The reason that so many working-class people haven't already pledged their allegiance to Socialism is that it claims to be the voice of the Lowest of the Low, and most working-class people have struggled their whole lives to not BE the Lowest of the Low.

The working-class dream is to rise into better circumstances than they presently endure, and Socialism tells them its an illusion, a game that can't be won, at least not by dirty little people like them. When this news is delivered by middle-class theoreticians it's always seen as condescending.

One has to have a dream that runs contrary to experience in order to yearn for Socialism. An example of this is the movie Annie Hall, when Woody Allen visits his parents in their miserable home beneath the roller-coaster in Coney Island. Mom has just fired the cleaning lady for stealing, but Dad angrily defends the cleaning lady, declaring, "Who should she steal from, if not from Us?!"

That is the relationship between the working-class and Socialism. I wonder who Dad is voting-for this year.

Very true, I think we are saying the same thing but I was writing while you were posting. I posted right above this. That scene in Annie Hall is hilarious. He basically says she'll never be better than a thieving cleaning lady which is fundamentally offensive (even though the Dad and Mom bickering is funny).

I always thought Dad meant that the System was stacked-against the cleaning lady, therefore she had a right to steal, therefore anyone who wasn't the Lowest of the Low deserved to be robbed.

This the altruistic root of Socialism, which is a secular version of religion, that you don't own what you think you own, you merely hold it in trust.

If the cleaning lady doesn't help herself to your stuff, a council of wise men who commune with a higher reality will tell you what to do with it.

In the extreme case, the wise men take you to a labor camp. In the mildest case, the wise men tax you until you are the Lowest of the Low, and then they help you. In theory.

I just wrote elsewhere that Americans are stupid, stupid, stupid. I get exasperated. Reality Calls is not stupid. He/she can even parse a nice W. A. joke. And is probably American. I will try to temper my speech. God, Americans are so frequently STUPID.

By tomorrow I will have made a list of my own astonishing stupidities and will stop roaring around like this. Meanwhile, I will just gnaw on my fist.