Obama and the New Culture

[Beregond2]

I have been re-reading "The Chaos Point" by Ervin Laszlo. He talks about cultural demographics and how they are changing, identifying three main groups in America: the Traditionals, who are the very conservative rightwingers, fundamentalists, lower income, who made-up 24.5% of the population in 1999; the Moderns, who are money-and-business oriented, consumerist, secular, middle-to-upper income types, who were 48% of the populace; and the Cultural Creatives, middle to wealthy, innovative, holistic, socially active, culturally sophisticated, spiritual, ecologically concerned, making up 23.5% of the people at that time. However, twenty years earlier, the latter group were only 3%, so they are far-and-away the fastest growing part of the populace.

It strikes me that the Clintons were representative of the Moderns, Al Gore has been a transitional figure, bridging the Moderns and the CCs, and Obama is being carried along on a wave of CC support.

The Republican strategy of the past thirty years has been to forge a coalition of the most extreme elements of the Moderns - by which I mean the most venal, self-serving, greedy products of that mentality - and the Traditionals, largely by conning them into thinking they were on their side, looking out for their values. The Clintons were the "kinder, gentler" version of that, less hypocritical, more genuinely concerned for the well-being of average Americans - but still Moderns in their outlook. They were important in their time, because they saved us from the worst excesses of the Right. But in the end, they just put-off the day of reckoning.

Obama strikes me as something altogether different, and that difference is what people who don't like him don't "get." They look at his policy positions and say: "He is just Hillary with less fight, less willingness to get down and dirty." But that difference in style is much more meaningful than it might seem. That kind of aggression is something that the CCs who admire him would never consider an asset. They are drawn to him precisely because he is strong without being confrontational, because he is modelling a kind of leadership that the 21st century is in desperate need of.

And most importantly, he is drawing on their strength, their ability to work from the ground-up, rather than the top-down. If we are ever to achieve the kind of decentralized, truly democratic society it will take to weather the coming storm, it will require the kinds of organization and grass-roots activism the Obama campaign is building. The point isn't that Obama is so wonderful; it is that he is the crest of a wave that might save this country and this planet, if it is allowed to grow.

Hillary's tragedy is that she is fighting the wrong battle at the wrong time, using the wrong weapons. Her moment has passed, and there is nothing she can do about that. Ideally, she would recognize the change that Obama represents and get onboard. But I think she is just too proud and stubborn for that.

I'm not explaining all this very well, but I recommend the book. A lot of good food for thought.

[amandabeech]

1. What I get is,

throw anyone over 40 or who isn't making at least $100,000 for the family (adjusted for cost of living) under the bus.

Is that accurate?

[Fredda Weinberg]

3. It really is a mean new world they imagine, marketed by Harpo Productions n/t

[amandabeech]

5. Well, meanness surely is on the increase in this country.

And culture trends are always reflected and amplified here at DU.

However, you notice that Harpo Productions hasn't been producing anything for the New Culture leader?

Harpo's CEO left the Wright church several years ago. Do you think that has anything to do with it?

[Fredda Weinberg]

9. We're supposed to be happy w/the key under the seat. Don't ask

how it's paid for ... let the beautiful people take care of us.

We're been deceived before, so this doesn't surprise me. I've even walked away from DU for a while, so this is no shock. It's just sad to see lessons forgotten so quickly.

[Beregond2]

12. I'm not trying to be snarky or anything, but

what on earth are you two talking about? Harpo Productions? Mean people? The "key under the seat?" Lessons forgotten? I have no idea what any of that means, or what it has to do with what I wrote.

[Beregond2]

7. ?

I can't imagine how you got that out of what I wrote, or from anything in Obama's postions or campaign. The key words of this "movement" are compassion, communication and community. It is all about building cooperative networks, not about throwing anyone under the bus.

[amandabeech]

8. Apparently, we see different things in Obama. n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

15. The key words of the Cultural Creatives movement are creating a demographic to exploit.

Genuine cultural creatives are sidelined by the logic of Postmodernism, which is the dominant philosophy at work in business-friendly treatises like this one describing the rise of an affluent, "end of history" Eloi culture that will displace the need for working class people. I live in one of these supposed Cultural Creative centers, and the artistic lifeblood has been drained out of every last one of them with every strident step they have taken to definition of the term. Genuine creatives are FUCKING POOR for one thing. It takes sacrifice to live in a non-consumeristic society, as opposed to a Whole Foods and Starbucks (or the more expensive, socially acceptable variant).

