Folk And Country At Two Guys

                                     

 by Joe Siano

My lifelong fascination with music started the moment the Beatles landed in Queens.

In those days, South Jersey had no “cool” record stores with passionate and knowledgeable staff.  What I had was the Two Guys of Cherry Hill record department with indifferent cashier clerks.

Two Guys was Jersey’s own Walmart before we had Walmart.  If it was legal and smaller than a car, you could get it at Two Guys

The Two Guys record department was my music Mecca.  Its alluring album jackets and enticing 45 sleeves called out, “buy me”, “take me home”, “make me yours”.  I was "the kid" and it was my "candystore".

But among the Rock/Pop, Soul, Jazz, Classical, and Vocalists (Frank, Dino, etc.) sections was the
aisle of Folk & Country.

To my knowledge, Folk was the tunes of bygone days.  It was songs like Tom Dooley, Shenandoah, and Red River Valley that Sister Miriam Gerald taught us at after-school guitar lessons.  They were fun and easy to play, but I was not going to spend what little money I had on Folk Music records.

And what was Country?  I had no clue.  Was it Roy Rogers singing Happy Trails at the end of each week’s show?  Little did I understand that the Fab Four music that I loved was steeped in the Rockabilly sounds of country boys Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, Buck Owens, and their compadres at Sun Records and in Bakersfield.

Britannica confirms my early perceptions: “folk music, (a) type of traditional and generally rural music that originally was passed down through families and other small social groups. Typically, folk music …is learned through hearing rather than reading.”

In time, I saw that there were at least three factions in the Folk camp.

The first, I call the Archivists.  They adhered to the Britannica definition of keeping the traditional, old music alive.

The second, I call "Folkish" artists who perform original, copyrighted material in a folky style.  The Folkish folks divide into two factions:  The Winners and the Whiners.

The Winners were ambitious young singer/songwriters hoping for multi-platinum success in the mainstream music industry.  They bided their time and honed their craft, hoping to get discovered in the folkie coffee houses.   The pay was pitiful, but the stages were open to anyone with a guitar and cojones.

Papa John Phillips captured the zeitgeist in CreequeAlley:

John and Mitchy were gettin' kind of itchy
Just to leave their folk music behind;
Zal and Denny workin' for a penny
Tryin' to get a fish on the line
In a coffee house Sebastian sat
And after every number they'd pass the hat
McGuinn and McGuire just a-gettin' higher in L.A.,
You know where that's at
And no one's gettin' fat except Mama Cass

Mugwumps, high jumps, low slumps, big bumps
Don't you work as hard as you play
Make up, break up, everything is shake up
Guess it had to be that way
Sebastian and Zal formed the Spoonful
Michelle, John, and Denny gettin' very tuneful
McGuinn and McGuire just a catchin' fire
In L.A., you know where that's at
And everybody's gettin' fat except Mama Cass

And California dreamin' is becomin' a reality

Whether it was fashionable to admit it, these hippies were authentic capitalists.  They went all in, investing their youth, imagination, and effort for a shot at the brass ring.  They fought to climb the Billboard charts, win the hearts of music fans, and earn their slice of American Pie. As capitalists always do, these young bucks grew the industry so there was plenty more pie for everyone.

 

 

Pete Seeger was the preeminent Folkish Whiner of his day.  He was a card-carrying Communist.  The Whiners lined up behind Seeger, bashing American free enterprise and liberty.

Intolerant ideological twits that they are,  they booed and threw trash at Dylan as he tried to advance his art and audience by going electric at Newport.

The Whiners are no fun

Whiny Folk is a top-down phenomenon.   From their high perches in Cambridge, Palo Alto, and Greenwich Village, the Whiners sow discontent.  They have beehives in their bonnets about this country that gave them and millions of others a good life.   Allinskyists with strings is what they are, selling glorious revolution. 

Whiny Folk is a boutique item for the elite and the deluded.  The American masses never bought it.  Never have, never will.

I waded into the Country pond slowly.  The deeper I went, the better it felt.

By my senior year at a Michigan cow-college, Y'all Come Back Saloon and Kenny Rogers’ Lucille were car-cruising favorites.  These songs stirred the soul while breaking hearts.

