“Economic Anxiety And Its Discontents

“What happens to those without the skills and abilities needed to move up the education ladder to a position of prestige in an increasingly competitive world?” One expert’s
answer: “They have become populism’s frontline troops.” Thomas @Edsall explains:https://t.co/nYfk667rOT

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) February 9, 2022

Economic anxiety is an idea that still won’t die.

What industrialized world do we have without construction workers? Carpenters? Plumbers? People sitting at computers turning idea from engineers and architects into plans for buildings, power plants , factories, homes. Not to mention machines, televisions, phones, computers. People with enough time and money to travel to Trump’s rallies or blather on the internet or listen to podcasts are not much suffering from their economic status. Pundits and Harvard Law professors imagine “working class” people are like them, just with less money and, crucially, less education. They also imagine the lack of these things leads to “anxiety” the better educated and wealthier are spared. It’s an absurdly elitist and anti-democratic proposition.

The paranoid style in American politics is mostly fueled by wealthy, educated, and intelligent Americans. The first mistake of educated people is thinking everyone with similar sufficient education (Ivy League is the cliché, but it isn’t the only classification).thinks alike, i.e., is “reasonable.” Which means those without such educational attainments are, by definition, “unreasonable.”

You can see where this goes. The solution is not the cure; it’s just another symptom of the disease. Trump divides people. The response is to divide people. It’s the same argument that whatever the Republicans do, the Democrats must do. In order to preserve national unity, we must destroy national unity. In order to save democracy, we must destroy democracy. Because the real “solution” being offered here is to make more people like “us,” or to render more of the people described as politically impotent, even more politically impotent.

“Prestige” and education don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Teachers are educated; but below the level of a few prestigious professors (mostly those who manage their way in front of TV cameras), they have no prestige. States are busy passing laws meant merely to pay lip service to extremists. Banning “CRT” from the classroom is ultimately meaningless. How do you define CRT do you can ban it? It’s no different than banning pornography. You know what it is when you see it doesn’t establish an enforceable legal standard. In Alabama legislators have already learned this lesson: parents were calling them to complain teachers were teaching CRT by mentioning Black History Month. Economic anxiety again? Or just shame and good old American racism? Greg Abbott has told the Texas Education Agency to investigate schools for providing pornography to children, a violation of criminal law. TEA has no prosecutorial authority, but librarians across the state are terrified of the prospect. Teachers and school librarians should enjoy some measure of prestige in society; but they never have. Is their anxiety going to lead them to support Trump?

Why not?

A sweeping generalization that needs special exceptions to keep justifying it just exposes the weakness of the proposition.