Populist Rage

Hey, Amy Sullivan and Joe Klein! I think I found that "populist rage” you were looking for:

Among the ruins: Stair railings, built-in cabinets, shower doors, double doors to the master bedroom and other doors are gone, a fireplace was yanked out, the hardwood floors are torn up, carpeting was taken, the toilet was removed from a bathroom. There’s nasty mold. There are no appliances in the kitchen. Even the sinks and garbage disposal are missing.

“The hot water heater was also removed from the house. One entire bathroom and the kitchen was stripped from floor to ceiling, including all drawers, cabinets and even the counter tops,” Moon adds.

[...]

“Some misguided home owners, angry at the bank for foreclosing, think it’s somehow permissible to turn the home into a total nightmare,” writes California broker associate Elizabeth Weintraub on about.com.

“I’ve seen homes where every window looked like it had been whopped by a baseball bat,” she writes. “Some previous occupants deposited feces on counter tops or in the middle of the living room floor … Sometimes home owners turn on all the water faucets and plug up the drains before departing.”

Also, for “populist rage” of another stripe, you might turn your eyes to London today.

Just sayin’.

(h/t, Atrios)

Looking For Rage In All The Wrong Places

[UPDATE]:

Hilarious. One of the jokers at Clownhall can't muster any populist rage, either.

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Over at Swampland, both Amy Sullivan and Joe Klein question just how “angry” people really are at Wall Street. Sure, they’re angry ... but are they really, super duper angry?

Klein writes:

So, yes, people are "angry" at Wall Street. They are also "angry" at Octomom. I wonder if the depth and quality of those two rages differ--or is this all just a television show? I mean, how many demonstrations, how many economic riots, have there been? There have been real free-for-alls, featuring real violence and bloodshed, in places like China, where the level of societal unfairness and desperation makes our own not-insignificant inequities seem like a workers' paradise. There used to be economic riots and marches here--back in the Great Depression, and further back in the populist era of the late 19th century. But none lately. There doesn't even seem to be significant movement in the polls, which are our own, latter-day way of marching on Washington.

[...]

But most of the anger we see and hear comes from people who are paid to be angry, on cue, on cable television--as opposed to people with actual grievances.

Hmmm. I have a couple of thoughts on this. For one thing, to say people don't have real grievances because they aren't rioting in the streets is bizarre. People have lost jobs, can't afford their kids' college education, and have seen their retirement funds evaporate. That stuff is real.

Here's another thing, polls are not the modern day way to march on Washington, and only the most deluded Villager would think they are. Polls are tools used by PR firms to manipulate the media about public opinion and push an agenda. I thought Klein was smart enough to know that.

Guess not.

Second of all: Judging the depth of the peoples’ anger by the size and number (and violence) of demonstrations strikes me as rather odd. We’ve had some big demonstrations over the past 10 years: against the war in Iraq, against the Bush Administration, against anti-immigration bigotry, and against globalization. Half the time the media didn’t even bother to cover these demonstrations. When they did, I don’t recall Joe Klein or anyone else saying they indicated the American people were “angry.” In fact, most of the participants were written off as liberal crackpots and terrorists.

Thirdly: America is not China. We do not live under a repressive regime that is anything close to what the people of China endure. How people in Communist China react is really not pertinent to a discussion about how Americans react.

Finally: America in 2009 is in a far different place from the America of the 1930s or even the 1960s and 1970s. We’re different demographically, socially and economically. We are older. We are wealthier and enjoy a more comfortable standard of living. We’re busier. And we are more insulated and isolated from one another.

We have become insulated by our technology. We twitter and e-mail and blog, and it’s easy to feel like we’re in communication with the outside world, but that technological filter keeps us from having real interactions with people. We form virtual communities, not real ones.

How we live isolates us. We don’t stay at the same job for 40 years, nor do we live in the same house or even the same town for that amount of time. We don’t stay with the same life partner for that amount of time. The bonds of church, family, and community that joined us back in the 1930s no longer apply.

I’m not saying this is good or bad, I’m just saying that the threads that hold us together are more tenuous, and this has changed how we interract in the world.

And this is why I believe few of us march in the streets anymore. I think those days are pretty much over. Sure, certain segments of the population will stage demonstrations, some of them might be quite large and you might even catch one on the evening news, but these are usually highly structured affairs involving a lot of networking, planning, and organizing. You know, the last expression of “populist rage” we saw required the involvement of a GOP public relations company, a well-monied financier, a network of bloggers and talk radio hosts, etc. etc.