[FrenchieCat]

2. Interesting.

The part about Hillary's time has past sounds extra correct.

[LaStrega]

4. The wrong weapons?

Is that even possible?

But seriously, your post makes a good point. And thanks for the book recommendation ... I'll definitely check it out.

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. I'd say that obama is a blank slate for projection of whom ever you

want him to be. You see him as one of yours, other see him as one of theirs. It's all good for obama.

[Beregond2]

11. I wasn't really

writing about Obama, but the movement surrounding him, which certainly isn't a "blank slate."

[Leopolds Ghost]

22. I certainly hope the "movement" surrounding Obama is not composed of cultural elitism, be they...

modern or postmodern in their philosophical extollation of hypercapitalist consumerism.

[Beregond2]

33. The "CCs"

as defined in this book, are opposed to consumerism. It is the Moderns who fall into that category.

[babylonsister]

10. Cultural conservative? CC? How about the need for change at the

right time when it's so sorely needed? His message can be vastly simplified. And to think, I remember hearing that Obama hasn't waited 'his turn' to run. How democratic of those that thought that!

I realize you're talking about a book which I haven't read.

[polichick]

13. Here's the original book about Cultural Creatives...

It's worth a read too. I look forward to checking out The Chaos Point!

<http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Creatives-Million-People-Changing/dp/0609808451/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210496499&sr=8-1>

(I thought CCs were powering the Dean campaign too, and wrote him about it. I see the Obama movement as a continuation of the Dean movement.)

[Leopolds Ghost]

14. Sorry, but IMNSHO... FUCK THE "CULTURAL CREATIVES" DOCTRINE and fuck it again. Your mileage may vary

This is a classic neoliberal doctrine promoted by slimeballs such as David Brooks and Bill Gates.

Read "Postmodernism and the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" or "The Baffler" by Tomas Frank
(yes, that Thomas Frank).

Or take a course in modern day urban development economics if you want to understand the origin
of the "cultural creatives" term and how it has wormed its way into popular consciousness through
deliberate marketing and gentrification (reclamation through depreciation and emerging markets
using so-called "cultural creatives" as stepping stone demographic to push out the poor and working class).

Most of these people who pretend to be our allies (and I would say the vast majority of actual
"progressives", including our affluent secular friends and relatives, especially the ones who
hesitate to call themselves "liberal") are nothing but hypocritical, consumerist, yuppie slimeballs.

And many of them are just as racist as the so-called "moderns".
Just live in one of their goddamn enclaves some time and ask yourself
where are all the black people and where are all the working class whites.

Postmodernism has been a driving force of the Baby Boom generation. the "Moderns" are the
WWII and Beat generation. Geezus Christ the historical memory of the blogosphere goes down every year.

These are the people "we" (those of us who are populists in any case) are supposed to be fighting AGAINST.
They betrayed the ideals of the 60s generation long ago, if they ever had any.

Of course, I will not be surprised if this is Obama's preferred constituency and not Thomas Frank.

It will only coincide with his musings on how he differs with Hillary on next to nothing.

[JCMach1]

17. There will be a lot of disappointed people when they find out 'change'

means change of President and not anything revolutionary.

I don't see Obama in any way standing outside the neo-liberal tradition (of course, neither did Hillary).

And yes all of these categories are based on one thing: economic consumption :puke:

So yes, you are right in your analysis.

[Skidmore]

19. Civilization is predicated on consumption and economic consumption

is the basis for advanced civilizations. How that consumption, economic or otherwise, is structured depends on the decisions the members of a particular culture make in regard to the sharing of wealth and power. Now, I happen to believe that Obama is offering each of us an opportunity to participate in a new structuring of our culture. We can either step up or stand at the sidelines and piss and moan. It is up to us as individuals to determine the degree of ownership we will assume over the choices our particular society makes. This, and Obama's stated allegiance to constitutional rights, are the reason I suppor this man wholeheartedly.

[Leopolds Ghost]

20. You support Obama because you want to participate in new structure of culture based on Consumption?

Interesting. Who's going to produce all those goods you want to consume? On the distribution of what valuable resource, taking care to ensure that it is already posessed in abundance by the wealthiest elites, will the securities and credit of your consumer friends and relatives be backed by? And with whose oil and natural gas will you power the engine of transnational Creative Class consumption, fueled as it is by a vast, unseen network of slave-labor industrial plants thanks to the outsourcing of "traditional jobs" seen as too costly by consumers who are unwilling to take charge of their own environmental issues, so choose to outsource them on the grounds that an unseen puke-green river in China is something that Americans will never have to see?

