Is it really condescension that motivates this loathing for our smoldering, downtrodden Bittering Classes on the part of the socio-cultural-economic elites ? Maybe there's some other affect or attitude that comes regurgitating into play here, whenever our pencil-necked nabobs stop their negative nattering long enough to envisage how things might play out with the white trash folks when they get to fondlin their .22s in their pickups on the way back from a stemwindin fire and brimmstone harangue from the Rev Wright or some trashy white demagogue equivalent, when they get to fixatin on those im-grunts stealing over the border in their swarthy droves to steal all ours jobs and such, and nobody doin nothin bout none of it! While ma wife's got to have that surgery over at the haw-spittle, but we can't ev'n afford nun a thatthere med-kuhl care!

Maybe what drives our intellectual snob pundit friends to recoil at the thought of such Bitter Mobs is not so much "condescension" as fear, a clammy fear that the stammering stupid folk might start channelling their class hatreds into physical or political action.

Or maybe not. Besides, what is "snobbery," anyway? Isn't snobbery just another word for prejudice, for claiming the right to pre-judge other people's beliefs or style without giving them a fair, even-handed hearing? And if we accept that definition, isn't it just as "snobbish" of the bitter gun-people to hate the overly articulate (if not always very bright) self-conscious bourgie types? Why does merely breathing the word "elitism" on a topic always mean we have to immediately bow and scrape and pander to the literal-minded, spluttering "prophetic" types?

In the end, I would argue -- as a true Vulgariste -- that the only type of "elitism" that can be said to menace the masses with a demonstrable debasement of their livelihood or psyche is financial elitism, the mindless preference for big numbers in discrete bank accounts -- a knee jerk reaction, if there ever was one. Vulgar Marxism and Christian fundamentalism have always had much in common in any case and maybe, if we are really determined to give the Bittering Classes their due, maybe it's time to offer up the godless rich on the offer of their trashy fury, let the poh folk be runnin 'em down, one by one, in their breakin down GMC pickups on a dirt road out by the county line after the chores is done some fine evening.

It would be very soothing for our culture! Heck, we could even make a reality TV show out of it. Tonight, Billy Bob will mow down Jack Welch in his Dodge Hemmie on Highway 29, then say a prayer over Jack's crumpled corpse . . .