On Bitterness and Elitism

"A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is."
- Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disuptation

I can't believe Hillary is still playing up the elitism spin on Obama's comments. Today in the middle of the 5 pm news, a commercial ran, approved by her, showing "random" Pennsylvanians on the street talking about how offended they were by the comments.

For the record, here's what actually shook down (as reported in the Washington Post):

Obama's comments came at the end of a lengthy answer in which he rejected the notion that voters were passing him over simply for racial reasons, saying instead that his campaign of hope and change was having difficulty in "places where people feel most cynical about government."

"Everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class . . . don't want to vote for the black guy,' " Obama said at the fundraiser.

"Here's how it is: In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism."

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them.

And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not," he went on. "And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Here's me again:

First, he's actually doing what Luther advises in his explanation to the eighth commandment (in the Small Catechism)- he's trying to explain his neighbor's words and actions in the best possible light, trying to understand WHY there is an apathy and bitterness and distrust toward government in many places in rural America.

Answer me this: how is trying to understand where someone else is coming from, and trying to explain that to someone from a very different background, being elitist? On the contrary, to me, it is the epitome of compassion (literally, "to suffer together" or "to suffer with").

Second, what he said is true. My right to say that is a little sketch, as I am a non-native "outisder" who's only been living here for three years (though I would contend sometimes the gift of outsiders is they can see things natives can't). But if you don't want to take my word for it, Andy and Meg are native central Pennsylvanians (Andy a pastor, Meg a social worker for the foster care system), and they were not only not offended, but agreed with Obama's analysis. So did Robert Reich.

Because the hard facts on the ground are, people here HAVE been beaten down by the economy for a long time - everywhere you go, you see old factory buildings that are shut down, often because the company moved overseas. And that is not just ancient history - three years ago when I moved here, La-Z-Boy had bought out one of the last major local factories/employers, Pennsylvania House Furniture, and shut it down to move operations to China. It is TREMENDOUSLY offensive to people that the furniture still bears the name "Pennsylvania House" when it is no longer made in Pennsylvania, especially since it is being made by "foreigners."

They have also, to an extent, been beaten down by, or at least lost opportunities to, "outsiders." The highest percentage of my parishioners do or did work for "Chef's" - Chef Boyardee, which became American Home Foods, which became (and is now) ConAgra. One of the most revealing conversations I had was over a year ago, with someone retired from Chef's, who told me the company has a strong policy of non-fraternization between management and regular worker bees. Additionally, when they first started working for the company, regular workers who showed potential could advance up to management, but then policy changed - to be a manager you had to have a college degree. All of a sudden, they had to answer to all these outsiders schooled in management theory but with no organic knowledge of their particular plant, and you had to do what they said even if you knew it was incorrect. And there was no getting to know them as a real person inside or outside the workplace.

[A whole lot of tumblers clicked into place after that conversation. It helped me understand the vibe of resistance and suspicion I felt in the congregation when I first arrived (and still feel on occasion), because there I was, an overeducated outsider with no organic knowledge of the particular context, being placed in a "managerial" position in a system and a culture that defers to the pastor - even when they do so grudgingly.]

Now in Lewisburg, you've got Bucknell University added into the mix, which only serves to underscore the disparity between those who have (again, mostly coming in from the outside) and those who are working hard just to scrape by. Bucknell estimates a price tag of $43,380 for the 2008-2009 school year - when the median income in the borough is $30,137, and in most of the surrounding county is $37,000ish. Many of the students drive nicer, newer, fancier cars and have more disposable/discretionary income than people in two-income homes in the community. According to a few sources, in the week between finals and graduation, the students head down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where it is not uncommon for parents to plop down thousands of dollars renting beach homes and sponsoring a week-long drunkfest for their children. That's an egregious waste of money any way you slice it, but is especially abhorrent to someone who makes minimum wage with no paid vacation, or who had to work an entire year before they earned a week of paid vacation.

Add to this the horrendous inefficiencies of the Pennsylvania government. An example: when I went to register my car here, something that would have meant one stop at the DMV in MN, I had to go to three different offices to complete the process. I went to the DMV to get my driver's license, then had to go to a place called Tri-County Tags to transfer my title. Talk about bitter - you know Marge's sisters on _The Simpsons_ (hostile, chain-smoking, DMV workers with NO interest in helping you whatsoever)? It's like Matt Groening based them on the employees of Tri-County Tags. But what's worse - they are not an office of the state, they are subcontractors. $50 of the fee you pay goes to them directly, and all the paperwork says clearly that, as subcontractors, they are NOT RESPONSIBLE for any mistake the state may make on your application. So if the state office makes an error, you have just flushed $50 down the toilet, which you'll have the priviledge of paying again when Tri- County Tags resubmits your application. THEN I had to go to yet a third place to get my vehicle "inspected" - which has nothing to do with emissions, but is supposed to test roadworthiness (I could maybe get behind this if it was ever enforced, but it isn't - there's a person in the community who drives a hunk of junk that failed inspection and everybody knows it and everybody knows someday this is going to cause a horrible accident that might even kill somebody, but they never get picked up and cited for failing inspection).

By the end of that day, I was so frustrated by the whole experience that even I, the Progressive pseudo-socialist Midwesterner, was pounding my steering wheel and muttering "No wonder people here hate and distrust the government!" And the irony was not lost on me that my frustrations were all with the subcontractors, which were not actually government offices. But that left me even more frustrated and confused as to what kind of messed-up government subcontracts out those kinds of public services, why the DMV couldn't have handled it all.

All of which is to say, as I believe Barack himself was trying to say, there are some good reasons for people to feel bitter and disenfranchised around here. And it's a great temptation, when you are bitter and disenfranchised, to start scapegoating other people for the overwhelming problems you are facing - whether that scapegoating happens in relation to your next door neighbor who looks just like you (and believe me, this is a culture that can hold a grudge) or in relation to a group of outsiders not at all like you. It's a great temptation to start thinking of the world in terms of black and white, us and them, it's hard not to listen to the people who drive the wedge further in, who play off your fears and resentments, who promise a substitute security or a false sense of power and control over your own livelihood and/or salvation.

The sad thing is, Obama's getting raked over the coals when he's the one brave enough to call the thing what it is, to call the government on its neglect, to call the people on their apathy and anger. The sad thing is, he's the guy who truly wants to empower the people to work together toward a more perfect union, to bring voices to the table that have long been ignored, to disenfranchise the corporations that have so long set the rules to their own advantage and screwed the people in the process. But once again, the fear-mongering powers that be are working like mad, using sound-bytes and wedge issues to convince people to vote against their own best interest.