BTW, of course Obama is infinitely better than Hillary. But that's not saying much, is it? He's a powerful public speaker who happens to be to the right of Kerry -- and not particularly populist. Whats worse is many Obama supporters have bought into the notion that Hillary is a populist (because the elitist, Cultural-class MSM says so) and therefore they should not associate with anything that smacks of populism.

[Skidmore]

21. Methinks you've read a lot into what I wrote that I didn't say.

Part of the structuring of consumption includes determining the types of products, how they are to be produced, how energy is used, and the value placed on the environment. I don't know exactly what this CC stuff is about and will look into it futher. I don't believe Obama or any other supporter I know is advocating a continuation of the economical models of the past 3 decades replete what you have outlined. Like it or not though, consumption by humans will always exist. I choose to consume with the needs of others and the needs of the earth in mind. Perhaps we are at a point where we can create a new definition of what consumption should be in relation to the earth. It is an opportunity to change.

[Leopolds Ghost]

23. Your notion of placing consumption as the root value is what I'm disagreeing with.

For one thing, the whole notion of a "Creative Class" as a "lifestyle" predicated upon certain patterns of consumption is a terrible definition of the meaning of the word "creative".

For another thing, more pertinent to what you are arguing, life is predicated on many things. You could say that consumption is necessary for life and then proceed to declare that American way of life is non-negotiable and can better be maintained through a liberal national government transformation, when the reality is, nothing we do will prevent future hard times from setting in when the oil runs out.

What you are saying here could be misread as materialism (Objectivism, I guess -- the capitalist alternative to Marxism -- an all-encompassing modernist doctrine of needs to be met and rational outcomes) or postmodern lifestyle consumerism (the notion of lifestyle as an individual choice, to be freely chosen from a list of available lifestyles, purchased and consumed, culture as a list of archaic premodern cultural products to be sampled) or even dialectical materialism (Marxism applied to all facets of life) I find all three of these approaches highly problematic.

Most Americans only object to the last one (Marxism) and usually for reasons that apply equally to the other two (blotting out all other meaningful non-materialistic metrics for judging value in society, ignoring the importance of typically under-valued but essential pieces of the human eco-system that don't factor into materialist analysis, ignoring social justice in favor of broad definitions of the greater good.) But most Americans are nevertheless by and large modernist materialists (Horatio Alger believers, Ayn Rand types, Hillary supporters) or else they are postmodern cultural "rootless cosmopolitans" who believe that progressive government will be able to mend the hole in our lives left by the absence of civil society engendered by ruthless corporatocracy.

This can be seen in the worthless art and architecture that abounds in non-creative "Creative Class" cities.

The reality is that progressive government is needed to block the ascendancy of complete fascism, I think.

[Skidmore]

25. You have way too may 5 syllable words going on there.

I'm saying that consuming (food, shelter, clothing) is essential to life. That consumption itself (American or otherwise) should be on the table to be redefined in this age by all peoples. I'm not advocating for maintaining American patterns of consumption. You are going way too complicated on this. I consume locally, grow a lot of my own food, use as little energy as possible and recycle endlessly. Hardly anything in my home was purchased new. I give any excess for the use of others. I'm not talking about consuming for the sake of consuming or as a lifestyle. Anything you weren't born with and you use is material. We need to revisit how we sustain humans in this crowded world so that no one is left out. I'm not talking about anything more than using commonsense, and am not engaging in a textbook philosphical discussion using jargon or mincing words. We need to get very real about our world and standing in one place and yelling about models is not the way to do it. Rolling up the sleeves and getting on with the work, even if it means getting the hands dirty, is necessary.

[Leopolds Ghost]

26. There's not much we can do. The only reason consumption is more and more important

is because of resource scarcity brought on by the disastrously accelerating overpopulation of the Earth and its resources.

If we were at or below Earth's carrying capacity (adjusted for sustainable energy sources) then the stuff we are calling "resources" to be consumed would instead be an older term -- "staples" (like air and water) which in our current society only the rich can afford to take for granted.

As Kunstler and Jared Diamond point out in their excellent (non-excessively syllabic) recent books, societies that are living at carrying capacity are in many ways more affluent than ours, on their own terms, until you introduce them to a common market with an overpopulated, resource-hungry industrial power and then the economic bottom drops out for traditional societies, destroying their access to local resources.

