LIMOUSINE LIBERALS THEN AND NOW
Oread Daily http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/

Back in the day when I was just some crazy, radical hippie kid in
Lawrence, Kansas and the Oread Daily was nothing more than a
mimeographed sheet a few of us wrote and passed out by hand we used to
call them "Limousine Liberals." They were those snobby types who
"cared so" but did little. They chided everyone who wasn't of their
ilk as they went about their happy lives free of fear, free of want,
free to be.

They didn't work in plants, they didn't farm the fields,they didn't
wait tables, they didn't go to jail, they didn't go off to Vietnam.
They just smiled.

They didn't grow their hair long, grow pot, go braless, drink out of
bottles, fight with cops over things that mattered. They went to
dinners.

They looked down on most everyone but themselves.

They sure as hell looked down on us "dirty hippie commie types"
because we didn't have taste or manners, we didn't dress for success,
we weren't "adults," didn't defer to them, and we were just plain
nasty.

They looked down on the "regular folk", because they wore coveralls
out in public, because they had grease on their hands, because they
hadn't read the latest issue of the New Yorker, because they voted the
wrong way and spoke the wrong way and didn't eat right to boot. Most
of all they looked down on these people because they just didn't
understand what these liberals knew was best for them.

Yup, they looked down from on high on all of us youthful crazies and
right wing townies, beer drinking, pot smoking yokels locked in some
sort of political scrum in the dust of River City.

None of us (yippies, hippies, revolutionary wackos, or those on the
other team, on the right side of the infield so to speak) really gave
a hoot about what these liberal professors and lawyers and well
dressed, well mannered, well respected men and women about town
thought of us though. We knew who they really were after all.

Those Limousine Larrys got on my nerves.

Apparently they get on the nerves of an East Texas woman by the name
of Pam whose "letter to Joe" you can read below.

The following is from Joe Bagent's Website "Deer Hunting with Jesus:
Dispatches from America's Class War."

Hard times aren't coming, they're here

Good Afternoon Joe,

You can count me as a new reader. I found you down a trail of links.
You write eloquently about what I call the spiritual blight in the
good old USA.

I lived for years in and around Austin, Texas and I've had a belly
full of arch "liberals" who look down there nose at anyone who doesn't
get their organic free trade coffee beans from Whole Foods Market.
(Driving there in their SUVs with a Save the Whales bumper sticker, no
doubt). In other words people who think they are "liberal" because of
what they CONSUME, and don't begin to understand how elitist and
offensive they really are.

Back here on planet earth (deep east Texas now) you get what they sell
at Wal-Mart or Brookshire Bros. because those are the only grocery
stores in town. Of course you also have what you can grow, raise, or
catch. East Texas may not be Belize, but it's a lot closer to the
Third World than it is to Wall Street.

Meanwhile the "I want it all and I want it now" mentality seems to be
winding down as (lo and behold) you cannot as an individual or a
country consume more than you produce (or the planet can sustain) in
perpetuity. Having ransomed our future and the future of our
children's children on the backs of the rest of humanity we find we
cannot even pay the interest on the debt. Economic hard times aren't
coming, they are here. It only remains to be seen as to how bad and
how long.

I'm wondering how welcome those "rich Americans" are going to be in
places like Belize if the dollar really does tank and we drag the rest
of the world into a depression with us? My guess is "Not very."

Of course, if you are a regular working person who sees disaster
coming, there isn't much you can do but try to find a bolt hole and
figure out how many feet of beans you need to plant if the stuff stops
showing up at Wal-Mart. A lot of smart people say capital and exchange
controls are coming which means you might get out but whatever money
you have won't. Of course, if you are uber rich, you have some kind of
Panamanian blind trust set up and you already have you dollars stashed
elsewhere. (Oh yeah, the Bush family just bought a big ranch in
Paraguay.)

I think you are right and the world is in the process of being
profoundly reshaped. There are frightening prospects and dire
predictions aplenty, but I very much fear that "Totoville" may indeed
be the end result and the ONLY real freedom that may be left is
thought, but certainly not action or speech.

Certainly, I am not hopeful. I see my fellow Americans stunned that
the mass delusion of prosperity they bought into with home equity
loans and credit cards is being revealed as folly, while the bankers
pocket their bonuses and look for new sheep to fleece. Very few seem
to get the underlying fallacy that fueled their egocentricity and
feeling of "entitlement." You just cannot buy contentment and
happiness. If you spend your life working a job that offers no
fulfillment to pay someone else to do everything meaningfull in your
life and buy your "entertainment" is it any wonder that you feel out
of touch with everything? (I would be happy if only I had fill in the
blank.) It's like the ultimate outsourcing and a bottomless pit,
because things just don't make you happy no matter what the marketing
gurus want you to think.

I've been fortunate to have those moments in my life that I think
would be called moments of enlightenment -- those moments when you
feel totally engaged and alive with a sense of awe. (Crossing the
desert southwest in the middle of the night when some DJ out in
Bumfuck, Arizona, decided to play a commercial free Rolling Stones
retrospective comes to mind. Windows down, full moon on the saguaro,
and Mick howling at his young and angry best.)

But you are correct, those moments come with the luxury of great
freedom and the time to THINK, and I traded a lot of comfort and
"security" for that freedom. But then I never was a "material girl",
my biggest weakness is for tools and the skills to use them. Right now
my weaknesses are dairy goats, chickens, and open pollinating non-
hybrid garden seeds. Speaking of which it is time for me to go and get
my hands dirty.