Special Interests

I used to take pride in America's relative lack of class consciousness. Unlike Europe and Latin America, people in the US, as a general rule, don't like to overtly call attention to how much money they make. Most Americans, rich and poor alike, prefer a casual, practical style of dress. T-shirts and jeans work for corporate CEOs as well as plumbers. It's considered an honor to have friends from different socioeconomic backgrounds. And you hardly ever hear anyone talk seriously about High Class Culture in tones that aren't ridiculing. Our popular films make fun of snobbery and, while we sometimes laugh at them, the icons of our culture have often been everyday Joes--alias Homer Simpsons or Ralph Kramdens or Mr. Smiths or Davy Crocketts. We even require a certain level (or pretense) of "average Joeness" in our elected leaders.

But recently I've come to see the "average Joe" phenomenon a little differently. While America, the culture not the government, does propagate a positive respect for the everyman, I no longer think lacking class consciousness is something to brag about. It's exactly the opposite, actually--a cause for fear and shame. The sad truth is that lacking class consciousness means next to nothing if you're not also lacking class divisions. And class divisions are pronounced and ubiquitous features of American culture. In truth, American class divisions might be even sterner and more constant than they are in other countries because in America they aren't honestly looked at or analyzed. Our culture keeps them hidden and thereby protected.

Take the phrase "special interests", for example. We love to complain about the excessive governmental influence of "special interests", but, literally speaking, "special interests" don't have undue or excessive influence at all. The homeless are a special interest group and no one suggests that they have too much influence on government policy. Same goes for migrant farm workers and single mothers and artists and scrabble players. The phrase "special interests" is an unequivocal euphemism. What we really mean to say is "the ruling class". But we won't say that because if we did we would have to face the reality that our government is run by the same upper class grinches we love to ridicule in popular films and culture--that the term American democracy is just a euphemism for plutocracy--that the American government cares more about corporations than individual citizens. If we call the elites special interests groups, we can safely keep fiction and reality separate. We can continue to champion the average Joe without having to actually act (or vote) in his interests. The government (with even more ease than before thanks to the Supreme Court's recent decision) can continue to represent corporate interests at everyone else's expense, for if we dared realize that the fictional Mr. Burns-and-Mr. Potter-run America is more real than the one we mistake for reality, then one or the other America would have to be destroyed: the culture or the government. So, instead, one serves to hide and enable the other, to point to the truth only as a fictional gimmick while the real gimmick masquerades as truth, and everyone sleeps peacefully.