In a bar in Toledo, across from the depot
On a bar stool she took off her ring
I thought I'd get closer, so I walked on over
I sat down and asked her her name
When the drinks finally hit her, she said "I'm no quitter
But I finally quit living on dreams
I'm hungry for laughter and here ever after
I'm after whatever the other life brings"

In the mirror I saw him, and I closely watched him
I thought how he looked out of place
He came to the woman, who sat there beside me
He had a strange look on his face
The big hands were calloused, he looked like a mountain
For a minute I thought I was dead
But he started shaking his big heart was breaking
He turned to the woman and said

"You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille
With four hungry children and a crop in the field
I've had some bad times, lived through some sad times
But this time your hurting won't heal
You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille"

Jazz great, Charlie Parker loved Country.  When his jazz peers asked what he saw in this hayseed music, he replied,  “Listen to the stories.”

In many ways, Country is like metal.  "We don’t have stars in metal, just fans who got on stage." 
Thus says Lemmy of Motorhead.

That’s Country.  It is bottom-up; real stories, by real people for real people. 

A few County fans may be saints, but most are sinners.  They drink, cuss,  brawl, cheat, formicate, get arrested, go to jail, love their kids, disappoint their loved ones, and struggle to pay bills.   They’re not proud of their misbehavior.  They are contrite, praying that Jesus forgives them

They know life is tough, their bosses may be jerks, and the government is not on their side.  Still, they believe America is the finest place of all. With perseverance, hard work, and faith, they will get by.  They get knocked down, but they get up again.

Country songs tell their fans that they are not alone. The songs tell of the many good folks facing problems like theirs.  The music helps them to blow off steam, shake their booties, and face another day.  It makes the beer taste better.

The Two Guys Discount Department Store and its Record Department are long gone, but now, at least, I appreciate the difference between Folk and Country.

Post Script

I spent my working career documenting my marketing investment recommendations to clients.  With that, I offer a Google AI summary of the Country and Folk audiences in my formative years.  I believe they hit the mark,

 

 And God bless Graham Parsons.

 

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“Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction.” 
- Paul Simon

Screaming Memies - Meme Collection

 by Joe Siano

9/2/26

7/4/26

1/4/2024

9/26/23

9/24/23

4/2/21

3/11/21

1/31/21

1/23/21

1/21/21

1/19/21

 11/15/20

 

11/10/20

11/18/20

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“Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction.” 
- Paul Simon

Red Neck, While Trash, Blue Blazers

by Joe Siano

An American radical for capitalism and Christian culture warrior looks back at 70.

Part One – Red Neck

Freebird's long, languid opening licks stir my soul.

Like Philly boy, Ray Benson, I’m a Southerner at heart.  Ray saw “miles and miles of Texas” and never looked back.

I hail from the east side of the Delaware. From New Jersey.  South Jersey, that is.  Our North Jersey neighbors have gone on record that the southernmost part of the Garden State is Ghetto, populated with Pineys (Jersey's hillbillies), Trash, and is “Pretty Much Alabama”.  Sweet Home Alabama.

Yeah, I’m a displaced redneck, all right.  I have a taste for biscuits and gravy, barbecue, bourbon, collards, cornbread, Krispy Kreme, Cajun and Creole delights. I love Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, Hank, Waylon, Willie, Patsy, Dolly, and the Opry.   Emmy Lou is my queen, but I’m becoming an Ella Fella.

And I tip my hat to those patriotic Southern gentlemen and good ol’ boys who stood up for their homeland in Mr. Lincoln’s war.  Heroes one and all.

Need I point out that the Treaty of Paris, which ended the War for Independence, was concluded with one country on one side (Great Britain) and thirteen newly sovereign nation-states on the other.  The text lists them individually as parties to the accord

"His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States; that he treats with them as such”

Each former colony was recognized as a free, sovereign, and independent state, just as France, Germany, or Italy are sovereign and independent states.  

America's newly independent states banded together in a federation for shared purposes just as our European friends band together for mutual benefit in the EU.  It was always understood that any nation could leave at any time, as the Brits did with Brexit.

On this side of the pond, the Founding Fathers understood that any or all of the states could withdraw from the federation if it ceased to serve their interests.

