Where’s The Uprising?
Again picked up the essay on political theory by Wendy Brown entitled, American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-Democratization. Brown composed the essay in 2006.
It is a dense read. I work to understand the collaboration, the alliance between Neoconservative minded people, who represent the family of my birth, and those Americans of a Neoliberal economic mentality. How could such unlikely cultural traditions become compadres, so tightly joined in a family-like fashion to a shared worldview and motivation? The evangelicals and the uber well-to-do “one-percenters” form a sizable bloc of reliable supporters of the President and his policies.
Such a alliance seems fraught with contradictions from a purely logical stand point. It is tempting to think, as I have that surely some large scale deception has come into play. Wendy Brown goes a good distance to show how working class folk, understanding themselves as loving their country, and “following Jesus,” feel a commonality with a man who has represented 
a rapacious capitalism for his entire life, who promulgates policies biased to make the rich much richer. Is this a massive shell game, the mother of all deceptions, or is it something else? Are the masses at Trump campaign rallies unwitting victims?
Brown quotes from Thomas Frank, What’s The Matter With Kansas (New York: Henry Holt, 2005)
More, the wealth of America is figured by neocons as part of its greatness (and part of what makes it desired by some foreigners, hated by others), hence an appropriate element of patriotic attachment. This renders as anti-American any resentment of the rich, reasoning that also neutralizes anger over a deteriorating standard of existence for a working class content, in Thomas Frank’s words, “to be underpaid and overweight” as long as it is also cooed to by the party of the rich as “the real America.”
“Real” Americans……. How real? What is a “real” American? How can you tell? What are the minimum requirements?
