Sanders can give America what it needs: Some good old-fashioned class warfare

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has struck a nerve in the heart of America. Throughout the country, the Vermont Senator has been drawing enormous crowds, equal to that of Hillary, while also gaining in the polls and prompting Clinton to muster up her best Elizabeth Warren impression. It is clear that Sanders’ populist message, which addresses economic inequality and Wall Street corruption, is resonating with the American people. But what’s most important about the rise of Bernie Sanders, whether you believe he is a true populist or a cog in the Democratic machine, is that he (and other progressives like Warren) is bringing back what has long been stomped out in America: class politics.

Well, thats not entirely true. Class politics never really went away, there was simply a shift in aggression. Since the ’70s, the ruling class has gone on the offensive, while the middle and lower classes have been brought to their knees. Of course, when the lower classes go on the attack, its class warfare; but when the ruling class does it, it’s reform. (At least this is what has been hammered into the minds of so many Americans over the past 40 or so years.)

Just think of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform and his promise to “end welfare as we know it.” The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was signed into law in 1996, and was a culmination of over 20 years of ruling-class propaganda. Politicians, pundits, and the media managed to create a nasty picture of the poor leaching off of everyone else in America, while popular terms like “welfare queen” were added to the lexicon. But what was particularly clever about this attack on the underclass was how it became as much about race as it was about class. This was not an accident. Since the Civil Rights era, racial prejudices have been used to divide the lower classes, dismantling of the New Deal coalition — which had been racially and culturally diverse — in the late ’60s.

University of Minnesota Sociologist, Joe Soss, explained the evolution of this strategy to BillMoyers.com:

“In the 1980s and ’90s, a kind of narrative had emerged that I call the story of illegitimate takings. It held that there were white people who played by the rules, and then there were people of color — and particularly black people — who were taking from those people in an illegitimate way.”

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http://www.salon.com/2015/06/29/bernie_sanders_can_give_america_what_it_needs_some_good_old_fashioned_class_warfare/