I read the Michael Lind piece to which Ross refers, and I have long worried about the Brazil-type outcome. But this misses something important: it assumes the working class wants, and would take, a large share of the responsibility of governing. /1
To expand on that point, it's not hard to "repress" the numerically greater share of the public when their interest in government and governing is close to zero, and even *hostile* to the notion of government, as conservatives have become. /2
@DouthatNYT
@DouthatNYT
@DouthatNYT We've already slid into an oligarchy of the managerial elite - a danger I raise at the end of my book - but I would argue this not by design, but by *default*. The working class - which once read newspapers and cared about government - is occupied with bread and circuses now. /3
@DouthatNYT I wish that were not so; as we bury George Bush, I wish we had more of the engagement and civic virtue that his generation, across classes, had. But I want to return to one more point before I stop here: fault and blame-laying. /4
The working class has adopted the vices that it once hung around the necks of minorities, not just in terms of family dysfunction, but the insistence that government - at the national level - fix everything. It is a colossal double-standard that this is now okay...for whites. /5
This does not make me "woke" or a newly-minted liberal. I am simply applying the same standard that conservatives applied 30+ years ago, and applying them consistently. The dispassionate application of standards was once something conservatives valued. No longer, I guess. /6x
