Comment 67101

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted July 30, 2011 at 12:28:56 in reply to Comment 67089

I find American political life really fascinating for this reason. It's unlike any comparable country. The American "left" has embraced elitism and middle-class aesthetics wholeheartedly, alienating a huge chunk of the working class. The conservatives, on the other hand, are very good at appealing to 'common folk', even though they hold an ideology which is much more elitist in terms of belief.

It's a colossal PR failure for the American "left". By relying constantly on arguments and attacks which paint their opponents as "uneducated" or "low-class", they've alienated a lot of the people they claim to be fighting for.

I don't know that I'd single out anyone on RTH as an "elitist", but we certainly tend to converse in fairly middle-class terms (academic, technical, economic etc). It's certainly a favourite complaint of trolls. In a city like Hamilton, that means we have to be mindful of how we come across to others who don't. This isn't to say that there's something wrong with using verbose language or "big thinkin' words" - just that we should be careful not to do it in a way that excludes or belittles people. Not everyone's had the chance to take urban economics classes or read Jane Jacobs - that doesn't mean they're stupid.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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