By 1860, the South was getting seriously hosed by the North with no solution in sight.  Federal government policies were skewed heavily in favor the North to the detriment of the Southern states

An essay by Matthew Miller put it succinctly:

By the mid-19th century, the United States had become an economic house divided. The North, rapidly industrializing, favored protectionist tariffs to shield its manufactured goods from foreign competition. The South, agrarian and dependent on exporting its cotton and other cash crops to Europe, required free trade to prosper—or at least minimal, temporary protectionist tariffs. The federal government, under Northern control, increasingly imposed tariffs that extracted wealth from the South and simultaneously benefited the North. They were not merely policies of economic preference but instruments of exploitation, as much of the wealth extracted was spent on Northern internal improvements.

The political hurdles to overcome this were insurmountable.  The Northern Republicans held a 147 to 87 seat advantage in the House, and a 17 to 15 edge in the Senate.   Lincoln was a minority president, garnering less than 40% of the popular vote while carrying zero Southern states.

If “no taxation without representation” was just cause for the thirteen colonies to sever ties with the Motherland, then no taxation without effective representation is an equally plausible reason for Southern secession.

As they did four score and four years ago, the Southerners asserted their right to peacefully exit a bad deal. This time, Abe Lincoln played the role of King George.  The North pressed its overwhelming advantage in manpower, money, and machinery to crush the agrarian Southern upstarts for the benefit of its bankers, merchants, and industrialists.

Just because they won did not justify the carnage of Mr. Lincoln’s war.  Might does not make right.

God bless Virgil Kane.  God forgive those who visited pain, death, and destruction on his homeland and his family.

And please do not say that the War Between the States was a struggle to end slavery.

Lincoln’s Republican Party platform was committed to preserving slavery where it already existed.  In a letter to newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, President Lincoln confessed: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union… If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it,”.

In that same letter, Lincoln, who was a philosophical descendant of Alexander Hamilton, declared that he sought national authority to be restored. 

Two years after the North commenced hostilities, the Emancipation Proclamation was proclaimed as an afterthought.  It was a propaganda ploy to clothe a tawdry cash grab in a cloak of moral righteousness.

As always, it was all about the Benjamins, or whoever’s face was on the currency back then.

Despite the soaring rhetoric of his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln’s vision of centralized authority is anathema to liberty.  Thoreau nailed it.  "That government is best which governs least"

‘Nuff said.

 

Part Two – White Trash

A cursory look at my pigmentation and features suggests that I am of European lineage.  What we call “White”.

The man and woman who conceived me disposed of me at birth.   That makes me “trash”.  White Trash.

Fortunately, I was gestating in an era when unwanted babies were put onto the salvage heap for others to claim.  Had my birth mom been pregnant with me twenty years later, I probably would have been disposed of with the medical waste.

It could well have been a hard-knock life for me. Luckily, a loving, childless couple, Joe and Kay Siano, rescued me.  Praise Jesus!

I can’t say much about White Privilege, except that I was privileged to have them pour their heart, soul, time, talents, and treasure into giving me an awesome childhood and every advantage they could afford.

Think of Steve Jobs, another infant adoptee of my generation, and the wonderful working-class couple that adopted him.  Steve may never have had the opportunity to change the world without the love and support of his adoptive parents.

Consider the case of Tim Tebow.  Doctors advised his mom to abort him.  But Mamma Tebow said “no”.
Her baby, Tim, went on to win a Heisman Trophy and two national championships.  The Associated Press honored him as the GOAT college quarterback.

Dr. Fauci might say Tim's mom was“anti-science” for ignoring the advice of “medical professionals”.

If life is like a box of chocolates. so is every child in the womb.  You never know what you're going to get – a Steve Jobs, a Tim Tebow, or me.

Where there is life, there's hope.  Choose life.

Part Three – Blue Blazers

Mr. Lincoln’s war began a long erosion of states' rights as the newly invigorated central government grew in size, strength, and ambition.  The odious, post-war Fourteenth Amendment pushed national, one-size-fits-all solutions onto the states and localities.

In this instance, the long arm of Uncle Sam reached down to the sleepy burb of Pennsauken.  It handed my folks notice that I was to be removed from our nearby school and bused far across town to satisfy some DC bureaucrat’s notion of social justice.

