Living in such curious times as we do some writing projects take more time and focus than I have had lately. This being early November 2020 with me living in the United States I trust I don't have to explain too much as to why. Musical analysis and music blogging has been temporarily on hold, as has blogging about things connected to the history of a former 501(c)3, although I want to mention that on that orbit of topics Justin Dean had a fascinating (for me) conversation on the Bad Christian podcast I want to eventually blog about. But for this weekend, links for the weekend will suffice.
https://www.thebellows.org/the-double-horseshoe-theory/
As an attempt to explicate class warfare Lind's proposal seems to have some merit. I'm reading deBoer's The Cult of Smart and also Lind's The New Class War lately. Reading Lind reminded me of a willfully ridiculous set of jokes in Whit Stillman's Metropolitan about the difference between a titled aristocrat and an untitled aristocrat with a member of the latter saying the former are "the scum of the earth". Lind proposes that the underclass is basically not relevant to an examination of the political battles within the overclass and that the competing interests and allegiances of the professional bourgeois and the small business bourgeois can help us get a clearer sense of what neoliberalism in its progressive and reactionary forms has been up to in this millenium. As Lind puts it:
At the risk of being overly schematic I would suggest that the “center,” “left” and “right” of America’s top-thirty-percent politics can be mapped imperfectly onto the managerial elite, the professional bourgeoisie and the small business bourgeoisie. In particular, both DSA progressivism and Tea Party conservatism can be understood as different strategies for enlisting the power of government to stave off the proletarianization of the constituents of the two bourgeoisies
The goal of so-called progressivism in 2020s America is to expand employment opportunities for college-educated, center-left professionals, while adding new wings to the welfare state that are tailored to their personal needs. The slogan “Defund the police” is interpreted by the bourgeois professional left to mean transferring tax revenues from police officers, who are mostly unionized but not college-educated, to social service and nonprofit professionals, who are mostly college-educated but not unionized. The enactment of proposals for free college education and college debt forgiveness would disproportionately benefit the professional bourgeoisie, not the working-class majority whose education ends with high school. Likewise, public funding for universal day-care allows both parties in a two-earner professional couple to maximize their individual incomes and individual career achievements by outsourcing the care of their children to a mostly-female, less well-paid workforce at taxpayer expense.
...
The upper horseshoe schema explains American political factions in terms of different combinations of its elements. When the professional bourgeoisie allies itself with the Managerial Elite, you get Clinton-Obama-Biden left-neoliberalism. When the small business bourgeoisie allies itself with the Managerial Elite, you get George W. Bush-Paul Ryan-Nikki Haley right-neoliberalism.
