That title in itself raises a number of questions.
Does America still have a working class? Are there a multiplicity of working classes? Are all "working" Americans just the working poor?
Guess it's gonna depend a lot on how you define "working."
"Class."
"Poor."
Bill Clinton showed us a lot about the importance of definitions back in the Lewinski era.
I'm a regular reader of Counterpunch.
Some of the stuff I read there is utterly invaluable.
Much of the stuff I read there is utter crap.
For example, Mateo Pimental, a Counterpunch regular, has figured out that Donald Trump is a racist.
Well, no shit!
Hey dude, we're all racists at some level. Acknowledging race is racism when you get down to the nitty gritty of it.
And how does one go about the business of social commentary without acknowledging race?
I've long thought that classism casts a bigger shadow than racism. When the black guys and the white guys stumbled out of Frankel Steel with their lay-off notices in hand one night in the 1980s, we had everything in common. In fact, at that moment, we had way more in common than we had to divide us.
Black and white alike are gonna miss our payments and maybe lose our homes.
I had black workmates at Budd Automotive and Frankel Steel and at Saint John Shipbuilding and at pretty much every other place I ever worked.
We might have had different skin-tones, but we all worked the same gig.
In that "classless society" that America has ostensibly become, maybe a few folks could turn their sights on what's really going on in the debasement of America's working classes.
I'm guessing Donald Trump will get there well before Mateo Pimental.
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