# I Pit the ID-demanding GOP vote-suppressors (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 12, 2012, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943 "2012-06-12T19:15:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 438
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8741 "2016-03-10T01:33:13Z")
By the way, since will/drive/ambition are out of play, do you recognize the luck/chance aspects of heritage/genetics/“life circumstance” (definition pending, I assume) or were those also just figments of my allegedly variably (in)sincere attempts at redefinition? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8742 "2016-03-10T02:50:21Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Sorry to just jump in, but I’ve been following this thread since its start. > > Is your definition of “working class” someone who graduates high school without any plans for college, and no discernable job skills? I suppose that applies to a lot of them, but it’s not definitional. Many working-class people have high job skills and some go to college (community, at least). [There are various definitions of the"working class"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class) – but not so widely various that it is difficult to say who is and isn’t in it. One can perhaps meaningfully subdivide the working class. From [_Class: A Guide Through the American Status System_](http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294367637&sr=8-1) (originally published 1983), by Paul Fussell: > [@](#): > > My researches have persuaded me that there are nine classes in this country, as follows: > > ## Top out-of-sight Upper Upper middle > > ## Middle High proletarian Mid-proletarian Low proletarian > > Destitute > Bottom out-of-sight > > One thing to get clear at the outset is this: it’s not riches alone that define these classes. . . . “Economically, no doubt, there are only two classes, the rich and the poor,” says George Orwell, “but socially there is a whole hierarchy of classes, and the manners and traditions learned by each class in childhood are not only very different but – this is the essential point – generally persist from birth to death. . . . It is . . . very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you have been born.” When John Fitzgerald Kennedy, watching Richard Nixon on television, turned to his friends and, horror-struck, said, “The guy has no class,” he was not talking about money. > > \ > > \ > > . . . Proceeding downward [from the middle class], we would normally expect to meet next the lower-middle class. But it doesn’t exist as such any longer, having been pauperized by the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s and transformed into the high-proletarian class. What’s the difference? A further lack of freedom and self-respect. Our former lower-middle class, the new high proles, now head “the masses,” and even if they are positioned at the top of the proletarian classes, still they are identifiable as people things are done to. They are in bondage – to monetary policy, rip-off advertising, crazes and delusions, mass low culture, fast food, consumer schlock. Back in the 1940s there was still a real lower-middle class in this country, whose solid high-school education and addiction to “saving” and “planning” maintained it in a position – often precarious, to be sure – above the working class. . . . These former low-white-collar people are now simply working machines, and the wife usually works as well as the husband. > > The kind of work performed and the sort of anxiety that besets one as a result of work are ways to divide the working class into its three strata. The high proles are the skilled workers, craftsmen, like printers. The mid-proles are operators, like Ralph Kramden, the bus driver. The low proles are unskilled labor, like longshoremen. The special anxiety of high proles is fear about loss or reduction of status: you’re proud to be a master carpenter, and you want the world to understand clearly the difference between you and a laborer. The special anxiety of the mid-proles is fear of losing the job. And of the low proles, the gnawing perception that you’re probably never going to make enough or earn enough freedom to have and do the things you want. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8743 "2016-03-10T02:54:53Z")
Also – Fussell seems to overlook this – the working class can also be subdivided racially/ethnically. Among other things Marx got wrong, a social class is not merely a set of people of the same economic status or economic function. It is also a sociological entity. People of the same class do not just work at the same kinds of jobs or earn the same level of income, they live in the same kinds of neighborhoods, go to the same schools, socialize with each other, marry each other, and absorb a similar outlook growing up. The white and black working classes are really two different social classes, and will remain so until socialization and neighborhood and intermarriage between them is a great deal more common than it is now. It’s not that either is above the other (except that the whites probably provide most of the high-proles as Fussell defines them); they’re like two halves of the same layer of the cake. Or thirds, or whatever, because the Latino working class is separate from both, etc. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8744 "2016-03-10T03:10:59Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Your link goes to a thread. What, specifically, in that thread do you believe proves that working-class people cannot accomplish this? I linked that post merely as an elucidation of the point, which is so obvious to anyone who pays attention that I hardly think it requires **proof.