In the US, class war still means just one thing: the rich attacking the poor

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2161252,00.html

Iraq has, quite rightly, dominated the national conversation and will dominate Bush's legacy. But that doesn't mean it will necessarily be the chief concern for voters choosing their next president. In this week that officially kicks off the presidential primary season, sexual scandal is not the only issue to remind us of the Clinton era. In 1991 Clinton's chief strategist pinned a note on the wall of his campaign headquarters to remind the team of its core message: "the economy, stupid".

A similar focus may once again be necessary, although translating that maxim into votes is not straightforward. Paradoxically, the states with the highest levels of poverty and lowest incomes are staunchly Republican. Poor people tend not to vote, and candidates tend neither to appeal nor refer to them. However, economically they are a glaring and shameful fact of American life; socially and culturally they dominate the centre of almost every moral panic - but politically they do not exist. None the less, in recent years the conditions associated with poverty have spread far beyond the poor. Almost two-thirds of those who lost their health insurance last year earn $75,000 or more. Homeowners are also not so easy to write off, not least because those hardest hit happen to be in politically sensitive areas. Of the 10 states that have suffered the most from foreclosures, six - Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, Florida, Ohio and Michigan - are swing states.

Among the viable Democratic contenders, John Edwards has embraced the economic agenda most forcefully. In his stump speech he calls for reversing Bush's tax cuts for those earning more than $200,000 a year, cutting poverty by a third in 10 years and eliminating it altogether in 30. Having announced his candidacy from New Orleans he has walked many a picket line in recent months and tells crowds: "The organised labour movement is the greatest anti-poverty movement in American history." With the brooding resentment at growing insecurity now reaching a critical point, Obama and Hillary are also shifting their focus.

Sadly it is unlikely this resentment will gain much in the way of political expression beyond populist rhetoric. The notions of personal reinvention and economic meritocracy that lie at the heart of the American dream are far more powerful and enduring than the kind of class consciousness necessary to redress the imbalance between rich and poor. Inequality of wealth in the US has long been justified on the grounds that there is equality of opportunity. The trouble is that while inequalities have grown dramatically over the past 20 years, equality of opportunity has been all but eroded.

[MatrixEscape]

1. Curious here ...

Your handle is "Thankfully_in_Brittan" and yet, we see a strong and watchful model for a police state forming over there from the reports we get. You have many problems of your own, but we do envy your health care system.

While you do have an outsider's perspective to offer in respects to the very sad and abysmal state of politics and inequitable distribution of power and wealth in in America, I am having a hard time seeing reasons to hold the UK up as a model that rivals the pitfalls of the American culture in inevitable decay.

Maybe you can give me some insights as to what your politics offer above the paid for cronyism and corporate, Big Brother, police state surge that is now overwhelming our populace and decimating the last semblances of what we thought was the zeitgeist of well-being, prosperity, and sustainability here.

In other words, while your political commentaries on our two-parties-as-one range of limited range of choices are interesting and valid, just how do you see the comparison, across the water, to your on system? Do you find all those cameras comforting rather than disquieting as we follow in your footsteps? Did Blair not do the same thing with your political framework that Bush has done to ours?

It would be better to know from what grounds your overview of corporately controlled politics here comes from and what your current system of government might have to offer us as we sit and ponder this mess, to our scenario. That would be enlightening, above and beyond the prognostications and comments about the next election.

[T_i_B]

2. Yeah my username sucks

And whilst our governments record on civil liberties is dreadful I wouldn't call it a police state just yet. All the same, stuff such as ID cards are not good.

As to the rest of it, I'll have to reply when I'm a bit less busy for the moment as you would need a decent reply.

[MatrixEscape]

3. Thank you ...

for your concern and thoughtful reply. I look forward to your response and insights. We need all the help we can get here from all perspectives and I hope I have inspired you to add your own.

[flashl]

4. This reminds me of ..

'What's Wrong With Kansas? A Conversation With Thomas Frank ((Metropolitan Books, 2004).'

[Vidar]

5. It's a pity, because we really need a revolution.

[LongTomH]

6. Scroll down and read the comments to this article.

You'll find that the Guardian is plagued by the same ilk of right-wing trolls we find in the US. They meet every progressive article with a shitstorm of cherry-picked figures and out-and-out lies.

[T_i_B]

7. Well that's CiF for you

All articles in the comment section of the grauniad, be they left wing or right wing get attacked by Comment is Free users. (Articles by Polly Toynbee are particularly popular for this purpose). If the article is by a well known politician or it is about religion, Israel, 9/11 or any other hot button topic discussion quickly goes down the pan.

Needless to say that the Guardian's CiF message boards have gained a reputation for lunacy and vitriol.

[Prophet 451]

8. But Edwards is a SOCIALIST!!!11111!

Yeah, doesn't scare me much either. I'm a Brit too and the US habit of the right for screaming "socialist" at anyone who says anything about economics baffles me, not to mention the terror the word is supposed to invoke. We've had socialist governments and although their record has been mixed, none of them turned into the USSR.

No, it took a staunch capitalist (Blair) to start eroding our rights...

[Briar]

9. It's interesting to read

today's reports about George Orwell being put under surveillance by the Special Branch and MI5 as a dissident, government opponent and <gasp> communist sympathiser.

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment," wrote George Orwell in the opening pages of 1984. "How often, or on what system the Thought Police plugged in ... was guess work."

Winston Smith, the pallid and ill-fated hero of Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, is left under no illusions about the all-encompassing nature of Big Brother's surveillance society. Placed under the relentless scrutiny of the Thought Police, Smith's flirtation with free thought and sexual rebellion is ruthlessly expunged.

What Orwell, the Eton-educated author and passionate socialist, could not have known, however, was the uncanny parallel between his nightmarish vision of an all-seeing dictatorship and his own status for more than a decade as a target for the close scrutiny of the British security services.

The personal MI5 file of the literary standard bearer of the British Left, published today after being kept secret for nearly 60 years, reveals how Orwell was closely monitored for signs of treacherous or revolutionary political views by Scotland Yard's Special Branch from 1929 until the height of the Second World War. While toiling as a cash-starved foreign correspondent and a struggling author, detectives formed the view that Orwell was a louche "bohemian" who held "advanced communist views".

Full article at:

http://arts.independent.co.uk/books/features/article2924398.ece

and it shows up rather clearly that the supposed differences between totalitarian and so-called democratic states were more in the spin than the actuality. If we are having difficulty making credible an alternative to corporate rule and the unregulated free market with all their disastrous social consequences today, this has been built on nearly a century of concerted efforts to thwart the handing over of power and the nation's wealth to the nation's people.