Ma and Pa Siano would have none of that for their precious boy. 

Even Joe Biden, while he was still cogent, knew busing was stupid.  In a 1977 Senate Judiciary hearing, young Joe said, “Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point.” 

During the 2020 Democratic debates, Kamala Harris wiped the floor with old Joe over this.  It was her proudest moment.

Back to my story.  My folks elected to forgo a no-charge public school education and pay for me to attend a newly opened Catholic school within walking distance of our house.

They had no money to spare.  They worked multiple blue-collar jobs so that I might be a blue-blazer boy.   They sacrificed time, energy, and money for my education and a shot at the American Dream.

At St. Stephen’s, boys wore blue blazers, white shirts, blue ties, and dark pants.  The girls wore blue

jumpers over white blouses. Their skirts had to be no more than an inch or two above the floor when measured from a kneeling position.

School days were highly regimented.  One teacher, usually a nun, had to ride herd over sixty kids, for six hours every day.  We processed into the building and took our assigned seats in height order and in silence.  We spoke only when spoken to.  Discipline came swiftly. Sometimes painfully.

Detailed homework assignments were written on the blackboard and were expected to be copied into our notebooks word-for-word. 

Parents were expected to read the assignments, review that work, and sign off on the completed tasks.
Failure to comply resulted in swift discipline.  Sometimes painful for tough guys.

When classroom control slipped, our Pastor jumped into the breach.

Father (later Monseigneur) John O’Brien was a fire-breathing, short-fused, old-school martinet from the Old Sod.  OB sported a huge turnip head atop a tree trunk body with ham hock mitts that would do any pugilist proud.  He was the avenging angel who made “promises” of reprisal, not “threats”.

We would later understand that the fire breath was Camels and cheap scotch.

Forgive me for quoting liberally from the Kinks' underappreciated Schoolboys in Disgrace album.  Its lyric poetry evokes my time at St. Stephen's.

From an ocean away, rock's Poet Laureate captured OB's essence:

Boys like you were born to waste,
You never listen to a word I say
And if you think you're here to mess around,
You're making a big mistake,
'Cos you're gonna find out the hard way,
You gonna find out the hard way.

No matter what I do or say,
You're much too dumb to educate.
One day life's going to turn around and slap you in the face,
Then you're gonna find out the hard way.
You'll take the hard way,
Gonna take the hard way.

Well, you'll do it your way and I'll do it my way,
And we'll see who's the one to survive.
You'll find that with no foundation
Or qualifications
There's no way that you can get by,
No, there's no way you can get by.

Why don't you take the easy way?
Why don't you co-operate?
Don't just sit there and vegetate.
Do you want to end up illiterate?
You think that life's a vacation
And you've no inclination
To dust away the cobwebs of your mind.
Now it's time for confrontation
And I'm tired of being patient,
So I've got to be cruel to be kind.
Yeah, I've got to be cruel to be kind.

I'm wasting my vocation teaching you to write neat
When you're only fit to sweep the streets.
Your intellect is such
That it requires a killer's touch.

So I'm going to play it your way,
We'll take the hard way.
Going to take the hard way,
You can take the hard way.
Gonna take the hard way,
Gonna take the hard way.

 

They pushed us.  We pushed back. Eight years of jostling and sparring, punching and ducking.  We took our hits, but like the Bayonne Bleeder, we hung in and never backed down.

Frankie was the role model., "I faced it all, and I stood tall, and did it my way”

Old Freddy Nietzsche got this one right. "Out of life's school of war—what does not kill me makes me stronger."

He could not have been more correct.  By not being mollycoddled, we learned our 3Rs,  and became resilient.  We grew up to be accountable, responsible, and self-supporting men and women.

Like Marines forged at Parris Island, the Blue Blazer Boys and Blue Jumper Girls owe a debt to St. Stephen’s and our parents who sent us there.  It’s a tribute to the Greatest Generation that they wanted even greater things for their kids and were willing to sacrifice for it.  

Our moms and dads pushed us towards “greatness”.  A greatness not measured in dollars and cents, but in faith, loyalty,  and character.