** > [@Bricker](#): > > They can. They just have to be willing to not buy things they cannot afford. > > The problem is that they want to have big screen TVs and Disney vacations and run the air conditioner every time it’s hot. > > They are free to make whatever choices they wish. But the new living room set is money that could earn interest for them instead of interest for the store, if they kept the old furniture. People do have free will, and the workers are not workers because they’re stupid – ignorant, perhaps, but not stupid. They were smart enough to organize vast and powerful labor unions, once upon a time. What you say cannot be any less obvious to them than it is to you. If it were – not that easy, but that simple – for working-class people to acquire a middle-class lifestyle like they could from the '50s through the '70s, then, while cultural factors might still be a holding-back force, a very great many more **would** acquire it than actually manage to do so, any more. No, the problem is that they now live in an economic environment where they simply can’t earn the kind of incomes that their parents could, they cannot enjoy the job security or benefits their parents could, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8745 "2016-03-10T03:15:16Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I linked that post merely as an elucidation of the point, which is so obvious to anyone who pays attention that I hardly think it requires **proof.** Actually, you’re wrong, in a way that is so obvious it does not require proof. > [@](#): > > People do have free will, and the workers are not workers because they’re stupid – ignorant, perhaps, but not stupid. What you say cannot be any less obvious to them than it is to you. If it were – not that easy, but that simple – for working-class people to acquire a middle-class lifestyle like they could from the '50s through the '70s, then, while cultural factors might still be a holding-back force, a very great many more **would** acquire it than actually manage to do so, any more. No, the problem is that they now live in an economic environment where they simply can’t earn the kind of incomes that their parents could, they cannot enjoy the job security or benefits their parents could, etc. No. If I stood next to someone who was buying a 72-inch plasma screen on credit, I am certain he would acknowledge the math that shows why it was a bad choice…but he’d still sign the credit card receipt. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8746 "2016-03-10T03:24:25Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > No. If I stood next to someone who was buying a 72-inch plasma screen on credit, I am certain he would acknowledge the math that shows why it was a bad choice…but he’d still sign the credit card receipt. But whether he did or didn’t – in that particular transaction and in others habitually – would not really make much difference in where he would be 10 years from now. What, you expect him to save his money to buy stocks or bonds? He still couldn’t buy enough to eventually finance a middle-class standard of living. **Middle-class** people can hardly do that any more, they mostly live paycheck to paycheck like the proles, and their earned income, not investment income, is what finances their lifestyles. Why don’t you say something about those silly middle-class spendthrifts who simply **have** to have homes in the 'burbs and send their kids to college? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8747 "2016-03-10T03:54:24Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But whether he did or didn’t – in that particular transaction and in others habitually – would not really make much difference in where he would be 10 years from now. What, you expect him to save his money to buy stocks or bonds? He still couldn’t buy enough to eventually finance a middle-class standard of living. What, specifically, is a “middle-class standard of living?” Does it include plasma screens? > [@](#): > > **Middle-class** people can hardly do that any more, they mostly live paycheck to paycheck like the proles, and their earned income, not investment income, is what finances their lifestyles. Why don’t you say something about those silly middle-class spendthrifts who simply **have** to have homes in the 'burbs and send their kids to college? Neither choice is necessarily spendthrift. How many Disney vacations, cars for the kids, and unused gym memberships are also on the table? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8748 "2016-03-10T04:19:47Z")
I gather that for the good of America, plasma-screen technology must be banned. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8749 "2016-03-10T04:25:13Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > . . . “The liberal” is singular. . . . Bullshit. It was a class noun. You used synecdoche, and you used it deliberately and knowingly. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8750 "2016-03-10T04:33:35Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Bullshit. It was a class noun. You used synecdoche, and you used it deliberately and knowingly. Yeah!: It’s like you’re some kind of, uh, synecdouche! [heads to Wikipedia to look up something completely unrelated] ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8751 "2016-03-10T04:41:08Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Bullshit. It was a class noun. You used synecdoche, and you used it deliberately and knowingly. Nope. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8752 "2016-03-10T04:42:01Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > You assert that my success is due to the advantages my father gave me. I rebut this argument by pointing out that he lacked similar advantages. Your response is that he was uncommon. Why am I not uncommon, then? I assert that your success is partially due to the advantages your father gave you, dipshit. I’d suggest that being uncommon is in some respect luck. For instance, in our society, being a tall, white, attractive guy helps someone in life. It gives them an advantage. I don’t doubt you and your father have, or had, high IQs. That’s luck . Having a good family who train you well. Having connections and acquaintances who you can network with. Having access to education. Growing up with good nutrition. Being taught the right accent. That one helped me, if my mother hadn’t taught me neutral-American English, I’d have had a tougher time. There are countless things