How much longer will the middle class politely tolerate its own destruction?
By Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic
… The rise of the middle class was the result of Industrial Revolution capitalism… Yet the intellectual reaction for the most part has been to either ignore it or treat it with disdain…
What’s rare are attempts to see things through the perspectives of that despised group and its progenitors, the poor.
In 1800, virtually everyone was poor, living under conditions of deprivation and grinding poverty. Even being wealthy was no picnic; present-day poverty-line Americans live better. Life expectancy was an estimated twenty-nine years.
Farming, the occupation of most, was dangerous, backbreaking labor from dawn to dusk… There was no electricity, no running water, primitive sanitation and health care, and none of the machinery, gadgets, and appliances we take for granted…
As the nineteenth century progressed, primitive factories began producing goods of better quality, in more quantity, and at lower cost than had been possible by artisans handcrafting their wares. No doubt conditions were abysmal .., but an important point gets overlooked.
Bad as they were, the factories were a better option for those who worked in them than the farms from whence many of them came, or they would have stayed there.
Early industrialization provided profits to capitalize: more factories, further innovation, new inventions and industries… Each new generation of mines, factories, ships, trains, farms and other productive assets became less labor-intensive, produced higher average real wages, had lower percentages of child labor, and were less dangerous than their predecessors…
It was their best option, and better than anything they had previously known.
The nineteenth century produced more technological and scientific innovation than all the centuries before it combined… By 1900, life expectancy in the US was 46 years for males and 48 years for females, an unprecedented one-century increase…
Millions of people braved the dangers of travel, the uncertainties of life in a new land, learning a new language, the prejudice and hostility, starting at the bottom, and the absence of government giveaways and freely chose to immigrate to the United States.
Sometimes the payoff was huge…
The self-made businessman became the American archetype, fueling countless aspirations.
The emergent middle class was a cohesive force for political stability. The immigrants passed their memories of what they had escaped to their children and grandchildren. They embraced the reality and the promise of America based on their own fruitful experience.
Few noticed the thunderhead on the horizon. That thunderhead was hate, directed not at America’s flaws and weaknesses, but at its virtues and strengths.
The sacrifice, hard work, thrift, and ingenuity that had lifted millions from poverty was condemned as selfishness, blind ambition, and greed. The middle class that didn’t exist a century ago was materialistic, anti-intellectual, and spiritually impoverished…
You can guess where the hostility came from: the intellectuals … and would-be rulers in a nation with little desire to be ruled.
The desire for autonomy, to be left alone, to be free to make one’s own decisions and live one’s own life, are the benchmarks of well-adjusted normalcy.
The desires to tell or force other people what to do are the opposite, wellsprings of hate…, neurotic, sociopathic, or psychopathic.
That the middle class is now fighting for its life reflects two intellectual failures…
The truisms that any expansion of the government’s power and resources would only reduce the people’s liberty and be funded with money stolen from them was overwhelmed by the standard propaganda: coercion is necessary to address some risk, danger, or “unacceptable” condition…
The other failure: most “average” Americans simply couldn’t comprehend or even conceive of the hatred directed against them.
Statism, whatever its variations, is never about doing something for people, it’s about doing something to them…
When somebody claims that your life is their property, they’re telling you that they have the right to do with it what they will, which includes killing you…
You shall know them by their works… Only unmitigated hatred accounts for the particular antipathy directed towards the middle class: their values, their prosperity, and their predominate race (white) and religion (Christianity).
Nobody can say what the consequences of the all-out war against it will be. It is the bedrock of modern economies and its destruction will take out most of the developed world’s productive capacity and consumer markets…
The notion that our rulers are insane has slipped loose from the alternative media where it was once confined… Donald Trump questioned those repeated failures and that provided his margin of victory in 2016…
As the middle class watches the America it once knew and cherished collapse, and comes to understand why, it realizes its head is on the chopping block. A bright middle-schooler can see that the Green New Deal will bring the economy to a shuddering stop…
Take away middle class dreams and you may well be taking away the last thing that keeps them paying their taxes, observing the law, supporting the troops and police…
What began as a gentle squeeze a century ago has become python-like constriction. Government has drained economic vitality and shuttered opportunity as the once politically stable, prosperous, and optimistic middle class dwindles… It’s only going to get worse…
The ruling class has backed the middle class into a corner… Aristocratic arrogance, condescension, exclusivity, and isolation add to the combustibility…
What if a substantial portion of the population has taken to the streets? What if praetorian sentiment is with the protestors and insurrectionists? Are the rulers really prepared to use tanks and even nuclear weapons on their own population?
