The Internal Proletariat

[degringolade]

So yesterday, I began the discussion of the Prole. 

Leaving aside the creative minority/dominant minority question for right now, let's take a look at the masses that constitute the bulk of our society.  Historically, these have been perjoratively referred to as the "Proletariat".  I don't see any reason to change that for this discussion.

Here in the land of the free, the word proletariat is incredibly loaded.  The astounding success of the demonization campaign against socialism/communism by the ruling elites has been successsful beyond any rational expectation.  But there are still proles, aggressively and with multiple trademarks, they have been re-branded.

I want to talk now about the internal proletariat.  In my mind, these consist of the "deplorables".  Now, the MAGA folks want to label them with a more positive spin, but I don't think that their PR department has hit upon a suitable buzzword yet, but they are most certainly working on it.

The internal proletariat is probably pretty heavily canted toward the white.  It really is the direct descendant of the white lower class that actually did the physical work building the infrastructure of the country.  It provided the bulk of the manpower for the mass wars of the twentieth century.  Now, it does have a heavy sprinkling of ethnic minorities, but these are usually transition folks, third or fourth generation immigrants with a heavier sprinkling of the American Dream.

Whether or not it is in decline is what is in question, My guess that the Republican see it as valuable and direct their recruiting and PR campaigns toward the shibboleths that this group of folks worship.  It isn't that the Republican party gives anything resembling a shit about these folks as individuals, but the Republicans see these as the fields that they harvest using their vote gathering machinery.

In a way, the Republicans, through that fuckhead Mitt Romney, kind of helped to define this group in a negative fashion.  47%.  With his sneering bragaddocio (he is the fuckhead of fuckheads, a true poster child for the elites of the Republican party), he painted the other side of the proletariat line: the idea of the internal proletariat as white boys who knew their place. 

The strengths of the internal proletariat are:

• They are heavily armed
• Quite a few of them have had formal combat training
• If they feel it can behoove them, they can work hard
• They tend to be pretty inclusive if anyone makes even a minor effort to be a little like them.

The weaknesses of the internal proletariat are:

• They are feeling oppressed and are beginning to lash out blindly.
• They tend to cast things in a religious light (heavily Christian)
• They usually aren't that well educated, so their intelligence (and they are as smart as any group) is somewhat constrained by folk wisdom. 

So:  this is one side of the prole equation.  This is the sword taken up by the Republicans.