The Clinton Movement and the Middle Class:
Of Dummycrats, Oxford-Morons, and

Copyright 1995 by D.H. Myers. All rights reserved. For personal use only. This generally means that academic, commercial, or occupational use not permitted without author's written consent.

I remember shortly before the 1992 presidential election, that I tried to get a copy of Mr. Clinton's personal resume containing his academic history before making up my mind who to vote for. But Mr. Clinton's supporters and staff were not responsive to this request of mine. Instead of sending me what I had asked them for, they sent me his education proposals which, after looking at them for five minutes, I decided that either he or his daughter did not spend more than five minutes drafting them. I also asked a 25 year old female sitting at a pre-election Clinton table in front of a bookstore if she was a college graduate. I do tend to poll people like this, you know. She promptly took sexist-like offense at my question for no apparent reason, and refused at first to give me a straight answer. I had to explain to her that I looked upon college grads as an interest group, and so forth. She apparently had not expected this explanation of my question, and she finally admitted that she was a graduate of NYU. And yes, I also observed that since she would be considered very sexually desirable from a vulgar male psyche point of view, this did not hurt her chances of admission and retention by a selective school such as NYU and subsequent employers.

It was apparent from the election hoopla that Clinton voters had their own agendas in mind rather than knowing what Mr. Clinton would have ~o offer over the next four years. The word "change" was a key slogan in the Clinton campaign, and Mr. Clinton, as he probably knows, would be deluding himself if he believed the voter mandate was for change of a progressive nature.

The strong movement of votes for Mr. Clinton came from people dependent upon their college degrees and enrollments, and perhaps others with their children in school with the same middle class dreams. These are the people who have felt sorry for themselves and resentful because their excessive privileges over the poor had diminished under the Republican administration through budget cuts in middle class social programs such as higher education.

"The middle class is always a firm champion of equality
when it concerns humbling a class above it, but it is
its inveterate foe when it concerns elevating a class below it."
- Orestes A. Brownson,
Boston Quarterly Review for 1840

The electorate's resentment of George Bush at that time bore a strange similarity to the resentful ouster of Prime Minister V.P. Singh of India in 1990. Singh had opened up a slew of government jobs for the lower castes in his country, and was voted out of office a month later after riots and several suicides by college students who represented the middle class who, like their American counterparts, had hoped to monopolize employment opportunities. Singh had been decisively, yet equivocally, accused by this frightened middle class of creating these job opportunities to "buy" votes from the lower castes. The same college-credentialed middle class in both India and the U.S. are typically resentful at the idea of the poor and less credentialed "rising up" above them socially and politically. In the spirit of this resentment, the Bush administration was equivocally accused of contributing to the Rodney King riots by failing to provide economic assistance to the poor in the riot areas. But even if he had, then Bush would have been nonetheless accused by the same middle class of raising the status of the poor and "less qualified" through "affirmative action" programs.

Shameless Quote:

"The homeless should be lined up and shot."
-Laura, sociology student, State University of New York, circa 1990

One program to this effect is the Clinton enactment of tuition credits for so-called public service. The current program makes for about 100,000 college students who would get a stipend of $7500 per year and a deduction of $10,000 per year off their college tuition. The problem with this program, in addition to engendering unrealistic hopes for most of the nation's five million college students, is that this special interest subsidy is far above the income level of the devastated people who need help the most - financial help without strings so they can live normal lives. This program not only promises exploitation and degradation of poor people for $18,000 per year, but the credential value of "public service" on student resumes are likely to create additional financial perks for them in the future at the further expense of the poor.

The so-called public service jobs, if they follow the example of the Peace Corps, will have strong ideological requirements for their applicants, and not just anyone can apply and expect to get a job. These jobs are for relatively rich people who find it easy to fill out a job application. Other qualified applicants are, of course, rejected before they even apply, regardless of their abilities. This would become consistent with the pattern in which the wealthy and unabused are able to get through school while others of different persuasions are induced to drop out and to not apply.

In contrast to the younger college generation and its recent graduates, the Baby-Boom generation and its predecessors are much older now and established insofar as their academic credentials and consequential employment security (or lack of credentials and insecurity for those without). The older dropouts are the personae non gratiae of the schools and employers regardless of any future college loan program, while the children of the rich will continue to be welcome in the schools and the job fairs. Many, if not most or all older underclass, can no longer get fair returns from any future college investment. Therefore, the Clinton proposal for $24,000 in guaranteed student loans for everyone will benefit only certain types of people, usually from the middle class, and makes Mr. Clinton guilty of "buying" middle class votes.

Bill Clinton is a graduate of Yale, Georgetown, and Oxford, and therefore meets the narcissistic requirements of anyone ingenuous enough to accept college graduates as an unremovable elite. If all politics is the politics of values, then the values which he symbolizes can perhaps suffer the fate of political upheaval, which could well be on the way in the upcoming elections in 1996.

Despite his election promises for a better economy, the economy has gotten worse. As he professes to concentrate on domestic issues, pressures from abroad upon relative American wealth threaten to increase to the point of alarm. The deficit is only a road sign. The many foreign workers who have been allowed to supplant the U.S. workforce will become much less friendly as the years roll by. American society will become more and more bitterly divided - around a 1 to 4, 5, or 6 ratio, between the graduate and non-graduate aging work force. This split will increasingly become exploited by massive foreign interests which seek competitive advantage. In the meantime, integration of the U.S. workforce will become increasingly difficult. It is only a matter of time before much of the displaced workforce consiously rejects the over-credentialed overlordish employers as illegitimate and not worth working for, as they subconsciously do now.

"History is nothing but the succession of the separate generations, each of which exploits the materials, the capital funds, the productive forces handed down to it by all preceding generations, and thus, on the one hand, continues the traditional activity in completely changed circumstances and, on the other, modifies the old circumstances with a completely changed activity."

-from Marx and Engels The German Ideology circa 1845

As a child of post World War II liberalism, the American Dream for Bill Clinton's generation stated "Well, you can't have the family home, but you can go to college, get a degree, buy your own home, and rule the world". This unrealistic dream has not simply faded for the many, it has become more than a cruel and illegitimate hoax for its American victims.