Fred Clark tends to get it right. I first read him when he was debating the Christian principles involved in taking a job with a microcredit charity that charged interest. His article on Missouri denialists - those who do not believe that Missouri actually exists - was perfect. Most of the resentment in the world is people resenting peop…
Fred Clark tends to get it right. I first read him when he was debating the Christian principles involved in taking a job with a microcredit charity that charged interest. His article on Missouri denialists - those who do not believe that Missouri actually exists - was perfect. Most of the resentment in the world is people resenting people less well off. It's the old "being poor can't be that bad if you still have a cell phone" or "those 1930s breadlines weren't that bad; all those guys had hats". It explains all those small business tyrants upset that their workers get food stamps, housing vouchers and possibly even medical care. This resentment is something that has always been out in the open, but most observers ignore it the way a Missouri denialist has to avoid counting the 50 stars on the US flag. Clark nails it nicely and puts it, as he often does, in a good Christian framework. If there were more Christians like him, Brand Christian wouldn't be as deprecated today.
Is this a US phenomenon only? In Britain, it used to be class warfare, where the resentments were mainly directed upwards from the workers towards the upper classes. The upper classes, secure in their position mostly ignored it unless it affected them in the "pocket". People of privilege, from school age upwards would either look down on those without privilege, but I don't believe there was any resentment. Is this difference due to the very different, non-evangelical Christianity in Britain, a country that was very secular in comparison to the US.
From reading Orwell's essays, I got the impression it was a thing in Britain in the 1930s. His essay on Donald McGill mentions a whole class of uppity servant and workmen humor with an obvious tinge of resentment that these underlings were actually people. Maybe I read something in that wasn't there, but the idea of a workman buying a share of car wouldn't be the target of a joke without an element of resentment. Again, maybe I projected this based on my seeping in American juices all these years.
There was definitely a lot of resentment against union people during the rise of Thatcher. I think her real appeal was best explained in Letter to Brezhnev, but a lot of people who voted for Thatcher to crush the unions were clear in their resentment. This was intensified, if anything, by the class difference. (Wow, this brings back memories. Do you remember those charity boxes, for example, in hotel lobbies to raise money for Falkland War veterans because Thatcher's government had pulled some fiddle to deny them benefits? That's what they told us tourists.)
I wasn't around in teh 1930s, but I do know that the upper classes treated most servants as invisible people. [The maids had to turn and face teh wall when a master or mistress of the house came by them.] This certainly isn't resentment, just ignoring the "lesser mortals". Until it was pointed out to me, I didn't realize that I treated the waitstaff in restaurants in a similar way once they started serving the meals. But this isn't the resentment that is indicated in the article, AFAIK.
The issue with teh unions in the Thatcher era was due to the extreme striking for wage increases during the last labour goverment in the 1970s. People just got fed up with public services not reliably working. Thatcher was a reaction to that. The resentment was not so much to the people (I know, because I was supportive of the need for wage rises in some cases, e.g. nurses.), but the inconveniences caused. I suspect that the inconveniences caused by some of the more extreme climate change groups' actions are the prblem, not so much the causes that many governments have effectively ignored.
I was staying in a few hotels during and after the Falklands War. I don't recall those charity boxes. However, that may have been my general lack of observation. ;-(
Fred Clark tends to get it right. I first read him when he was debating the Christian principles involved in taking a job with a microcredit charity that charged interest. His article on Missouri denialists - those who do not believe that Missouri actually exists - was perfect. Most of the resentment in the world is people resenting people less well off. It's the old "being poor can't be that bad if you still have a cell phone" or "those 1930s breadlines weren't that bad; all those guys had hats". It explains all those small business tyrants upset that their workers get food stamps, housing vouchers and possibly even medical care. This resentment is something that has always been out in the open, but most observers ignore it the way a Missouri denialist has to avoid counting the 50 stars on the US flag. Clark nails it nicely and puts it, as he often does, in a good Christian framework. If there were more Christians like him, Brand Christian wouldn't be as deprecated today.
Is this a US phenomenon only? In Britain, it used to be class warfare, where the resentments were mainly directed upwards from the workers towards the upper classes. The upper classes, secure in their position mostly ignored it unless it affected them in the "pocket". People of privilege, from school age upwards would either look down on those without privilege, but I don't believe there was any resentment. Is this difference due to the very different, non-evangelical Christianity in Britain, a country that was very secular in comparison to the US.
From reading Orwell's essays, I got the impression it was a thing in Britain in the 1930s. His essay on Donald McGill mentions a whole class of uppity servant and workmen humor with an obvious tinge of resentment that these underlings were actually people. Maybe I read something in that wasn't there, but the idea of a workman buying a share of car wouldn't be the target of a joke without an element of resentment. Again, maybe I projected this based on my seeping in American juices all these years.
There was definitely a lot of resentment against union people during the rise of Thatcher. I think her real appeal was best explained in Letter to Brezhnev, but a lot of people who voted for Thatcher to crush the unions were clear in their resentment. This was intensified, if anything, by the class difference. (Wow, this brings back memories. Do you remember those charity boxes, for example, in hotel lobbies to raise money for Falkland War veterans because Thatcher's government had pulled some fiddle to deny them benefits? That's what they told us tourists.)
I wasn't around in teh 1930s, but I do know that the upper classes treated most servants as invisible people. [The maids had to turn and face teh wall when a master or mistress of the house came by them.] This certainly isn't resentment, just ignoring the "lesser mortals". Until it was pointed out to me, I didn't realize that I treated the waitstaff in restaurants in a similar way once they started serving the meals. But this isn't the resentment that is indicated in the article, AFAIK.
The issue with teh unions in the Thatcher era was due to the extreme striking for wage increases during the last labour goverment in the 1970s. People just got fed up with public services not reliably working. Thatcher was a reaction to that. The resentment was not so much to the people (I know, because I was supportive of the need for wage rises in some cases, e.g. nurses.), but the inconveniences caused. I suspect that the inconveniences caused by some of the more extreme climate change groups' actions are the prblem, not so much the causes that many governments have effectively ignored.
I was staying in a few hotels during and after the Falklands War. I don't recall those charity boxes. However, that may have been my general lack of observation. ;-(