Trump and social class

There is a bit of drama about a pressman being thrown to the ground at a Trump rally. There were fifteen thousand people at the rally. There were a few hundred black-lives-matter protestors who got thrown out. There were some illegal immigrant rights protestors who got thrown out. Did no one else get thrown to the ground?

A horde of black-lives-matter protestors are being herded out by security. They are leaving peaceably. The pressman gets out of the press box. Security guy stops him by getting in his way. Pressman is absolutely shocked, outraged, and indignant. Pressman gets right in the security guy’s face, screaming at him from an inch or two away. His spittle must be spraying all over the security guy. Security guy grabs him by the throat and pushes him out of the security guy’s face, laying him quite gently on the ground. Pressman kicks, tries ineffectually to fight. But the wonderful thing is expression on his face. He is absolutely incredulous, he is astonished, he is outraged he cannot believe that the security guy has dared to lay impious hands on him.

Observing the black-lives-matter protestors an arms length away, it is obvious that they believe that it would be entirely ordinary and expected for security to lay hands on them if they failed to leave or resisted being ejected, and don’t see anything the slightest out of the ordinary about security laying hands on some guy. That is what security does. Business as normal, nothing to see. They are leaving quietly because they believe that if they make trouble, security will kick their ass. Pressman thinks he can make trouble, and security cannot kick his ass.

But there are a bunch of people around the incident who also find security laying hands on the most holy pressman startlingly impious.

Pressmen, even though they are usually paid with the smell of an oilrag, are a much higher class than mere menials like security, security being working class, even though this security guy was secret service, who draw way better pay than pressmen.

So how does Trump come into this story I hear you ask. The security guy was not a Trump employee, he was a government cop, not a rentacop. So how is Trump involved?

Trump is involved because I am pretty sure the security guy would ordinarily have internalized the class dynamics, and let his social superior spit in his face, but listening to Trump made him less submissive, raised his spirits, made him remember he was a man.

Now if we were governed by real aristocrats, I would be entirely in favor of menials knowing their place, and would find Trump’s populism disturbing, but we are governed by scum. An aristocrat would never scream in a menials face. He might kill the menial, he might have him killed, he might permanently blight the menial’s career, but he would not scream in the menial’s face.

Which brings me to those trade deals that Trump has been denouncing.

I don’t know what Trump thinks is wrong with those trade deals. But what I think is wrong with those trade deals is that they treat making physical things in America as evil and oppressive, a sinful activity that needs to be phased out as soon as possible, as a lower class activity. These deals demand that other countries go along with America’s outrageous and oppressive copyright and patent laws, and open their doors to American capital, while opening America’s doors to physical manufactured goods, without really much asking foreigners to open their doors to American physical manufactured goods.