Tag: Identification

So, identity is and always has been one of the most important forces in politics, the rise and fall of empires, etc. This was true long before “identity politics” or intersectionality and it will be true long after they are forgotten.

Identity is who you feel with. Who you bleed with. If people like you are hurt, you hurt. You can see this in degrees in terrorist attacks and natural catastrophes. If it’s the Brits being hit, Americans care. French? Somewhat less. Baghdad market bombing? Don’t give a shit. (Yes, you are special flower and do actually care, which may well be true, as you are one of my readers and self-selecting for caring more about people not like you, but most people don’t. I wish they did, but they don’t.)

This is also true for good things; they matter more if they happen to people I identify with.

My primary political identification is with the precariat: The working class who aren’t even stable working class. They can lose their jobs at any time, they live in bad housing, they are one bad bounce away from the street. In the US, they can’t afford healthcare even if they have insurance, in most countries they can’t afford dental care and you can see it as they get older in their yellow teeth.

These are the people who are always scared, who will work until they die or physically just can’t, and who will push far past what “can’t” would be for most other people. They work through pain and illness because, even in most countries with sick days, a week isn’t enough if you’re precariat: When you eat badly, and you work hard, your health breaks at some point.

I’ve been precariat a lot during my life. I’m precariat now. I’ve belonged to other classes, I’ve even been well off, upper middle class. I’ve hobnobbed and lived with the upper classes plenty, I grew up with them in boarding school. I can fit in with most classes, as long as I have the wardrobe, though as I get older and look older it becomes a bit harder: I don’t have the shiny well-cared for, calibrated, drugged look the upper classes have at my age.

Some of my identification with the precariat is simply that I often am one. But I could choose to identify with other classes or groups, I’ve been among many of them at some time. People can be stubborn about identifying with a class they no longer have the material circumstances for–they can hold on to that until they die, acting as if they still belong and often getting away with it. It’s worth doing, because lower class people are treated worse.

Period. They are treated worse, always. I put on a suit and clean up and I see the change. I change my manners and act middle class, and how I am treated changes, always for the better.

Lower class people have manners and attitudes which are recognizable, and higher orders, even the people only a little higher, shit on them the moment they recognize those manners. Exceptions exist, and I’ve gone out of my way when my circumstances are good to be an exception (which is why service staff anywhere I go regularly always like me), but they are exceptions.

But while some of my identification is simply positional, a lot of my political identification stems from the fact that the precariat, more than anyone except those who have fallen out of the system completely, are the ones who need the help. They tend to work very hard and get very little for it. I’ve done office work, construction work, retail and food prep, among many, many jobs, and the psychological stress of office work can be real, but it’s not the same as a hard physical job, where in any case the bosses are often still assholes. (This is especially true in retail in my experience. Never did manufacturing.) Office workers also tend to have a bit of protection from the most abusive behaviour, because of a certain shield of civility which does not apply to those at the bottom.

So, I am for Bernie, and I was for Corbyn, because they will do the most for those who need the most help. I can argue that most of what they want to do will also be excellent for everyone but the very rich, even if many of those people don’t recognize it, and it’s true, but I don’t care very much. The self-identifying middle class, the upper class, and the rich (three separate classes) are mostly either actively scum, or passively scum. The “middle class” has thrown everyone, including their own weaker members, under the bus in a pathetic attempt to keep their perceived status. The upper class are the rich’s close retainers, executing their policies and about one member of the rich out of a hundred who has power is doing more good than evil.

Identification is a matter of feel. When the precariat are hurt, I hurt. I feel their pain. This isn’t theoretical, you can see it on brain scans. When something good happens for them, I am happy. This is true even if it has no effect on me; I’m Canadian, and have universal health care–yet I have spent much of my career advocating for the US to adopt universal care.

One reason that Warren never had a hard core of supporters the way Sanders does is simple: She doesn’t identify as lower or working class or precariat. She doesn’t feel like one of the body. She doesn’t actually seem to feel the pain. Bernie, despite having been in Congress for ages, has a lot of Jewish working class feel. The anger that turns off the technocrats as inappropriate for the office is real to working class types. If there’s reason to be angry, be angry. And Bernie is angry because their bosses are treating them like shit.

Warren wants to be the good boss; the good intellectual. The savior.

Bernie feels like one of us and he’s angry with us.

He may or may not win the nomination (though I think he can win the election.)

But it’s why there’s a core of people who trust him through thick and thin.

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