The One About The Four Main Reasons Why Most People Don’t Embrace Progressivism.

January 22, 2010 by Toriach

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One of my strengths, I firmly believe is that unlike a great many Progressives, well meaning though they may be, I am firmly entrenched in the Working Class. I understand the realities that these people deal with because many of them are my realities as well.

As a result I am sometimes able to offer some insight to my middle and upper middle class Progressive Brothers and Sisters. Today I’d like to do that, to help explain why so many people who are working class and poor, not only don’t embrace Progressivism, but actively run from it.

There are four main reasons why this is so.

1: People want answers!

In any society, there will always be those few brave individuals who are willing to live a life of uncertainty. Always questioning, always trying to make sense of the world for themselves. Such people are a wonderful treasure and deserve to be recognized as heroes. But the fact is that most people don't want questions, they want answers. And generally speaking they will gravitate towards whoever or whatever is offering them the answers they seek.

This is a fact of life in all aspects. My own history is a perfect example.

I was born in 1973. I lived in a small town. As I was growing up, I had a small number of experiences that I regard as mystical. In the time and place I lived the only group offering answers about what I experienced was Christianity. As a result I stayed a Christian for a number of years even after I started to doubt the answers I was receiving. Because for the longest time no one else was offering competing answers.

It was only upon gaining access to a good public library and reading about Buddhism, and Neo-Paganism that I started to find answers that felt right to me.

Well the same is true when it comes to politics. People want to know things like, “How will I feed myself and my children?” “How will I give my children a better life?” “How will I ensure we have a decent place to live?”

And as they ask these questions, they most often hear Conservative Republicans offering them answers. They are often not great answers, but they are answers all the same. Meanwhile it seems that most Progressives have forgotten how to speak forcefully, they've forgotten the art of appearing certain of the rightness of your cause. As a result most people drift towards the ones with the answers, because they just don’t have the strength for more questions.

2. People value the concrete and the relateable.

Most people simply are not very good at thinking in abstracts. They want to know how a particular idea or action relates directly to them, especially directly to their well being. Vague talk of public good, or half answers with a lot of abstraction will lose their interest every time.

The current health care “reform” situation is a perfect example.

Even in the early days of the bill, there was a plan for an individual mandate. Which many were willing to ignore because of the promise of a public option that would offer them decent insurance at an affordable rate. Once the public option was well and truly gone, the individual mandate started to look more and more loathsome. And every time the Democrats have been challenged on the mandate, they constantly talk in terms of how not having it might affect the insurance companies. Well pretty much NOBODY gives a shit about the insurance companies. If they had instead chosen to talk about how the costs would be even higher without the mandate, or how their were genuine controls in the legislation that would guarantee that even without a public option the insurance companies would have to provide real useful coverage. But instead almost all of the talk is in the abstract, and sadly when a Progressive does offer answers that most people might find meaningful they are sadly so far out of the mainstream that they don't get heard. Instead most of what people do get to hear is crap about “How this is the only chance to pass a bill for a decade.” and “Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Ideas that may be true, but still are abstractions and not even remotely relatable to the lives of people who have to balance going to the doctor against their need to eat, pay the rent, and put gas in the car.

3. People don’t want to feel they are disposable.

Generally speaking any time a limiting of ones perquisites and prerogatives takes place, it effects the working class and the middle class. Almost never are meaningful lasting steps taken to reign in those in the Corporatocracy. We have seen examples of this in recent times. When the mega banks and other corporations needed a bail out the money flowed to them like water rushing down a hill. But now a year later with unemployment at over ten percent, suddenly there seems to be a limitation of funds to help real people. Suddenly the wars our government has gotten us embroiled in, and keeping money freed up should the corporations need it again, is more important. Or with financial regulation legislation, all the Republicans have to do is raise an eyebrow and suddenly the Democrats are backing off having a strong regulatory agency to oversee these institutions. The same is the case with the death of the public option. Every time they meet the least little bit of resistance the Democrats, Progressives included cave in. Now most people are mature enough to know that if you don't compromise on anything you usually wind up with nothing. But guess what happens when you compromise on everything? That's right, you still get nothing. Think about it you mathematicians.

4. People want fewer burdens, not more.

The final point is in regards to the tendency that Liberals and Progressives have to focus on trying to effect changes in people’s habits, by using things like sin taxes, etc, all the while doing nothing meaningful to address the kind of lives that working class people lead that make them feel that their only pleasures in life are of the kind that are deadly for you.

Part of the problem as I've said before lies with cigarettes. The thing is that once it was proven that second hand smoke was a real and very immediate danger to the welfare of people who weren't smokers, a number of fairly stifling laws were and continue to be enacted. And honestly I don’t have a problem with that, simply because someone else smoking, is essentially infringing on the rights of everyone around them.

But unfortunately they have taken this one situation and applied the tactics to everything. So people fear and not without reason being penalized for what they view as the only pleasures available to them in life. But instead of working to creating a situation in which people are paid better and have actual access to the tools of self betterment, instead they just pile on the sin taxes. All the while generally not doing anything to address the food manufacturers who put crap in food to ensure that it is as addictive as possible. The recent bright exception to this is an initiative to get the amount of salt in prepared foods reduced.

Work on creating tangible improvements in people lives first and foremost. Make sure they have a living wage, real, reliable, affordable healthcare, educational opportunities that don’t leave them in debt up to their eyeballs, and you might just see that people with the a better living situation make better choices.

Ultimately these four suggestions, are by no means the be all and end all of challenges Progressives face in getting our message across to the working classes. But they are the most immediate, and they certainly represent I think a good place to start.

Keep The Faith My Brothers And Sisters!

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