L. Neil Smith on Anger in America

As I've been saying for decades, there is enormous anger simmering just below the surface of America's Productive Class. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century, they have labored hard to supply everything necessary and good in our society—from diesel fuel to lemon meringue pie, from the wheels that get us from one place to another, to the homes in which we find our refuge and comfort—only to have the rewards of their labor snatched away by rapacious parasites intent on controlling every moment and aspect of their lives.

Yet it is they, the Productive Class, who are the first to be blamed, by elements of the Non-Productive Class who couldn't tell a cotter pin from cottage cheese, for everything, real and imagined, that is said to be wrong with that society, from bad taste in color, cars, and clothing, to air pollution, depleted ozone, and global warming.

To the average politician, newspaper columnist, hairsprayed TV commentator, or Hollywood airhead, suburbia is a kind of despicable, disgusting, fetid swamp to be crawled out of, rather than as close to Utopia as humankind has ever come, the locus of all the wishes, hopes, and aspirations of a people whose only wish is to be left the hell alone.

And all these idiots can think of—congressthings and others of the so-called "dominant culture" who believe they own us—is how to suppress that anger for another year, another decade, another century. They desperately want to deny that their opposition is significant and serious. They want to dismiss it as right-wing racism and childish ingratitude. It would never occur to them to consider what that anger might be about, or that it might be justified. They simply want it managed. It's probably too late for that, but they'll be the last to know.

Read it all here...