A Few Notes On The Lower Middle Class

...that, I must admit, I despise more than the ignorant and belligerent working class -- that is, white trash/rednecks.

One
It's basically white-collar people with a blue-collar attitude. They're trapped economically between the middle/upper-middle classes and the working class. Its members usually don't rise to the middle class or higher, no matter how much they bow and scrape to them, and are scared to death of dropping into the blue collar working class and the loss of social status that comes from that.

Two
They often lack a certain class or style. They are often uncultured and boast about that. They tend to be rude, hostile, and belligerent against the arts and artists.

Three
They are often strongly bigoted against women, minorities and gays. But in secret. They don't have the courage of their convictions, no matter how terrible.

Opposed to them is the upper class, whose members often are just as bigoted but don't hide their opinions because they won't be punished in any way for them. Also opposed to them are the lower classes, who are often just as bigoted but don't care about the consequences from their bigotry.

Four
They rarely openly defy authority, but burn with anger and sometimes hatred of it. It was why so many of them back in the 1960s hated the radicals like Students for a Democratic Society in its more militant phase or apolitical hippies who often went their own way.

Five
They tend to be anti-Semitic. Just as many blacks believe THE MAN -- that is, whites -- keep them down, the white lower middle class blames THE JEW for their misfortunes.

Six
Looking back, I had an uncle who had that attitude, even though he was an executive for a telephone company. He was transferred from the Indianapolis office to the New York office. His children/my cousins halfway jokingly called him Archie Bunker.

I also worked for an editor who had those attitudes; he was the first anti-Semite I ever knew personally.

Infamous people with that outlook include Richard Nixon and ... Adolf Hitler.

The Republican party has courted those types of people for the last 40-plus years. Often, that has bit its members in the ass.

Seven
I've been writing around these people in this blog. As the year passes, I hope I have the tenacity ... and the courage ... to deal with them and to expand my notes into a more formal post.