Not exactly the embodiment of "populist rage" in my opinion. We're too isolated to spontaneously take to the streets except under the most extraordinary circumstances.

I think in general “populist rage” today takes a different form. It takes place virtually, like on blogs--the kind of display that Klein once dismissed as “free-range lunacy.”

I think it's kinda funny that someone like Joe Klein would expect to see "populist rage" expressed in the exact same way it's always been expressed. And I also think it shows that the media are just as isolated and insulated as the rest of us.

Merle Speak, You Listen

Much as I hate to link to Joe Klein, aka “Joke Line,” one of the MSM’s serial offenders, I’m compelled to break my own rule today because in what can only be described as a sheer fluke, he interviewed a true national treasure, Merle Haggard.

Klein has never met a liberal stereotype he didn’t like, such as the time he said GOP candidates with multiple marriages "live like liberals” (Ha! I get it! We don’t have any morals like those conservative Christian folks do!). Or how about the time he said that liberal Democrats hate America. That was great! Thank you, liberal media!

In this week’s column he asks, "Does Merle Haggard Speak for America?” The answer is obvious to anyone who’s not isolated in their ivory tower of punditry. Unfortunately, that doesn’t apply to Joe Klein or most of the other Beltway gas bags. So it’s time for Klein and the rest of these clowns to have a steaming cup of STFU and listen for a change, because Merle is talking:

"The folks don't have a say-so anymore. They're being force-fed — music, yeah, but every other darn thing too. I supported George W. I'm not exactly a liberal. But I know how that Texas thing works, who those oil folks are and what they wanted in Iraq... I'm a born-again Christian too, but the longer I live, the more afraid I get of some of these religious groups that have so much influence on the Republicans and want to tell us how to live our lives."

Indeed. Like those Chinese hogs force-fed wastewater before slaughter, we Americans are getting shit shoved down our gullets and Joke Line doesn’t understand why we won’t say thank you:

A vague populist annoyance with big stores and big shots is one of the themes that have led Haggard to "change labels," as he told me with a laugh.

"Vague, populist annoyance”? Are you kidding me? How about outrage at the crappy way Wal-mart treats its employees, or the way big box stores have transformed rural America into a series of ghost towns?

Merle goes on:

"This is America. We're proud. We're not afraid of a bunch of terrorists. But this government is all about terror alerts and scaring us at airports. We're changing the Constitution out of fear. We spend all our time looking up each other's dresses. Fear's the only issue the Republican Party has. Vote for them, or the terrorists will win. That's not what Reagan was about. I hate to think about our soldiers over in Iraq fighting for a country that's slipping away."

Klein wonders if there’s a Bubba backlash brewing; I suspect there might be, or at least the GOP is afraid there might be, otherwise they wouldn’t stoop to manufacturing phony controversies about NASCAR vaccinations. But I also think there’s a core group of Bubba voters who will never vote for a Democrat come hell or high water.

It’s worth mentioning that the last time I blogged about this, the TN GOP sent out a press release about it, which someone posted anonymously in comments:

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN

In a Salon.com article by Thomas F. Schaller, the author states that the Democrat Party has lost a certain voter: "The 'NASCAR dad' -- that shirt-sleeved, straight-talkin', these-colors-don't-run fella who votes his cultural values above all else -- or 'Bubba.'"

Schaller wrote, "Start looking on milk cartons for Bubba because he has vanished, and not a moment too soon: The Democratic obsession with the down-home, blue-collar, white male voter, that heartbreaker who crossed the aisle to the Republicans many decades ago, may finally be coming to a merciful end."

More locally, a Nashville blogger, Southern Beale, analyzed the Salon.com article and went on to say, "I'd clarify this to say, have Democrats lost the rural white Southern vote, and should they care? Does anyone think Democrats can get this vote? Should they care if they can't?"

On behalf of those who get up everyday, put in a hard day's work, worry about their kids' education & safety, pay the bills, get your kids to ball practice, say your prayers knowing that God does hear you and, oh yeah, follow NASCAR, offer straight-talk and love our country and wave the flag, we are honored that you might join the Republican Party and stand beside us in keeping America, and especially Tennessee, the best place in the world to live and raise a family. We welcome each Tennessean and "we do care!"

Yikes, was that raw sewage going down my throat again?

Yep, sounds to me like they’re nervous. You know, once you’ve lost Merle,you’ve lost America.