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