That said, what I try to do in my community is fight to convince people to see outside of the consumption-oriented approach to life. I for one see no problem in "clinging to utopian visions" of complete societal change in the sense of "old fashioned moderns" and pre-moderns are wont to do, especially in the face of economic hardship.

[Skidmore]

29. Actually, I think we are saying very similar things but in differet ways.

America needs to simplify.

[Beregond2]

35. This post expresses

EXACTLY the ethos that Laszlo is talking about when he uses the term "Cultural Creatives." I am beginning to suspect he uses it in a very different way than others have, and that is leading to some confusion here.

[Skidmore]

39. Thank you. I strongly suspect that this type of thinking is exactly what

so many of the Clinton supporters who rail against change do not grasp about Obama supporters. I think so many of us who have embraced this call for change understand it to be a fundamental shift in the way we conceptualize and operationalize policy in the real world and not as an exercise in preserving the status quo. It is not a misty and nebulous concept put out by a dreamer but a call to real time, real world work. A revolution at grassroots level.

[Beregond2]

34. It sounds like

you are far more familiar with the history of this term than I am. As it is used by Laszlo, it certainly does not equate to "Yuppie;" on the contrary. Nor is it "post-modern," in the sense of nihilistic and self-indulgent. Those terms would apply more accurately to Moderns, as he is defining them.

I don't see Obama as a Yuppie phenomenon at all; that would be the Clintons. Maybe my view of young people today is scewed because I live in the Portland, OR area, but the ones I know are anything but Yuppies. And they are the ones who are responding to Obama's message the most strongly, the generation who have claimed him as their own.

Now of course, they may prove to be wrong. Obama may not fulfill their hopes. But he still is the first presidential candidate who is being propelled into prominence by that demographic (among others.) And I find that significant.

[goletian]

16. he doesnt pander to ignorance. doesnt put on shows. truth, on its own, is attractive - nt

[rodeodance]

27. Obama is nothing but a 'show' -a manufactured show.

[goletian]

38. youre clueless. go watch cartoons.

[jazzjunkysue]

18. Interesting. I'm new to these labels, but some of it does seem relevant.

It is easy to put people in these three groups: My parents are moderns, some of my friends are moderns and some (fewer) are CC's. Obviously, not alot of traditionals in my circle or the northeast. Teachers tend to be more moderns than you might think. And the support staff is generally traditionals.

Ok, so, those with the most hopefullness in their lives (CC's) will obviously hope for a better government and so root for the change agent. The argument about how much change Obama can manifest is a good one but this theory doesn't attempt to address the political realities of our current political forces, just society in general.

Those whose futures are less certain may cling to something they see as the solution: Cash. Restructure the taxes or wages for my benefit.

Those who have felt victimized by society will hope for something utopian that will completely re-organize society like religion or a return to a demographic they relate to, like 1950's white america. Blacks were marginalized and hispanics were largely unknown.

I hope Obama can separate multinational influences from our government, specifically by passing legislation that returns many regulations to former levels like environmental and trade and foreign policy. At the moment, the current government simply does not staff or fund any oversight it does not welcome. Obama will have the purse strings, and hopefully the back bone to bring these oversight agencies back on line, give them a seat at the table and help us heal. He can ask for reports from these orphaned agencies, get their information out to us and enlist our support for a re-establishnemt of these causes.

I am not sure everyone in this CC group is as revolutionary as this theory states. We simply know that Clinton will be more or less wedded to the system as is. We assume that the outsider, Obama, will be freer to cut the lines and right the ship. If anything, it's his practicality and earthiness that attracts: His bread and butter common sense, rather than some epic notion of greatness.

I think he's as pissed as we are and just wants to do the right things: Simple, basic, ordinary repairs. I don't see him selling himself as any kind of saint or prophet. Not at all. He's a regular guy. Hillary's not.

