Now go look at the pictures at We Are the 99%. One person after another is saying, "Look at me. I'm losing in this economy, and I'm not ashamed who knows it."

That's powerful. I think everybody who looks at those pictures feels a little bit of their own shame melt.

Maybe the economic story you're ashamed to tell is no great shakes compared to people who have lost their homes or got sick without insurance or had to move back in with Mom and Dad. But you probably have one.

Saturday night at dinner, talking about OWS led an old friend to admit to me that he had taken a pay cut. He's got a job; he's surviving. But still ­ a pay cut ­ that's not the image of himself he wants a lot of people to see.

Here's the story I don't tell: After things started going south, I was gullible enough to believe the bankers who said they had it under control. I put a chunk of my retirement savings into Citicorp and lost it. I'm not going to be eating cat food any time soon, but the story shows me being a sucker, so I don't tell anybody. I don't like being a sucker. I want to project an image of the 1%, not the 99%.

That's got to change. Just about all of us ­ around 99%, I figure ­ are losers these days. We need to stop being ashamed of it. We need to tell our stories, and when we hear each other's stories we need to embrace them, not distance ourselves.

Most of all, we need to turn the shame around. The bankers who stole a bunch of our money and lost the rest ­ they should be ashamed. The CEOs who have corrupted our political system so that it serves their interests instead of the people's ­ they should be ashamed. The politicians who take the billionaires' money, rig the economy in their favor, and then tell the rest of us it's our own fault we're not rich ­ they should be ashamed.

You don't have to tell me: Change requires more than just consciousness-raising. I know.

The old rules still apply. We're going to need policies. We're going to need agendas and lists of demands. We're going to need leaders to represent us and armies of volunteers to knock on doors and make phone calls and write letters to the editor. We're going to have to register millions of voters and get them to the polls. None of that is going to happen automatically just because people lose their shame about being victims of an economy run by and for the 1%.

But I don't believe that stuff is going to happen at all ­ not on the scale we need ­ until people lose their shame about being victims and losers. It's just a first step, but I don't think we can skip it.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suck It Up: Using Our Pride Against Us

Last week I talked about the role of shame in maintaining an unjust system: A lot of people are losers in such a system, but who wants to identify with losers? The closer you are to the abyss, the stronger the temptation to deny that you bear any resemblance to the people who have already fallen in.

This week we got to see the slip side of the same phenomenon: how the rich and powerful take advantage of the legitimate pride many struggling people feel in the virtues that keep them afloat.

It started a week ago Wednesday with a cruel joke: Erick Erickson, founder of the right-wing blog Red State and recently a CNN commentator, started the We Are the 53% web site to parody the emotionally powerful We Are the 99% site I linked to last week. He posted a photo of himself disguised in a working-class t-shirt and holding up his story:

I work 3 jobs. I have a house I can't sell. My family insurance costs are outrageous. But I don't blame Wall Street. Suck it up, you whiners. I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain.

The "53%" are from a right-wing talking point that is debunked here and in more detail here: 47% of American households pay no net income tax, mostly because they don't make enough money to qualify. (They pay plenty of other taxes, however, some at a higher percentage of their income than many rich people.) The point of "the 53%" is to evoke an image of a hard-working majority that pulls the weight of everyone else. It is part of the right-wing argument that minimum-wage-earners (and not the rich) should be paying more taxes.

And in Erickson's case, it is ridiculous. His "jobs" consist of doing what he enjoys, and he could stop any time he wants. The only things he "sucks up" are money and fame, not abuse or anxiety. But one of the talents that puts Erickson firmly in the 1% is his understanding of working-class resentment and how to turn it against the weak rather than the powerful. So people with legitimate stories to tell have followed his example and posted to his site. Like this guy:

I am a former Marine. I work two jobs. I don't have health insurance.

I worked 60-70 hours a week for 8 years to pay my way through college. I haven't had 4 consecutive days off in over 4 years.

But I don't blame Wall Street. Suck it up you whiners. I am the 53%. God bless the USA!

Minus the suck-it-up closing, this could be a 99% posting. This guy is a victim of the economy, but he doesn't like being a victim, so he identifies with the lords rather than the serfs. Damn those whining serfs, for claiming to be like him.

A similar (if less in-your-face) story has been forwarded all over Facebook:



Like the ex-Marine, this woman (the fingers and handwriting look female to me) has virtues worth taking pride in: She's talented enough to get a scholarship, hard-working, and with enough self-control to spend less than she makes. Her version of "Suck it up, you whiners" is less insulting, but just as distancing: "I am NOT the 99%, and whether or not you are is YOUR decision."

Really? I don't think so. We can all decide not to identify with the people who work more and more for less and less, but we can't decide not to resemble them.

I picture this student sitting in her cheap apartment, maybe watching somebody's cast-off picture-tube TV rather than going to the movies with her friends, eating something sensible that she cooked herself, planning to get back to her homework in another few minutes ­ and identifying with the 1%.

"That's how it's supposed to work," she writes. She's supposed to "work my @$$ off" for whatever she gets, and hope that she doesn't get sick, and hope that when she picked her major she didn't guess wrong about where the jobs would be. Meanwhile, the ever-increasing bounty of this rich planet goes to other people ­ many of whom aren't as talented, didn't scrimp and save, and don't work their asses off.

That's how it's supposed to work?



It's tempting to pour scorn on these two, but that's just falling into Erickson's divide-and-conquer trap. The 99% are supposed to fight each other. The field slaves are supposed to resent the house slaves, and vice versa.

So what is the right response? Max Udargo nailed it in Open Letter to that 53% Guy. It's absolutely worth reading in its entirety (it has become the most shared post in the history of Daily Kos), but this is the key point:

I understand your pride in what you've accomplished, but I want to ask you something.

Do you really want the bar set this high? Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs and work 60 to 70 hours a week? Is that your idea of the American Dream?

… And, believe it or not, there are people out there even tougher than you. Why don't we let them set the bar, instead of you? Are you ready to work 80 hours a week? 100 hours? Can you hold down four jobs? … And is this really your idea of what life should be like in the greatest country on Earth?

It would be one thing if life was just that hard, if producing enough for everybody to get by required everybody to work 70 hours a week and never make a wrong move. But that's not true. We know it's not, because things used to be different. Americans used to have secure 40-hour-a-week jobs that paid well enough to raise a family on one income. Per capita GDP has gone up considerably since then, but the surplus has all accumulated at the top.

That's not natural; it didn't happen to nearly the same extent in other countries. It happened here because the very wealthy got control of our political system and ran it for their own benefit. It happened because we changed the rules to reward financial sleight-of-hand over making things and serving people. It happened because we devalued the public sector ­ the schools, the roads, the parks, the safety net ­ and let our whole society get split into First Class and Coach.

Fixing that is what the 99% movement is about. It's not about making talent and hard work and wise choices irrelevant. But how talented, how hard-working, how wise ­ and how lucky, never forget the role of luck in your success ­ should a person need to be to have a decent life? How unforgiving do we want to make our society?

If the 99% win and the system changes, the economic race will continue and some people will still outrun the others. Nobody grudges them that. But we don't have to live in a society where the Devil takes the hindmost. And we can still have empathy for the people we pass. That's a virtue too.