Labor Day?

Today is Labor Day according to the calendar. Listening to NPR, the national station for the curious and balanced, Labor Day doesn't really exist. Most of the schedule is that of Monday except that the first team is resting and the second team works. Labor Day in the rest of the world is May Day, the first day in May. Parades, balls and political speeches celebrate it. In the US, labor unions celebrate and everyone else ignores the holiday.

Labor Day is about laborers. Laborers, however, are politically isolated. Today's left, in the US - liberal, cares about the middle class and unions end with just lip service. This change started with the New Left that totally ignored labor. Labor didn't support the New Left and the New left didn't bother to get the support of labor.

Liberals in the US look up to their brothers in Europe. They deal with Iraq, Afghanistan, hate Israel (anti-Semitism morphed into Israel hate), budget and taxes. The kids of liberals go to college and many go to business schools. The kids of laborer serve in the military. Laborer must, therefore, support the war in Iraq, or at least not oppose it. That offends liberals badly; understanding that natural emotion is beyond the limited concerns of liberals.

The chasm in between labor and liberal showed up in a distinct way in the Democratic primaries for president in 2008. Liberals, i.e. white color middle class Democratic voter, went for Obama in a big way, while blue color laborers went to Hillary Clinton. There was never an attempt to reconcile the two camps in 2008. On the contrary, when Obama was in trouble he didn’t heisted to blame the Clinton of racism. There was absolutely no justification for that ugly move, which should have disqualified Obama from being the Democratic candidate, but it was accepted by the liberal middle class as a certification for their war against Bill Clinton.

Indeed, we got a president who pays only lip service to unemployed laborers; he starts to deal with this unemployment problem less than two months before the midterm election. We got a president who wouldn't break up large insolvent bank not to endanger the stokes of his middle class supporters.

The primaries of 2008 brought out the vilest language aimed at at Hillary and Bill Clinton. The vile language may be a direct descendant of the New Left and its violent side. The language was augmented by arrogance and pettiness. The arrogance stems from feeling of superiority over laborers and right-wingers. The pettiness demonstrates the shallowness of the middle class that used to be left. Arrogance and pettiness is the mainstay of the liberals blog s today. Very few of these blogs deal with serious posts and complex problems. It's almost always: Na, na, na.

Will be ever get back a real solid left? I hope.