A bit more detail on where class warfare rhetoric leads you, from April 25, 2014 NBC News:
After the April 9 rampage that left 20 students and a security guard wounded, police armed with a warrant searched Hribal's locker at Franklin Regional Senior High School and found a sneering note dated April 6.
"I can't wait to see the priceless and helpless looks on the faces of the students of one of the 'best schools in Pennsylvania' realize their precious lives are going to be taken by the only one among them that isn't a plebian," the note read, according to the police.I am pretty sure that he meant "that isn't a patrician."
I grew up one of the poor kids in a very wealthy high school, and while I sometimes was envious, I never hated the kids from middle class and above homes. But I also grew up in an era when politicians were not so nakedly playing the class warfare card to get and hold public office.
"Patrician" is possible, but even back when I was in high school, there was a certain sort of personality that tended to think of themselves as superior in some intangible way to everyone else. "Plebeian" not only fits, but also comes up pretty often.
ReplyDeleteMost of those folks are just kinda egotistical, rather than mass-murderers, though.
The lefties, who have been running the schools, the universities, and the media for 40 years, have steadily preached hatred of anyone with wealth. Under Obama, they are feeling confident enough to let the mask slip pretty often.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the kid had it backwards; I think he had inflated self-esteem and resented being ignored. The chief connotation of "plebeian" in recent years is "vulgar" or "commonplace". "Patrician" has the connotation of "upper-class" or aristocratic style or quality.
ReplyDeleteHe wouldn't consider himself the only lower-/working-class student in the school.
But he might consider himself the unappreciated genius, the natural aristocrat, the overlooked Overman among clods. That seems to be a lot more common among rage killers.
Besides which, I don't see serious "class hatred" outside the fever swamps of the intellectual Left. Far more Americans still want to be rich (and often expect to be) than want to "storm the palaces".
For instance, in black-oriented pop fiction the protagonists are usually rich and designer luxuries are name-checked on every page.
There was (IMO) a lot more class resentment when much of the working-class worked long grueling hours for barely enough to live on, when rich people had servants, and in societies where class had a deep hereditary component.