[Genuine Realist]

Hah. That column was written by a rich (estimated net worth of $3 million) old white lady (Peggy Noonan) who was a speechwriter for Reagan and who married the chief economist of the Chamber of Commerce. Remind me of her qualifications to speak about the downtrodden everyman vis-a-vis the elite class she has been part of for 40 years? 

And what galls me so much about these kinds of arguments is that the vast majority of the working poor are people of color: "Among the 10.6 million U.S. low-income families with an employed adult in 2013, racial/ethnic minorities constitute 58 percent, despite only making up 40 percent of all working families nationwide." They are also disproportionately the ones who have been the victims of COVID-19. 

Meanwhile, almost every armed protestor I've seen occupying the capital building in Michigan is a white person, many driving large expensive trucks. I don't get the sense that they are on the brink of homelessness - rather, it's the infringement on their entitlement to operate a motor boat or have a low income worker polish their nails or landscape their yard that is bringing them to the edge. 

This in no ways discounts the tremendous economic dislocation that has taken place, but it says a lot that the Wall Street Journal has suddenly decided to take up the ostensible cause of the working poor that has been utterly ruined by the policies they've spent decades advocating for.

This is the problem in a nutshell. Peggy Noonan may have come to decent wealth, but she wasn't born wealthy. Neither was Reagan. There's the reason why they have come to represent common and Populist values.

You really think that the considerable protest against the extended shut down is the product of rich boat owners? There were indeed a couple of Second Amendment types in that protest. That, of course, is what the media - which has decided that lockdown is Blue, and therefore Good, re-opening Red and therefore Bad - what a simple world! - choe to feature. But there were many, many more of all races, there because they're scared to death about what happens next. There were plenty of photos of Black and White protestors, with their arms linked, because they have a lot more in common than they have differences. They're going broke. It's the unprivileged people, the ones living month to month, that are in danger. And that's what Peggy Noonan is telling you, if you choose to listen. That's the class she came from. (She's the daughter of a merchant seaman, educated at Farleigh Dickinson, who made her way on pure talent. She was not born to advantage.) It's where you start from that matters.

Faced with these rather self-evident truths, the media goes to tired racist cliches and ignores the fact that the lockdown supporters almost uniformly come from privileged classes - reporters and professionals from richly endowed and funded employers, people with family wealth, older pensioners. Like it or not, it's the privileged class that supports this, with the usual salonist yawn. Aren't you a member of that privileged class? Isn't just about everyone who supports the lockdown without second thought? And yet you dismiss THEM as overprivileged. Amazing. 

The book Noonan cites by Michael Lind contains essential insight. Lind is a maverick intellectual who creates waves among conventional thinkers, both Right and LEft. He sees the unworthy Trump as the lucky beneficiary of a reaction to the class war the elite managerial class has been waging for three decades now. You don't want to enlist yourself in that. 

Dismissing protests and concerns of this type on the usual racist foolishness is to enlist in the wrong army. (Do you really think rich boat owners are driving up to Lansing? And dignified african-Americans are suffering in dignified silence? Really?) Three weeks ago, I thought Trump had zero chance in November. But he's looking better every day. A big part of the reason is the MSN and the Democrats demonizing what are quite legitimate concerns of brobdingnagian numbers of ordinary people with real anxiety. There is talk of swinging California, as Newsome goes on and on and Garcetti cloes down LA. It's not that the health concerns might not be paramount. It's that the others are quite real, and you do not trivialize them.

[Genuine Realist]

Hah. That column was written by a rich (estimated net worth of $3 million) old white lady (Peggy Noonan) who was a speechwriter for Reagan and who married the chief economist of the Chamber of Commerce. Remind me of her qualifications to speak about the downtrodden everyman vis-a-vis the elite class she has been part of for 40 years? 

And what galls me so much about these kinds of arguments is that the vast majority of the working poor are people of color: "Among the 10.6 million U.S. low-income families with an employed adult in 2013, racial/ethnic minorities constitute 58 percent, despite only making up 40 percent of all working families nationwide." They are also disproportionately the ones who have been the victims of COVID-19. 

Meanwhile, almost every armed protestor I've seen occupying the capital building in Michigan is a white person, many driving large expensive trucks. I don't get the sense that they are on the brink of homelessness - rather, it's the infringement on their entitlement to operate a motor boat or have a low income worker polish their nails or landscape their yard that is bringing them to the edge. 

This in no ways discounts the tremendous economic dislocation that has taken place, but it says a lot that the Wall Street Journal has suddenly decided to take up the ostensible cause of the working poor that has been utterly ruined by the policies they've spent decades advocating for.

This is the problem in a nutshell. Peggy Noonan may have come to decent wealth, but she wasn't born wealthy. Neither was Reagan. There's the reason why they have come to represent common and Populist values.

You really think that the considerable protest against the extended shut down is the product of rich boat owners? There were indeed a couple of Second Amendment types in that protest. That, of course, is what the media - which has decided that lockdown is Blue, and therefore Good, re-opening Red and therefore Bad - what a simple world! - choe to feature. But there were many, many more of all races, there because they're scared to death about what happens next. There were plenty of photos of Black and White protestors, with their arms linked, because they have a lot more in common than they have differences. They're going broke. It's the unprivileged people, the ones living month to month, that are in danger. And that's what Peggy Noonan is telling you, if you choose to listen. That's the class she came from. (She's the daughter of a merchant seaman, educated at Farleigh Dickinson, who made her way on pure talent. She was not born to advantage.) It's where you start from that matters.

Faced with these rather self-evident truths, the media goes to tired racist cliches and ignores the fact that the lockdown supporters almost uniformly come from privileged classes - reporters and professionals from richly endowed and funded employers, people with family wealth, older pensioners. Like it or not, it's the privileged class that supports this, with the usual salonist yawn. Aren't you a member of that privileged class? Isn't just about everyone who supports the lockdown without second thought? And yet you dismiss THEM as overprivileged. Amazing. 

The book Noonan cites by Michael Lind contains essential insight. Lind is a maverick intellectual who creates waves among conventional thinkers, both Right and LEft. He sees the unworthy Trump as the lucky beneficiary of a reaction to the class war the elite managerial class has been waging for three decades now. You don't want to enlist yourself in that. 

Dismissing protests and concerns of this type on the usual racist foolishness is to enlist in the wrong army. (Do you really think rich boat owners are driving up to Lansing? And dignified african-Americans are suffering in dignified silence? Really?) Three weeks ago, I thought Trump had zero chance in November. But he's looking better every day. A big part of the reason is the MSN and the Democrats demonizing what are quite legitimate concerns of brobdingnagian numbers of ordinary people with real anxiety. There is talk of swinging California, as Newsome goes on and on and Garcetti cloes down LA. It's not that the health concerns might not be paramount. It's that the others are quite real, and you do not trivialize them.