17 December 2007

Greetings Mr. Fears & All:

Class is perhaps the great unrecognized yet terribly obvious and
enormous obelisk in the great rooms of America. Mark Twain was keenly
aware of this and often used it to great humorous and enlightening
effect. (For just one instance, kindly consider the descriptions of
the great worthies such as the judge early on in "The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer".) One needn't have even heard of Karl Marx and his classy
analysis to note that we are far from being a classless society and
that oppression from the top down is a serious problem for everyone.

For a wonderful view of what things are truly like I refer one and
all to a serious analysis disguised as a satire and comedy, that
being Paul Fussell's "Class: A Guide Through the American Status
System." (ISBN 0-671-44991-5) (I've told the good professor that it
was quite sneaky of him to cloak something so serious in such witty
and amusing ways and he effectively just smiled at me.)

Mr. Fears makes some wide and to me unsubstantiated claims regarding
the great American experiment but the tone of optimism is
particularly American. And rightly so. Despite the fact we are still
under a great deal of control by a very small percentage of our
citizens, the possibility of future change, for oneself and one's
fellows, is the great hope that has prevented a second American
revolution. The cynical will argue that hope is all we actually are
allowed.

Far from being in "the past," these class distinctions are very much
alive and well. One can rise, yes, but only so far. And even those
who achieve great wealth, enough to buy one's way into the right
clubs, societies and social situations, know full well that they are
tolerated but never made to feel as if they really belong. Which is
quite correct, because they don't. In America, blood counts for more
than anyone but scholars of European monarchical history would even
suspect it should. Is this right? Of course not. But that does not
imply or suggest that this disparity does not exist.

But back to the forum's general topic. What Mark Twain's work helps
me to see in general is the universal human buffoonery innate in all
of us. I owe a lot to his great leveling gaze born upon clouds of
decidedly common cigar smoke. This is too valuable to miss, I think:
if one can laugh at -anyone-, then no one can truly be said to be
innately superior to anyone else. If more folks stopped craning their
necks upward to where they want to be perhaps they'd have more time
to see where they actually are and then take care to change what they
think is not right.

I make these opinions based on inside information. I was born into
the upper class in the US but chose to betray that class and its
rules in favor of doing something for the greater good. (This was a
charge often leveled, albeit in hissed undertones, at much, much more
august persons such as  Franklin Roosevelt and many others.)

Cordially,
Benjamin van der Wel