List,
When I talk to workers (people like me) about matters vital to their
lives, when I show ordinary people Roger and Me or even Manufacturing
Consent, they get it. They're not stupid. Ordinary people are concerned,
are pretty hip to what's going on, and are eager to learn. I left my
contracting business to my cousin to enter the academy to learn more about
the world. And, yes, I drank beer and hung out in bars. The enemy of
freedom is not the mythical stupid proletariat (although sometimes
proletarians act in stupid ways). The enemy is the capitalist class and
the political stratum at their beck and call, many of self-important
latter moving through the ivory tower, from time to time kicking out
embarrassing fictions, believing the masses to be nothing the herd.
Maybe the fact that the ordinary person doesn't care about the concerns of
the cultural "left" and out-spoken trivial side of the political left is a
demonstration of Moore's argument? Maybe this has shot right over the
heads of the very people he is criticizing? I suggest that rather than
falling into the elitist mode and suggesting that Moore and the masses
don't get it, some might consider the possibility that *they* just don't
get it.
Andy