america has an "arrogant upper class"

Grocery shopping in Chicago

Three Floyds Brewery in Munster

JEDgolfing in Highland

Album photo shoot at Three Floyds

It’s Sunday night after 60 Minutes and this is what’s going on in My American, Radio Life.
 
I’ve doing a lot of:

• radio shows
• JEDgolfing (don’t ask)
• Reading
• Editing video
• Posting photos

Radio has taken me to a lot of social occasions in the past week or so.

• opening of 18th Street brewery in downtown Hammond
• opening and tour of Byway brewery on the southern border of Hammond
• tour of the opening of the new, multi-million dollar production facility at the world-famous Three Floyds brewery in Munster. On Thursday, I ripped on them on the air about being rude to customers and not caring about the Calumet Region. On Friday, I was on a personalized tour of the facility with Tom Keilman of BP and Dave Ryan of the Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce.
• bowling fundraiser for Bishop Noll Institute, where a lot of WJOB supporters come from
• birthday party for my step-son’s girlfriend, with members of the softball team that WJOB sponsors
• dinner at Theo’s, a longtime WJOB sponsor.
• Drinks at Giovanni’s, a longtime WJOB sponsor.
• Breakfast at Round the Clock, a longtime WJOB sponsor.
• Bowling night, with several WJOB sponsors.
• Grocery shopping in Chicago at Jewels with daughter.

Today I took the wife to her office in a snowstorm and hung around with lawyer associate Dave Gladish, who was walking the treadmill. It was awkward. He’s walking and sweating, and I’m sitting there eating a piece of pizza leftover from God knows when. For Valentine’s Day, Alexis and I stopped for dinner at True Barbecue, which is not a WJOB sponsor but is on the way home and it’s snowing like hell outside.
 
Instead of blogging for the three or four of you, I’ve been reading. Just a lot of random stuff like a short story by Albert Erskine and Business Week articles about oil and stocks going down together and even a really good article in Wall Street:
 
“The white working class is justifiably angry over its plight and the indifference of the country’s elites.”
 
Author Charles Murray says that we have lost our belief and execution of the American Creed, which consists of egalitarianism, liberty and individualism. This doesn’t mean much, really, until Murray asks the question:
 
“What happened (to the creed?) Many of the dynamics of the reversal can be found in developments across the whole American society: in the emergence of a new upper class and a new lower class, and in the plight of the working class caught in between.”
 
All right, so this is a little deep for the three or four of you on a Sunday night. But it’s a lot of the same bullshit that I talk about on the radio show. Remember how many times I have beseeched you to:
 
“Please explain to me why we idolize and admire perhaps the greediest man in America – Warren Buffet. It was never this way in America. Now it is.”
 
This line of talking on morning radio in Hammond, Indiana, has rarely elicited a phone call, email, text or even a stop in the grocery store in front of the green beans. Almost every other topic except talking about the emergence of a ruling class in America can generate discussion. Not this.
 
Murray quotes Tocqueville. In the 1800s, rich people tried not to show it. Tocqueville: “the more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people.”
 
Don’t you get it? America is a place where you’re supposed to work your ass off to make more money so your family can be better off… but you are never – NEVER – supposed to show off your richness. We are born of frontiersmen and rebels, immigrants and soldiers. We come from the Puritan and Catholic religions, which are at best skeptical of those with means.
 
“In recent years, the new upper class has evolved a distinctive culture…. (A) characteristic of the new upper class – and something new under the American sun – is their easy acceptance of being members of an upper class and their condescension toward ordinary Americans… Mainstream America is fully aware of this condescension and contempt and is understandably irritated by it.”
 
By writing this really long article in the Wall Street Journal, Murray attempts to explain why Donald Trump is so popular. But I don’t really give a shit about that. What I care about is that someone is articulating way better than I could ever hope to do a central problem in America – that we have lost our way.
 
“The real family income of people in the bottom half of the income distribution hasn’t increased since the late 1960s… The entire American working class has legitimate reasons to be angry at the ruling class. During the half past century… virtually none of the rewards have gone to the working class…. Add to this the fact that white working-class men are looked down upon by the elites and get little validation in their own communities for being good providers, fathers and spouses.”
 
Murray gets it.
 
“We have acquired an arrogant upper class. (And if we don’t do something about it), we will have detached ourselves from the bedrock that has made us unique in the history of the world.”
 
Yikes. It’s a great read for the three or four of you besides reading My American, Radio Life. Check it out in the Saturday/Sunday edition of the Wall Street Journal, Feb 13-14, 2016.
 
That’s enough for tonight. It’s Presidents Day tomorrow, so in keeping with recent tradition, Libertarian Chuck Pullen does my show. Still, I gotta wake up early like always and do a bunch of radio stuff like fix the slight hum on one of the microphones at the backup (original) WJOB studio and re-install Comcast’s metro E system on our Tieline encoder and decoder. My wife and I run a small business, which according to Murray in the Wall Street Journal, makes us the last believers in the American Creed.
 
“Who continues to embrace this creed in its entirety? Large portions of the middle class and upper middle class (especially those who run small businesses)…”
 
We’re small business owners. We’re the last bastion of the American Creed. Now shut up and go to sleep. You’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow on your day off.