So, let’s close with Mr. Davies as he fondly recalls his old school:

If ever you think about the happiest days of your life
Cast back your mind for a while
And remember the time when you were a child
Don't think of things that make you sad
Just remember all the good times that you had

Do you remember only happy days
Full of flaming Junes and summer holidays?
Or do you remember those stormy Novembers
As we walked in the wind and the rain?
Schooldays were such happy days
Now they seem so far away
I remember and I'll always treasure
Schooldays were the happiest days of your life
But we never appreciate the good times we have
Until it's too late

I miss all the acquaintances we made
And I'd go back if I could only find a way
Schooldays were the happiest days
Though at the time they filled me with dismay
We only remember what we choose to remember
When I was a schoolboy I loathed regulations and rules
I hated my textbooks and my school uniform
'Cos it made me conform
And teachers were always disobeyed

But I'd go back if I could only find a way

Feel the lump in his throat upon leaving.

                                                         As I walked to the last assembly,

There were tears in the back of my eyes,

And I saw all my friends all around me,

They were there to wish me goodbye.

As I stood in a line with my comrades,

I felt such a feeling of pride,

And I forgot all the grief and the hatred inside,

As we sang for the very last time.

Gather round, gather round,

Everybody gather round.

Come and join our last assembly,

Let us smile, wipe away all the frowns.

Gather round, gather round,

Everybody gather round.

As we stood at the last assembly,

All my friends came to wish me goodbye.

God bless you, Rednecks, White Trash “deplorables,” and especially you Blue Blazer Boys and Blue Jumper Girls who roamed St. Stephen's hallowed halls

Rock on!  We’re still standing.

 

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With Gratitude To The DSA

by Joe Siano

In 1948, Congressman  Dick Nixon exposed the high-ranking State Department official, Alger Hiss, as a Soviet communist operative in the top echelons of our government.

Senator Joe McCarthy parlayed on Nixon’s success by exposing closet communists in the Fifties.  Given the revelations about Hiss and the spying of the Rosenbergs on behalf of Soviet Russia, is it any wonder that McCarthy’s spider senses tingled?

Before all that, Vice President Henry Wallace styled himself as a “radical New Deal liberal”.  His pink shadings were too obvious for even Roosevelt’s lefty crew.  In 1945, He was dropped from the ticket and became the Progressive Party presidential candidate.  In The Quillette, Ronald Radosh writes:

“With the onset of the Cold War at the end of World War II, Wallace prominently argued that Stalin was not interested in spreading communism and expanding a Soviet empire. Soviet policy, he insisted, was to continue the wartime American–Soviet alliance in pursuit of a peaceful postwar world”

Yeah, sure.  How’d that work out?

In the Sixties, Democratic activists like Hanoi Jane Fonda, were not really anti-war. They opposed war against their fellow travelers, the Viet Cong, whom they viewed as “liberators”.

Saul Alinsky was another Red hiding in the Democratic Big Tent.   But at least Rules For Radicals is funny.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were young Alinskyite Community Organizers.  Alinsky found a safe haven behind the veil of Catholicism at theUniversity of Notre Dame.

This is why I am so indebted to the emergent Democratic Socialists of America movement.  It is akin to Gay Liberation for Marxists.  Now that the young bucks are proudly flaunting their Bolshevik bona fides, the old-timers must show their true comrade colors to remain relevant.

These ravenous moths of American socialism have slowly emerged from their cocoons over the past decade or so.

First, Bernie’s ugly turtle head popped up.  People thought he was harmless – their cranky old uncle.  He got a pass because he voted the Party line in the Senate.

Then came BLM and Antifa.  

Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder and former leader of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, stated in a 2015 interview that she and other co-founders were "trained Marxists". Celebrities and liberal politicians embraced BLM – legitimizing Marxism for the masses.

The Antifa/anti-fascist movement originated in the USSR to stamp out competitive totalitarian regimes.  German National Socialism and Italian Fascism combined Marxist collective economics and social control with a strong dose of nationalism.  The USSR objected to the nationalist element in each as it hoped to control all collectivist movements from Moscow. Don’t ever get the notion that Antifa means “pro-freedom”.   It means a pro-worldwide, centrally controlled economy and society.

