I ask The Archdruid and his readers 'Can you show us on the doll exactly where the educated professionals hurt you?' A Festivus airing of grievances

Happy Festivus! I promised an airing of grievances yesterday for Festivus and do I ever have some grievances to air!

I begins with a regular commenter at No More Mister Nice Blog asking a rhetorical question of Trump voters, "Can you show us on the doll exactly where the educated professionals hurt you?" He meant this as mockery, but I saw an opportunity.

I know exactly the group to ask this question. They'll take it seriously and give a lot of outraged responses. I'll report back next month on the results.

I followed through in the second comment to November 2024 Open Post at Ecosophia.net John Michael Greer's main blog.

A commenter on a liberal blog responded to the election results and particularly the educational levels of Trump's voters by asking "Can you show us on the doll exactly where the educated professionals hurt you?" He meant it as a joke, but I think it is worth taking seriously. I know of no better forum to get answers than here, so I'm throwing it open to you and your readers.

I begin with the answer from The Archdruid himself.

Neon Vincent, I can indeed. The site of the injury was in the pocketbook. The professional-managerial class presided over, profited from, and gleefully cheered on the process by which a hundred million working class Americans were driven into poverty and misery. I’ve noted before that when I was young, a family of four could get by tolerably well on a single working class income. The collapse of working class incomes and the soaring prices of housing, health care, and most other necessities over the last fifty years didn’t happen by accident, and nearly all the benefits of that process accrued to the professional-managerial class. If the person who asked that question really wants to get into the details, my book The King in Orange covers it in quite some detail.

Greer the Archdruid certainly lived up to my expectations by taking the question seriously and giving an outraged, if still measured, answer. That written, I think he's reinforcing a scapegoating campaign that began when the upper-middle class of educated professionals, which Greer and his readers call "the professional-managerial class," began leaving the Republican Party for the Democratic Party. Before then, conservative thought leaders, who I think came up with the idea before Greer, didn't appear to care about the benefits accruing to educated professionals; as long as they were voting for Republicans, they were fine with the situation. Afterwards, they began to go after the people leaving the party, particularly once not yet convicted criminal Donald Trump took it over. I think it's a case of getting revenge on people who are now safe to attack; Republicans aren't getting their votes anyway and blaming them for the troubles of the working class helps to get their votes, which the GOP are now courting.

By the way, Greer and his readers calling educated professionals "the professional-managerial class" is both a tell and an odd phrase for a bunch of conservatives to use. The term has origins in Marxist analysis for "a social class within capitalism that, by controlling production processes through occupying a superior management position, is neither proletarian nor bourgeoisie." The working class would resent them for being their supervisors and the small business owners would resent them for being rivals to be second banana in the social-economic order; one of the recurring themes in the comments to No More Mister Nice Blog, particularly from Yastreblyansky at The Rectification of Names, that a lot of the "working class" supporters of Trump based on their educational levels are actually small business owners, the petite bourgeoisie. Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene come to mind. Both were small business owners before being elected to Congress, which adds new meaning to "petty bourgeoisie."


So Greer's thesis is that the election and re-election of Trump were acts of revenge by the working class against the educated professionals. I buy that. As an attempt to improve the material situation of the American proletariat, I have my doubts. Seeing the educated professionals humiliated might improve the spirits of the working class, but I think the main material and political beneficiaries will be business owners, both stockholders in large corporations and proprietors of small local businesses. Only to the extent that the power and prosperity of business owners results in hiring more working class employees will it help the working class materially. Will it result in higher wages? Maybe, but I have my doubts. "Trickle down" hasn't worked that way for the working class over the past 40+ years. Why would it work now?


By the way, Greer's recommendation of his book The King in Orange should get the attention of fans of True Detective. "The Yellow King" was the main antagonist of that show's first season and the finale took place in Carcosa. Both of those come from The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, about "a forbidden play which induces madness in those who read it," although Chambers borrowed Carcosa from An Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Bierce. Listen to The King in Orange: The Magical and Occult… by John Michael Greer · Audiobook preview to hear Greer quote Chalmers mentioning Carcosa. Since Google Play Books has disabled embedding, I'm displaying the book's cover.


Greer's premise/conceit is that Trump is like The King in Yellow and drives mad all who oppose him. I'd say he drives just about everyone mad by giving them permission to be their worst selves. Does this include Greer? If so, all of us, including Greer, should consider ourselves lucky his worst self isn't that bad, even if I think he's giving Trump way too much credit beyond his feral instincts for self-promotion, dominance, and survival.

Follow over the jump for the responses from Greer's readers.


Greer's readers gave more personal and concrete responses, beginning with Dzanni.

Neon Vincent I’ve never had an interaction with an educated professional that did NOT hurt me. Since 1970. School, teachers, administrators, doctors, corporations, government. Never. Not once did they help me. Ever. They did destroy me several times, then go Oooopsie! Though. Doctors especially, but the courts too.

So, I’m not sure what you’re looking for. The failure rate is 100% across the entire USA. Where would anyone start? P.S. I am trained as an educated professional and play one on TV. Would it be amiss for me to say I hate them with the burning fury of a thousand hellfires? The only peace on the earth ever shall be if each is hunted down with a pack of dogs and force-fed a shovel. Short-handled, as Harry McClintock said.

That's the kind of outraged reaction I expected, so Dzanni may not have consciously known what I wanted, but gave me exactly what I was looking for.

Anonymous's response was much the same.

Regarding where the educated professionals hurt me. I went through a divorce some years ago and I am not going to give any specifics but educated professionals, lawyers, mediators, counselors. All people who before this I thought would help out almost destroyed me. If it wasn’t for my birth family I might not have survived.