[NashVegas]

24. The "Creative Class" Is a Manipulative Lie for a Generation of People Who Need to Feel "Special"

Much of the so-called creative class is on a worse Habitrail wheel than their parents ever were.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1870950&mesg_id=1871284

we had a long-lost friend over the other night. he was the guitar player in hubby's band when i was in college. after the band stopped touring he went to nursing school and is now a Critical Care Nurse.

we were doing the dozens while he strummed a ukelele and asked him if his job was anything like "ER" on tv. he said "it's a job. we don't freak out everytime someone goes critical. we can't or else we'd be rotten nurses." he pantomimed giving CPR to a patient and chatting about what's for lunch in the cafeteria.

hubby and me stopped in our tracks. "you mean, it's not like, a LIFE OR DEATH situation?"

guitar playing nurse: "no way."

me and hubby: "then WHY the HELL, are our jobs (marketing and software) always freakoramas?"

when i was working it was COMMON that every little job was a LIFE AND DEATH situaltion. "THE PMS COLORS AREN'T MATCHING!...WHEN ARE THE PROOFS GONNA BE READY?...CLIENT IS SCREAMING FOR COPY...etc etc." the calls would come on Thanksgiving...after midnight...when i was in crisis with sick relatives...dying parents....


Basically, the "Creative class" are called on to use their minds the way our parents were called on to use their labor. When dad came home in 1960, he was on his own time. When dad comes home in 2008, half the time he's still on the job, and any bit of code or invention he comes up with is the intellectual property of his employer.

Anyone, everyone can be creative. Everyone IS creative. It just happens that there are more powerful people who directly benefit when Wal-Mart to sells you that framed Kincaid print than there are when the local art supply shop sells you a blank canvas.

[Skidmore]

28. The "Creative Class" is a consequence of NAFTA and similar trade policies.

When you have a society that no longer produces the bulk of tangible goods, you create BS jobs with bogus titles and market information to take the place of actual physical labor in order to sustain the population. I recall that one of the main selling points of the proponents of NAFTA for that policy was that other people would do the labor and Americans would do the technical and creative jobs. Well, the upshot of that was that soon others could do the technical jobs as well and now there is open sneering having the education that was required in order for people to make themselves employable in the changing job market brought by those policies. When making copies has the same importance as tilling the soil for survival then you consider what leopold's ghost was saying above. The doodads in this society are excuses for not doing real labor in order to buy survival. Our nation needs to simply and return to doing actual work, and let other nations grow at the pace at which they can handle change. It is not up to us to create the world in our own image.

[NashVegas]

30. It's Amazing, Isn't It?

And more and more, we have a population that can't be sustained. It's gonna get nasty while the Bushes are away in Paraguay, living on top of that aquifer.

[Swamp Rat]

31. Cultural(?) Creatives(?) = What, technocrats?

They can also be very destructive.

Everyone on Earth is or can be "creative," and I don't agree with simplistic categories that attempt to barter meaning by using the word "culture."

[xchrom]

32. cultural creatives = futurists that newt gingrich touted

and promoted in the 90's.

i see a LOT of wishful thinking and misunderstanding posted in here.

'consumerism' is never going to go away -- and neither is a large human population.

those things are fixtures now and for long into the foresaable future -- it's living with those things that has to happen -- this is a post -post-modern universe that belongs to india and china.
with the eu and america coming in two and three respectively.

it's quite simply about mitigating and regulaing the extremes until the future irons itself out.
this is the transitional phase.

[Beregond2]

36. Great discussion!

Thank you all. This is what I was hoping for when I made this post. There are so many sharp, well-informed minds at this site, but lately we have been so swamped by primary BS, there hasn't been a lot of thoughtful exchange.

[Peace Patriot]

37. Money is missing from this analysis. Big, big, BIG money...

all the money in very few hands, thus all the power (or so we tend to think...or rather, so the "few" would like us to think).

The more people are deprived of community, of individual and collective power, of family, of real talk and simple joys, of kids being able to ride their bikes around town in safety, or climb nearby hills--run around, be free--the more they are deprived of meaningful work and of real, people-made, idiosynratic culture, and of the satisfactions of curiosity, new learning, travel, creative effort, the more they become desperate, soul-less consumers, and the victims (whatever their class or income) of the global corporate predators, the "few," who rule over us.

Money--big, big, BIG money--in the hands of the "few"--is dictating all of these "classes" of people, dribbling rewards to some and not to others, controlling what it is allowable to think or to say, with a tight vise on the parameters of political discussion, in particular, and, within these pre-determined categories of people, operate to "divide and conquer," to isolate and neutralize, or remove, the truly creative and the dissenters.