AOC's election to Congress in 2019, on a bold Progressive platform that included the Green New Deal, was a watershed event.  The Squad rallied behind her.  She did not label her policies socialism outright, but her close alignment with Bernie belied the truth.   Actions speak louder than…

The election of Mamdani as Commissar of NYC opened the floodgates.  The vanguard of the Democrat party is now openly and proudly socialist.   The old farts are wheezing and posturing to keep up.

Our founding fathers understood that democracy is the gateway drug to socialism.  And socialism is the gateway to communism.  Lenin himself said that, “The goal of socialism is communism”.

Communism is the fast lane to death,

The German social scientists, Wilhelm Röpke and Hans-Herman Hoppe, lived up close and personal with totalitarian fascism and communism.   Röpke understood that there was no discernible difference between the two flavors of collectivism  – so he lumped them into one category.  He labeled them the Centralizers.

Centralizers, as a rule, demand compliance with their policies at the point of a bayonet.  They destroy the liberty and initiative that create prosperity.   Their nations become impoverished prison states. Mass graves are filled with dissenters.

Hoppe points out that democracy is the gateway drug to collectivism – be it

fascism or communism.  Demagogues woo voters with fantastic but impossible pipe dreams.  These politicos are like kindly strangers luring kids into their cars with sweets.  Once in, the kids, as well as misguided voters, are captives.  Some are abused. Some are killed.  None get what they were promised.

The Didache is an ancient manual for Christian living.  It begins as follows:

 

“There are two ways, one of life and one of death,
and there is a great difference between the two ways.”

Without getting theological about what the Way of Life may be, we can say for sure that Progressivism, by any name, is the Way of Death.

·         The Jacobin French Revolutionaries beheaded the aristocrats and then turned on themselves

·         The Bolsheviks jailed and killed counter-revolutionaries, starved millions of farmers to meet state-set industrial goals, terrorized everyday citizens, and fomented bloody insurrections worldwide

·         National Socialism sought to extinguish the Jewish people, kill and enslave neighboring Serbs.
They advanced their science through cruel experimentation on humans and eliminated
"inferiors and defectives” from the gene pool.

o   BTW-this was the Margaret Sanger agenda as well.

·         Communist regimes in China, Korea, Viet Nam, Africa, and Latin America  followed suit with the “successful,” bloody, and brutal Soviet model

·         Today’s Western Progressives advocate a “compassionate” culture of death through abortions for innocent unborn kids and assisted suicide for the old, infirm, and chronically ill.

Choose the Way of Life.  The way of liberty.  The proven path to peace and prosperity.

Thank you, Democratic Socialists, for bringing socialism out in the open. Hopefully, reasonable folks, with even half a brain,  can get a close look at its lies and pitfalls.

 

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“Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction.” 
- Paul Simon

Working Class Heroes?

 by Joe Siano

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

If you want to be a hero well just follow me

John Lennon 1979

In the Good Book, Aaron spoke for Moses, although Aaron was not the prophet.

Democratic Socialists purport to speak for America’s “working class”, although the Democratic Socialists are not working class.

It’s been that way for a long time

Joseph Schumpeter debunked these frauds ages ago. 

In his 1942 classic, Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy, he observes how capitalism sows the seeds of its demise:

“One of the most important features of the later stages of capitalist civilization is the vigorous expansion of the educational apparatus and particularly of the facilities for higher education.

…inasmuch as higher education thus increases the supply of services in professional, quasi-professional, and in the end all “white-collar” lines beyond the point determined by cost-return considerations, it may create a particularly important case of sectional unemployment.

Second, along with or in place of such unemployment, it creates unsatisfactory conditions of employment (i.e.) employment in substandard work or at wages below those of the better-paid manual workers.

Third, it may create unemployability of a particularly disconcerting type. The man who has gone through a college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work.

All those who are unemployed or unsatisfactorily employed or unemployable drift into the vocations in which standards are least definite or in which aptitudes and acquirements of a different order count. They swell the host of intellectuals in the strict sense of the term whose numbers hence increase disproportionately. They enter it in a thoroughly discontented frame of mind. Discontent breeds resentment. And it often rationalizes itself into that social criticism which as we have seen before is in any case the intellectual spectator’s typical attitude toward men, classes and institutions especially in a rationalist and utilitarian civilization.”

