Intelligent Discontent

• Written by: Bob FunkMay 18th, 2008
• Comments:2 Comments
• Category:Economy, Featured, In the Region, Iraq War, The Left, The West
• Rating:
  (3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
  
   Loading ...

I attend college in Washington state and over the last few years I’ve become acquainted with a number of left-leaning periodicals, which focus on a range of subjects from entertainment to social life to politics. One such periodical is The Sitting Duck, which is published in Olympia.

This week’s issue has an article focusing on the south sound’s Republican and Democratic conventions. As I read through the article, I was drawn to the following passage:

The Iraq War has already entered history as one of the dumbest things in human memory, but now you have an economy going tits up, and that bothers Americans even more than shooting people they don’t know.

Before it was merely lies and corruption - now folks can barely afford to drive, and that’s going just a little too far. In Centralia recently, hundreds of truck drivers demonstrated to express their displeasure with the ruinous price of diesel fuel. It would be interesting to know how many of those guys voted for Bush.

I was, to say the least, a bit disgusted by this segment of the article. I think the attitude put forth in these kinds of writings highlight an offensive segment of the self-described “liberal-activist” portion of left-leaning America.

No doubt, this article was written by someone whose lively hood does not depend on gas prices, so it’s easy to trivialize the concerns of those whose lively hoods do. The writer of this article, a Terrence Knight, also assumes that the Iraq War is not a concern for Centralia’s truck drivers.

However, it was the last line that bothered me the most. Knight assumes, in so many words, that truck drivers voted for Bush and so they deserve what they get. How horribly offensive. I had always been led to believe that the left was a space for inclusion and a firm opponent to classism - perhaps I’m wrong.

I think it’s dangerous and rather repulsive when I see fellow “liberals” embracing stereotypes (in this case, of working truck drivers) and shunning a portion of the population’s concerns. It’s this kind of thought and this kind of writing that makes me cringe as a liberal - we should be embracing those who have become disillusioned with right wing leadership, not mocking them and we shouldn’t be perpetuating stereotypes of “truck drivers,” for example - it only makes the left come off as ignorant and out of touch.

It’s also this kind of approach that lends itself (and, in this case, rightly so) to accusations of the left being composed of the “liberal intelligista” - a bunch of self-assured, elitist jerks.

This is not what we, as liberals, need. We are grounded in an ideology of inclusion, compromise, and sharing the burdens of our society. Sometimes I think a few of us might forget those simple guidelines because of our shameless desire to win and a disturbing level of disdain for those who are not just like us.