Popular Will

The American working man needs defending, and the army of supporters is vast.

Well mostly from rich people. Rich media people. Rich foppish, WASPy millionaire elite fanboys of the supernal Homo Americanus.

That man is George F. Will. Barack Obama only the second non-millionaire to win his party's endorsement for President in since 1964 impugned their impugnable honor:

Obama's dismissal is: Americans, especially working-class conservatives, are unable, because of their false consciousness, to deconstruct their social context and embrace the liberal program. Today that program is to elect Obama, thereby making his wife at long last proud of America.

Awww! Burn! And sliming the man's wife isn't all he's got: Will has more:

What had been under FDR a celebration of America and the values of its working people has become a doctrine of condescension toward those people and the supposedly coarse and vulgar country that pleases them.

Will's column is a bravura performance. He bludgeons Obama with FDR, marries Bhim to the ineffectual -and equally weirdly named- Adlai Stevenson, makes a brief detour to kick the corpse of Marxism, before watching the glory of the American sun set over heroic Muncie, Indiana.

Of course this about the bitter comment. But what truly was he saying? Sometimes people's economic interests aren't the only thing that determines their vote.

Clearly this is some new post-racial creeping fascism? Will has surely done it this time and relegated the quasi-fascist ideology of liberalism to history's ash can.

I do like Jonathan Chait's response to Will in the New Republic called Popular Will -

[C]onservatives routinely express their fury that a majority of Jews stubbornly flout their own "self-interest"--defined as low tax rates and a maximally hawkish Middle East policy--to vote Democratic. The process of trying to persuade others to reconsider the nature of their self-interest is not some Marxist exercise or an accusation of false consciousness. It's what we call "democracy."

Question worth asking:

Can we stop using Brazil to illustrate inequality and instead wave our hands around and say,"mmhmmm"?

Another Question Worth Asking:

In a speech in 2007 Warren Buffett pointed out that his tax rate was 17.7 per cent while his secretary was taxed at 30 per cent. Does he hate working people too?