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1) However things shake out over the next 6 weeks, and regardless of who occupies the White House on January 20, 2021, the multiple crises this country is facing are not going away. They will all worsen. https://thestile1972.tumblr.com/post/615575642192347136/turn-turn-turn
2) Many of the most significant and deeply-embedded challenges faced by this nation are ones that people who people who exist in upper-middle class, professional, white-collar social circles simply cannot see clearly. They live in a bubble that insulates them (for now).
3) There are huge swaths of the country, and well over 100 million people who are being completely left behind due to structural economic change that have been eagerly embraced and implemented by people in the professional upper-middle classes.
4) Some of these problems, like economic inequality, are things that professional class people at least claim to care about, but many others, like this country's voluntary dismantling of its ability manufacture basic goods over the past 50 years, is seen as a feature, not a bug.
5) Too many people in the professional upper-middle class world that I inhabit view the world theoretically. People are "data points" viewed through charts, graphs, and spreadsheets. Working-class people and places are reduced to pixilated abstractions on a computer screen.
6) "Explainers" are written on how the destruction of the way of life for working-class people in states like Ohio is actually necessary, and will work out better for everyone in the end. If you don't like it, you can just move. You can learn to code.
7) And if you don't like it, by God, we are going to keep hammering that square peg into that round hole until you do. If you are too stupid to see what the spreadsheet clearly indicates is good for you, well, then, we really can't help you.
8) I've been alive for 48 years. I grew up middle-class, raised by parents who both grew up working-class, in what was once one of the most industrialized cities in the world. Even though I have degrees, and I, too, do most of my work in front of a screen, I haven't forgotten.
9) I've never felt more estranged from other people with degrees and white-collar jobs than I do right now, here in 2020. I increasingly have trouble relating to them, and cannot understand how it is possible that they cannot be alarmed by what is going on in many communities.
10) I read articles where it is triumphantly proclaimed that a candidate won the places with the most "talent", or GDP, or education-levels, or whatever, like that is some sort of validation of righteousness, or badge of honor.
Where am I? What parallel universe is this?
Where am I? What parallel universe is this?
11) My Dad's parents both worked in factories their entire working life. They were union members and lifelong Democrats. They despised Ronald Reagan.
I have absolutely no doubt that they would have voted for Trump, if they were still alive.
I have absolutely no doubt that they would have voted for Trump, if they were still alive.
12) I don't understand the strain of elitism that uses "talent" as a synonym for "college-educated". I don't understand people who can't see that not everyone wants to move away from their hometown, or that many people *want* to earn a living by working with their hands.
13) The reply guys are going to tell me that hardly anyone works in factories anymore. I'm not talking about factories. That's not the point. The point is that not everyone aspires to the way of life of the upper-middle class, white collar professional.
14) The perspective or point-of-view of people who make things, fix things, transport things; produce food, prepare food; produce energy, etc. is never reflected in public policy discourse, and is rarely even understood. https://thestile1972.tumblr.com/post/633604001409236993/the-people-you-depend-on
15) I could go on, but won't. Suffice it to say, whenever this election is over, the problem of broad swaths of this country feeling like there is no more place for them in this economy needs to be addressed, with tangible actions to restore a path forward for people and places.
16) Because if it isn't addressed, more people and more places are going to become estranged from the vision that the professional upper-middle class has for the country, and that is a recipe for disaster. [end] https://twitter.com/i/status/1324518032719433728
