Thanks for posting this essay. It’s what I’ve been saying all along, but Mike Elk says it way better than I do. As I’ve said in my comments here before (and to you in my emails),the reason the white working class feels that the “liberal elite” harbors contempt for them is because so many liberals DO. Every single one of them should read Joe Bageant’s book Deer Hunting with Jesus, where he talks about this very thing. Even the political correctness many liberals practice doesn’t extend to the white working class. In their eyes, “rednecks” are fair game. Right here in Asheville where I live and where so many people see themselves as “progressive”, you see that contempt all the time—in blogs, in comments on blogs, etc. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes not, but it’s there. And you better believe the working class feels it.

I’m with you—I don’t think union organizing is the answer. Here in the South, there’s a great mistrust of unions. Instead, I think his other suggestion is the key: go where the working class is and really, really talk to them. Even better, really, really LISTEN. With an open mind and not so many pre-conceived notions…

In other words, be LIBERAL.

If you had told me when I was growing up in the cold war that in 2009 an anarchist CPA (http://karendecoster.com/about) would be using Russian TV interviews to criticize a Democratic president for high unemployment, I would think you were inventing a pretty bizarre science fiction story!