{"id":62445,"date":"2020-12-04T11:05:50","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T17:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=62445"},"modified":"2020-12-04T11:05:50","modified_gmt":"2020-12-04T17:05:50","slug":"62445","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=62445","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Hillbilly Elegy\u2019 critics show they still despise \u2018deplorables.\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Elites won\u2019t allow any sympathy for poor whites<\/p>\n

Netflix\u2019s new adaptation of JD Vance\u2019s \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d is\u00a0devastating for the left\u2019s political narrative<\/a>. How do I know that? Because so many leftists are trying to keep people from watching it.<\/p>\n

Critics complain that the movie has too many noble country folk \u2014 though neither Vance\u2019s 2016 memoir nor the film version is exactly focused on nobility as such. They even gripe that the autobiography of a white guy from the hill country doesn\u2019t have any major black characters. Well, yes.<\/p>\n

For a film made out of a bestselling book by a well-known liberal filmmaker (Ron Howard) and featuring Glenn Close, Amy Adams and Gabriel Besso, the movie seems surprisingly controversial. And why? Because, as I mentioned above, it\u2019s devastating for the left\u2019s political narrative.<\/p>\n

As Princeton professor Robert P. George noted, responding to one negative review, \u201cDo you think [those] who don\u2019t want you to watch \u2018Hillbilly Elegy\u2019 might have .\u2009.\u2009. I dunno .\u2009.\u2009. an agenda? . . . The campaign against the film \u2014 made by the standard issue liberal filmmaker Ron Howard, by the way \u2014 is purely political.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be fair, everything coming from the left is political. But the reaction to this Netflix film tells us something about the way the left feels right now.<\/p>\n

\"Actors
Actors Glenn Close and Amy Adams in a scene from \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d on Netflix.<\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Writing about the reaction, Rod Dreher comments, \u201cIt is now OK to hate Deplorables again, and maybe even mandatory.\u201d He adds, \u201cI think the \u2018privilege\u2019 discourse among middle-class, educated, white liberals is mostly about rearranging prejudices to make lower-class white people deserving of the scorn of the uppers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The old Southern Democrats maintained the allegiance of poor whites by making sure those poor whites felt they could look down on blacks. The modern Democratic Party maintains the allegiance of \u00adupper-middle-class whites by making sure they can look down on lower-class whites. By \u00adhumanizing those lower-class whites, Netflix\u2019s \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d calls the whole enterprise into question.<\/p>\n

Humanizing the working class was once what Democrats were about. But no longer.<\/p>\n

After World War II and the G.I. Bill, a new managerial class emerged in the United States. A college education became not merely a rite of passage for the well-off, but a necessary passport, economically and especially socially, to the upper middle class. In 1960, one could be part of the upper echelons without a college \u00addegree; by 2000 that was almost unheard of.<\/p>\n

That meant, of course, that those who had entered the \u00adupper ranks did what the insecure lower tiers of aristocracy always do: devote a lot of attention to distinguishing themselves from the non-elite.<\/p>\n

In America, class war is disguised as cultural war, and cultural war is often waged under the guise of fighting racism. Thus, the Deplorables had to be cast as racists, though it wasn\u2019t the working class that redlined neighborhoods or set college \u00adadmissions policies.<\/p>\n

And that means that they can\u2019t be humanized, or shown to be victims. The sympathy of the upper classes is doled out in careful measure, toward select targets.<\/p>\n

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Of course, the consequences go beyond movie reviews. As Christopher Caldwell recently noted in The New Republic, the Trump economy involved the first \u201cegalitarian boom\u201d in decades. In 2019, before COVID-19 mucked things up, we had a 3.7 per\u00adcent job\u00adless rate (with record low unemployment for blacks and Hispanics.)<\/p>\n

Contrast this with the Obama part of the boom, where nearly all the economic gains went to the top 10 percent income bracket.<\/p>\n

Under President Trump, meanwhile, the \u201cnet worth of the top 10 percent rose only marginally, while that of all other groups vaulted ahead. In 2019, the share of overall earnings going to the bottom 90 percent of earners rose for the first time in a decade.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what\u2019s the most-touted policy initiative of the Biden crowd? Student-loan forgiveness, which will involve the working-class majority subsidizing the college debt of people who are better off.<\/p>\n

Most Americans don\u2019t have college degrees, and college-degree-holders on average make more money over their lifetimes.<\/p>\n

On net, the signature Democratic Party policy initiative is a transfer from the worse-off to the better-off.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easier to take things away from people if you pretend they deserve no better. The response to \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d suggests that we\u2019ll be hearing more of such things in the coming years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Hillbilly Elegy\u2019 critics show they still despise \u2018deplorables.\u2019 Elites won\u2019t allow any sympathy for poor whites Netflix\u2019s new adaptation of JD Vance\u2019s \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d is\u00a0devastating for the left\u2019s political narrative. How do I know that? Because so many leftists are trying to keep people from watching it. Critics complain that the movie has too many … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62446,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62445\/revisions\/62446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}