 

These overeducated malcontents coalesce into

“…a well-defined group situation of proletarian hue; and a group interest shaping a group attitude…(Of)… hostility to the capitalist order”

These people often find employment in education, media, politics, or government bureaucracy, where they will spread their distaste for competitive free enterprise – particularly among the young and impressionable.

Schumpeter’s insight has been given new credence via Peter Turchin’s elite overproduction hypothesis, “that describes the condition of a society that has excess of potential elite members relative to its ability to absorb them into the power structure.  This, he hypothesizes, is a cause for social instability, as those left out of power feel aggrieved by their relatively low socioeconomic status”.

A recent posting by blogger Nate Silver,  affirms that the Democratic Socialists are anything but working-class heroes.  He writes:

“The DSA occupies the high-education, lower-income corner of the electorate

…candidates like Graham Platner and Abdul El-Sayed who are associated with democratic socialism often claim to have the mandate of the working class. But in practice, their strengths tend to be with college-educated voters. 

Platner wasn’t particularly doing better among voters without college degrees than previous (losing) Democratic nominees in Maine. El-Sayed has relatively weak support from Black voters”

 

This is the latest epoch in a shameful tradition.

Karl Marx, an educated son of a successful lawyer, could not support his family with his writing. He depended on handouts from his rich buddy, Friedrich Engels, to tide him over.    Engels got money from his wealthy dad’s textile mills.  One wonders if he beat his breast crying mea culpa while exploiting his proletariat workers?

Proto-progressive Jean Jacques Rousseau enjoyed royal opulence in the palace of King Frederick the Great, as he waxed idyllic about the Noble Savage.  He pined for a return to nature while soaking up all the luxury the 18^th century offered – fine food, warm beds, wine, spirits and doting servants.

Meanwhile, Rousseau never married the woman who bore him five children, nor did he support his kids.   All five newborns were consigned to a public orphanage.  

Noble savage, meet deadbeat baby-daddy. 

In the “workers’ paradise” of the Soviet Union, the working people were intimidated, starved, beaten, and sentenced to slave labor in the gulags.  The intellectuals ran the show, living like the Tsar and his nobles.  The elites were the “Vanguard of the Revolution”, the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”.

 This Vanguard was to rule until the time came that the workers were ready to govern themselves.  Their clocks were set on mañana time.

Give me a break.  At least America once produced working-class heroes who were actually workers.

·         Eugene Debs worked in railroad shops at age 14 and later became a locomotive fireman

·         Samuel Gompers started rolling cigars at age 10 – first at home, then in small shops and later in factories

·         David Dubinsky left school at 15 to work as a baker in Russia and then in garment factories in America

·         Jimmy Hoffa left school at 14 to start his working life in a warehouse.

Tough.  Street smart.  No pampered college boys, there.  They may be pink, but at least they worked.

Yes, a working-class hero is something to be. Yet, the guy who wrote that tune had little claim to being one himself.  When John Lennon recorded songs like PowerTo The People and Working Class Hero, he was a jet-setting,
estate-owning, pop music glamour boy who left his working-class roots far behind.

Lennon mixed his talent, hard work, and dedication to craft with capitalist machinery to achieve fame and fortune.  He could never have climbed the mountain alone.   He had the benefit of managers, producers, record companies, music publishers, radio stations, publicists, fanzines, record shops, TV networks, concert promoters, instrument makers, sound engineers, delivery men, retail clerks, and many more.  

That's how capitalism works. One hand helps the other. Some prosper more, some less according to the value of their contribution,

When he got caught up with the Marxist radical left-wing editors Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn of the leftist publication Red Mole, Lennon felt compelled  to justify his highfalutin lifestyle with phony baloney populist anthems.  

Baby, you're a rich man.  Or, were.  Pretending otherwise fools no one,

No wonder Hunter Thompson dismissed these songs as “ten years too late”, calling Lennon a "punk that should have stayed put and not tried to get all serious”.

For my money, real working-class heroes are people with ideas to improve consumers’ lives and take risks to bring those ideas to market. They create jobs for workers, and profits for investors. 
In other words, capitalists.

Related Articles:

Collectivism – The Last Refuge Of The Useless

Is Being Wealthy A Crime?

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“Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction.” 
- Paul Simon