I used to feel superior to my rather paranoid, rightwing brother, who ranted about "the Illuminati." But having watched this Bush Junta unfold in the United States, I have to admit that he had a point. Five rightwing billionaire CEOs now control all news and opinion in the country (except word of mouth, which is making a comeback--and of course the internet). We see/hear their fascist "talking points" in all the news outlets, every day. We feel it--the trivialization and disempowerment of the People. We turn on the TV or the radio and it is all the same. What the "leaders" are doing--the illegitimate, unelected psychopath parading as our "president" and all his train. And all the other "leaders"--the assholes in Congress, or the candidates--acting as if everything is normal. Or the "rock stars," and what they're doing. We, as citizens, as people, have no existence and no power. We read the paper, and I don't know about you, but I get an eery feeling of handling something dead--not just a dead tree, but a dead culture. The same kind of glitzy "People" in the "People box. The same old names on the editorial page, saying the same old things. Beltway gossip. Or "issues" chosen by the corporate elite for us to contemplate. We, the People, exist as the victims of traffic accidents, or of crimes, or as percentages of consumers. Our hearts and souls are absent. What we really care about, what we want to talk about, or hear talked about, is absent. It's not even the lies. The American people have become rather good, actually, at recognizing and resisting the obvious lies. (56% against the Iraq War, way back at the beginning--Feb '03, NYT poll; other polls 54-55%; now a whopping, epochal 60-70% against the war.) It's the deadness--the sense of powerlessness, the sense that others decide your fate, not you--and only the very rich, or the very criminal, have any real existence. The utter lack of democracy, not to mention real diversity. And I think now that this deadness is quite a deliberate design, by some fascist elite "think tank," because it is everywhere. If the corporate news monopolies are a gage of who we are, our democracy and our culture are dead and gone. What we see on TV and read in the newsrags is its stinking corpse.

Same with the war. Designed of, by and for MONEY. The same with everything. Big money. The "few" with all the money. Lately, they have given a BIG TRUMPET to the nutso Christian right, way out proportion to their numbers, and that becomes the "narrative" for why we would elect psychos and mass murderers and mindbogglingly big thieves to public office. The nutso Christian right did not gain such prominence in a healthy democracy. They gained prominence in a democracy that was being smothered to death.

"Free trade." Big, big, BIG MONEY into that one, to break our high-end labor protections, and turn the world's people into slaves, and to plunder the environment worldwide. I'll bet it's five people, as with the corporate news monopolies. Five very, very, VERY rich people, who are now even richer, and have god-like powers over the food chain, and who gets nukes and who gets cocaine. Five people making these decisions. The "few."

Well, that's my reaction to this cultural analysis. The analysis has some truth in it, but it does not sufficiently address the issue of MONEY and how those who have lots and lots of it are manipulating us all--the latte drinkers and the putrid, homeless drunks on the sidewalk, the "hard-working white voters" and the even harder-working black voters, the nutso Christian wingers who think they have found Jesus in George Bush, and Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, who never mention the election theft machines (but are very smart otherwise), and those who read them, and those who don't, and those with fine linen sheets and those without, and everybody in between. We are all suckers, with some of us more aware of it than others; we are all members of the Church of the Very Rich that puts cages around our souls and tells us who we are, and whether we are worthy of heaven or not.

As in the Middle Ages, with the Catholic Church, the Church of the Very Rich, the Corporate Church of today, is all around us. It is the very air we breathe. It controls kings and princes. It writes our laws. It dictates what we are permitted to think. It puts its imagery everywhere. It is the power behind everything. And it is difficult to realize that it doesn't have to be this way.

I think there is a danger in categorizing people into groups (however you define or split up the demographics), that you are just replicating the way that these very rich powermongers think about the rest of humanity, and how they shove us into slots, cage us and manipulate us, for their profit. For instance, what about "liberation theology" Catholics, who fight for social justice, oppose abortion, and drink lattes? Or lesbian truck drivers who read Rilke and don't eat meat? People are not easy to categorize. Demographic categories, in fact, miss everything--the uniqueness of people. And thinking in such categories can be very misleading--and can lead you down the wrong path toward manipulation, toward failing to leave room for people to surprise you. Instead of trying to group people into categories of sameness, why not group them by their CONTRADICTIONS? The latte drinker who spends weekends working at the soup kitchen? The blue collar worker who is writing a novel in her spare time? The real estate agent who belongs to Greenpeace and fights for open space and wild nature? The corporate executive who hates the Iraq War?

And never, never leave MONEY--or I should say, "organized money"*--out of the equation. It is our God.

-------------------

"Organized money hates me--and I welcome their hatred." --FDR