you don’t control that contribute to your life’s path. Your actions use these things as a base. Like Trump for instance, we’ll never know if he would have been a success without his dad’s empire. He obviously didn’t run it into the ground. But he certainly had some luck on his side, and by luck I mean things out of his control. If you’re gonna grade people on accomplishments, I’d say the grades need to take account what they had to begin with. Your father, assuming what you say about him is true, and you’re not omitting relevant details (which seems possible, given that you are dishonest when it suits you), accomplished something great. You, have tons of advantages he didn’t, so I’d say your path is less impressive than his. Not that you aren’t impressive in general, you obviously have mastered a complex trade, and that’s a rare thing. And I respect that, even if I think a cosmic ray obliterated your empathy-node at some point in the past. 😃 > [@](#): > > You are doing the same thing now: it’s luck, unless somehow you can prove it isn’t. Luck is a factor. In everyone’s life. Period. _It isn’t the only factor_. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8753 "2016-03-10T04:43:50Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Nope. Then you are inept at communication. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8754 "2016-03-10T04:51:01Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > Then you are inept at communication. He isn’t always. I’m picking up on his “plasma screen” dog whistle, like his earlier “lottery winners who pissed away their fortunes” one. The message there is “it doesn’t matter if some poor people lose their votes - I know poor people are too stupid and irresponsible to vote since I once heard about a guy who spent his whole welfare check on Interne porn.” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8755 "2016-03-10T05:14:57Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > What, specifically, is a “middle-class standard of living?” > > Does it include plasma screens? Nowadays, almost certainly, and you know that much very well. But even more certainly, it includes a suburban or high-end-urban home and a college education – and those silly middle-class spendthrifts actually go into **debt** for such things, instead of saving the money to play the stock market, like you seem to idiotically and incomprehensibly think that even the workers should! ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8756 "2016-03-10T05:21:09Z")
Cliven Bundy referred to “the negro” having less freedom now than under slavery. Do you suppose he was referring to one specific black person, or all of them? Saying “the liberal” implies all (or most) not just one. The word “the” makes it a clear synchecdoche , in my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8757 "2016-03-10T05:27:33Z")
> [@raventhief](#): > > Cliven Bundy referred to “the negro” having less freedom now than under slavery. Do you suppose he was referring to one specific black person, or all of them? Saying “the liberal” implies all (or most) not just one. The word “the” makes it a clear synchecdoche , in my opinion. Well, to be fair, even Martin Luther King wrote and spoke of “the Negro,” and many Jewish writers wrote and spoke of “the Jew,” that kind of collective ethnic noun was just conventional usage of . . . a time long past, which time produced Cliven Bundy and some even less savory things. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8758 "2016-03-10T05:46:20Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, to be fair, even Martin Luther King wrote and spoke of “the Negro,” and many Jewish writers wrote and spoke of “the Jew,” that kind of collective ethnic noun was just conventional usage of . . . a time long past, which time produced Cliven Bundy and some even less savory things. So. … to be fair, “the whatever” has long been used as a collective noun? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8759 "2016-03-10T05:54:55Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Nowadays, almost certainly, and you know that much very well. But even more certainly, it includes a suburban or high-end-urban home and a college education – and those silly middle-class spendthrifts actually go into **debt** for such things, instead of saving the money to play the stock market, like you seem to idiotically and incomprehensibly think that even the workers should! I have no sympathy for someone who goes into debt to have a large-screen plasma TV, no matter how much such an item is “required,” for the lifestyle. I don’t recall mentioning the stock market. When did I? ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/8760 "2016-03-10T06:11:55Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > No. > > That’s not an accurate description of the choice people face. My father would have said to himself, “I have a year to obtain this document. Here are the days I can do so without losing work.” > > If anyone faces the choice you describe, it’s because they waited until time was so short that they had no other options. Or else they are working multiple jobs trying to keep their family together and living hand to mouth, and realized that while voting is something that he would very much like to do, on any given week day there were always things that had more immediate real world importance, that take precedence over the abstract advantage of casting a vote. This is in many cases honestly the right and moral choice. It’s basically the same thing that was wrong with the poll tax. If they knew 4 years in advance, everyone could probably scrimp and save and pull together say 50 bucks to pay to vote. But since the sacrifice this would mean for the poor is much larger than that for the rich it was a very effective way to make sure that the “wrong” people wouldn’t vote. This is just poll tax mark2 but using time and the cost of obtaining the right supporting documents in the place of a more blatant tax. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943.md?page=437) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943.md?page=439)