Comment on Roger Cohen's article "America Never Was, Yet Will Be" on 7/6/2018
| John Sonneborn | Fri, Jul 6, 2018, 11:16 AM | ||
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Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 3:22 AM
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Ms. Smarsh presents valuable information concerning the attitudes and working habits of people working in a great variety of jobs. Absent, glaringly, are the unemployed. Politically important among these are the laid-off seasoned skilled blue-collar workers in factories and in construction. Factory workers (“the proletariat”, in the sense used by Lenin and following Communists) are usually laid off owing to a drop in the demand for factories’ products, with automation playing a minor role. Automation plays only a negligible role in the laying off of construction workers, which occurs primarily in infrastructure projects. All these unemployed men were Trump’s base. Economically, the great majority of these are probably middle-class. Their fundamental grievance is not the loss of wages, but of the very meaning of their lives – the opportunity to contribute to society as a whole. (Marx, who cared ultimately for individuals, called this ”the species-essence”. As a Christian, I believe that each person’s essence is the impulse to give love.)
The Trump administration has been and can be expected to continue to be seeking to assuage the pain of factory workers by having the demand for factory-made products increase. The blue-collar skills needed in construction are more readily learned than are those in factory work. Hence,Trump’s heavy emphasis on stopping the flow into America of poorly educated immigrants and his use of racist tweets to support that ban.
While the demand for factory products may be increased by the manipulation of trade, the beginning of a new construction project takes a long time: it may be harmful to those in its neighborhood; it may be harmful to the environment. Resistance and a tangle of regulations must be overcome.
I read an article rather recently suggesting that Pres. Trump, aware of the length of time required to ease the suffering of these skilled workers, is seeking to distract them from it by appealing to their tribalistic desire for our country to be viewed as the most powerful. His “Make America Great Again” and “America First” are politically aimed primarily at those whose anguish cannot be readily extinguished.
John Andrew Sonneborn, D.Min
211J W 151st Street, 3B, New York, NY 10039
212-532-1365
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