What happens when the disaffected, many who will have nothing to lose, try to reclaim their lives and liberty and upend the political order that has roadblocked their pursuit of happiness?
Disaffection is a battalion, righteous moral certainty an army. The latter has moved the world and will do so again.
Victor Hugo said that nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. Here’s an idea so powerful yet so simple it fits on a bumper sticker: Fight for your life…
There’s no way to predict or control the consequences. The only certainty is that anyone who thinks they can do so will be proven disastrously wrong.
https://straightlinelogic.com/2019/03/08/the-experiment-by-robert-gore/
This is a heart-rending perspective, but too likely a true one. It is apparent that the Left is dead set on destroying the concept of Liberty for the consistency of socialist poverty. No exemplars are to be allowed. No successes are to be celebrated. Because to allow such is to allow someone to be better than any other person. That they do it by creativity, hard work, determination, self-sacrifice, delayed gratification, and investment is beside the point. They are TRYING to be better! That cannot be allowed!
I would hope that enough Americans would resist such an attitude, but the mid terms indicate that isn’t truly the case. Perhaps that was not a true read, because of the large number of GOP retirements, but it is still a troubling prospect.
Categories: Political
Pesky Truth 
“How much longer will the middle class politely tolerate its own destruction?”
As we’ve watched for decades while our gun rights, our free speech, our privacy and even our right to a speedy trial are nibbled away, I’ve wondered about the answer to that question too. There’s a lot of tough talk and you hear things like ‘if they come for my guns, they’ll get ’em one bullet at a time’ but nobody actually backs up those words, least of all our politicians.
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If (WHEN?) it comes down to the wire, I am afraid that there will be no Left left. The French Revolution rose up and murdered thousands of innocent people simply because there were (or might have been) upper class/nobility. Even the accusation of being supportive of the clerical-noble-middle class was enough to me “La machine” (Madame Guillotine).
If the Left does rise up, they will be slaughtered.
1. The military will stand down and protect their bases and keep foreign militaries from coming in.
2. The police will try and keep order in the cities (which will be starving).
3. People in rural areas will extreme vet anyone trying to leave the cities.
4. In 3 months 75% of the population of the cities will be dead.
5. In 6 months the one gang in each city will have killed off all rival gang members, and be at war with the cops.
6. In a year, the gangs in the cities will be trying to negotiate food from the farms, and be faced off with pretty serious firepower – mostly hunting rifles, not full auto – but in the hands of people who grew up with them and served in the military.
Once the political liberals (and maybe half of the so-called conservative) politicians are rendered room-temperature, things will settle down – and the country will be far more to the “right” than I want. It will eventually swing back in 75-100 years, but until about 2150 or so things will be pretty grim.
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Vonmesser, I’d suspect that the Left will only take to the streets en masse as a result of a tax revolt by the middle class, rendering urban services DOA.
I agree the urban islands will be effectively cordoned off, water, sewer, waste disposal, food, and gasoline services will be ceased, and police and fire will be limited to the more peaceful parts of towns. Even then, they’ll be spotty.
The armed forces are the wild card. If they remain loyal to unconstitutional government, the crisis will be hyper-destructive. If they abide by their oaths to the Constitution, the entire set of unrest will end in a few months, as the urban populations literally die off.
These are all horrifying prospects, but the plunder of the middle class producers must come to an end.
One way, or the other!
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“…the Left is dead set on destroying the concept of Liberty for the consistency of socialist poverty. ”
Well said, Curtis.
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