Note that Anonymous, like Dzanni, said that educated professionals hurt them, but neither really said where. That's not the case with Walt, who offered a list of specific examples.

Quoting myself from a recent print APA article. I started with echoing our host’s economic disparity complaints about who does and doesn’t earn enough to live on, but then continued with:

“For that matter, in [the working-class or what I call hands-on side of the divide], most of those college-educated people putting their degrees to work are more likely to be a hindrance to your life than a benefit. Sure, it’s necessary to have good doctors and engineers. But most college graduates employed in their field of study who interact with your life are doing things like writing unfair terms of service you can’t understand and have no choice but to agree to, deciding whether you’re allowed to move your own shed on your own property or let your ten-year-old walk a mile outdoors unattended, developing AIs to automate your job yet again, telling you not to teach your kid to read “too early” because it will interfere with their educational plans, working for corporations trying to get more of your money not by offering you something that’s worth more, but finding more ways to squeeze a little more revenue from the same transactions (“new improved” packaging for a smaller amount of potato chips), and countless other annoyances. That sad pet squirrel story symbolized a lot, on the eve of the election, for countless people…”

I would add that even the “doctors” exception has caveats. While I don’t fully share the general opinion about Western medicine prevalent here, I’ll point out that consulting a doctor, like consulting a lawyer, is usually a sign of trouble in your life, no matter how helpful that particular doctor or lawyer might be to you in that particular case. You don’t want to be seeing a doctor because you don’t want to be sick or injured…. even though if you ARE sick or injured, you might be glad to see them. Increased emphasis on preventive medicine means you’re more often seeing a doctor when you’re not sick or injured, but that’s rarely a positive experience either, being nagged about lifestyle, obscure numbers in your blood workup, and/or all the “recommended” screening tests you haven’t had.

While the rest of us, including the educated professionals and business owners, both large and small, get annoyed with doctors and lawyers, especially lawyers, most of the rest of Walt's complaints are about the actions of people employed by business owners, and they're the ones who benefit most from them, not their employees. Again, I think this is a scapegoating campaign: "Oh, no, it's not us, the business owners. It's the educated professionals!" Yeah, who are doing your bidding. Change your bidding and your educated professional employees will do something that might benefit the working class instead.

Siliconguy left a comment that was both specific and outraged to the point of hostility.

What a funny way to start the week’s topic. The sheer arrogance is astonishing. This Trump voter has a doctorate in metallurgical engineering ( as well as the MS and BS) and a second BS in chemistry. The commenter can’t conceive that an educated person might not be a left-wing control junky. Liberal-arts majors trying to tell me how to run my life or what I should do tend to annoy me. Even more so when they are from the big city and hove no idea how to function in a rural setting.

As to where the hurt was, the wallet. I could show the commenter the official wage history from Social Security that delineates my own personal ‘lost decade’ from 1995 to 2004 in nominal terms, or 2006 if we take inflation into account. Why did that happen? Mining was pronounced industry non-grata. Why? So the urban PMC could have high quality low cost vacations. They also went after logging at the same time.

Oh, my, the hostility and resentment, coming from within the educated professional class! No, my read on the original poster was that they were having a hard time imagining what the educated professionals did to the working class. Maybe that is arrogant, or at least clueless, but one of the reasons I asked was to report back what people thought the educated professionals had done to them. As for "The commenter can’t conceive that an educated person might not be a left-wing control junky," I'm picking the low-hanging fruit by pointing out that junky is an adjective; junkie is the noun for an addict. Yes, I used to be an English teacher. Second, as an educated professional, I would respond that I would have a hard time imagining an educated professional who would vote for Trump unless they had motivations that would override their education and class affiliation. Siliconguy exposed those in the rest of his comment when he complained about passages in The Old Testament and asked if modern Jews still subscribed to them. Ugh, antisemitism. I'm putting him in the same basket of deplorables that I long ago dumped Vlad/Janos into. With friends like him, Greer hardly needs enemies.

Grover was less detailed than either, but was still specific in his complaint.

Neon Vincent,

So you take the doll and ship it to Mexico, and then let hoards of Mexicans into the country – legally or otherwise – to take what’s left. That’s basically where the “educated professionals” hurt us.

Time to pick the low-hanging fruit again. It's hordes, not hoards. Spelling matters! Second, the business owners benefit more from cheap labor with no rights than anyone else.

JMG,

Glad you mentioned in “The King in Orange” in your response to Neon Vincent. It’s sitting under the coffee table in a stack and will now move to the top! The reviews sound fantastic. I read “The King in Yellow” a few months ago; one might assume it’s written in a similar style?

Greer answered Grover negatively: "Grover, not really. It’s the edgiest of my political books." Now I'm wondering if I should buy the book myself. If so, I wonder how far and I hard I will throw it. I guess that would count as a Festivus feat of strength. If I throw it into a wastebasket from across the room, it might even count as a Festivus miracle.

That concludes today's airing of grievances. I hope you appreciated them as much as I did and learned something from them, even it's not what the complainers wanted to convey.

I end this holiday entry by inviting my readers to enjoy FESTIVUS - December 23 by National Day Calendar.

Each year on December 23rd, Festivus commemorates a holiday episode of the television comedy, Seinfeld. In 1997, the popular television comedy brought Festivus to the masses when Frank Costanza (played by Jerry Stiller) explains he invented the holiday in response to the commercialism of Christmas. Its slogan is "A Festivus for the rest of us."

Stay tuned for Christmas Eve.