A while back down the Yellow Brick Road I listed all the national holidays and heritage months celebrated each year in the United States. And I was shocked to discover that White Trash Month is not celebrated, or even mentioned.
What is the point of these holidays and heritage months? It seems to me that there are two points. The first point is to celebrate glorious national victories, such as the July 4, 1776 Independence Day, or Armistice Day in 1918, or the VJ Day in August 1945. The other point is to remember the Fallen, the men that gave their lives so we might live, on Memorial Day and those who served in our military on Veterans Day.
In other words, the point is to celebrate our American identity, our unity. And to remember and honor the people who fought to make it possible.
It is traditional for people to fly the Stars and Stripes from our homes on these national holidays.
The point of flags is that they are war banners. They are partly a way for soldiers to rally to the colors on a battlefield, and partly a sacred object that soldiers do all they can to defend. It is shameful when the enemy captures your standard, your regiment’s flag.
Thus, Pride Month is a celebration of the “war” that gays fought to establish their rights. And then gay marriage. And now trans rights. And the various pride flags are the peaceful-protest equivalent for gays of the Stars and Stripe. They are war banners that symbolize what gays are fighting for.
Yes, but weren’t all national holidays true national holidays, back in the day? Yes, they were, when our ruling class and our national leaders identified as leaders of the American nation.
But today our ruling lass and our national leaders do not identify as leaders of the American nation. They identify themselves as leaders of “our democracy.”
This is because while our ruling class and national leaders used to rule through a political formula about the leaders of America leading the American nation to greatness, our current leaders rule through a political formula which is close to the lefty Allyship or Allyism. In this political formula the ruling class are Allies of the Oppressed Peoples fighting against the White Oppressors.
The signature effort of Oppressed Peoples and their Allies is the Protest.
Back in the day our ruling class supported the workers against the corporations, and the workers staged marches carrying signs, banners and placards on which were written their demands. Get the point? These are quasi military marches against the enemy.
Then our ruling class switched to supporting the Negros in their fight for civil rights against white Southern racists culminating in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963 at which the Rev. Martin Luther Kings, Jr. gave his epochal “I Have a Dream” speech. You can tell it was ruling-class approved because nobody called it an armed insurrection. Leaders of the March carried signs detailing their demands. There is no mention of flags in La Wik’s article on the March.
Whereas the movement for worker rights and civil rights were clearly about establishing rights for lower-class Americans, this is not so clear with regard to women’s rights and gay rights. I suggest and Votes for Women and Gay Rights are not really about the rights of lower-class people. What a lower-class woman needs is for the father of her children to stick around and not to beat her; what a teenage illegal-immigrant boy needs is to be safe from pedophile predators.
Pride Month began as a memorial of Stonewall riots following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, on June 28, 1929. Golly: I didn’t realize that I am writing this on the actual day of the police raid. La Wik:
As was common for American gay bars at the time, the Stonewall Inn was owned by the Mafia.
No kidding! And, ahem, Greenwich Village was not a lower-class milieu back in 1969.
So now we have Pride Month and Pride Flags, observances at the White House and politicians treat Pride Month as a national holiday.
Do you see that Pride Month makes perfect sense if you understand today’s politics as the Ruling Class Allies fighting with the Oppressed Peoples against the White Oppressors? Only, of course, the White Oppressors are just ordinary white middle-class Americans going about their business; the Oppressed Peoples are not really oppressed, but are certainly the supporters of the educated ruling class. And the Ruling Class Allies are just the ruling class doing its politics. There is no politics without an enemy, and right now the enemy of the ruling class is the ordinary white middle class.
With all these national holidays and heritage months it is well to remember the commentary of Eric Hoffer. Let me rehearse his words that I quoted in “Eric Hoffer on Political Movements” from “The Madhouse of Change” in First Things, Last Things, published in 1970 He says that in America we don’t need no stinkin’ mass movements.
Can mass movements do ought for the Negro? The answer is no. America is hard on mass movements. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a corporation or a racket. The Black Muslim movement is on the way to becoming a holding company of stores, farms and banks, while the civil-rights movement is largely an instrument in the hands of the Negro middle class to force its way into the privileged enclaves of American life. Used thus, the Negro revolution is not a movement but a racket.
I think that it is generally understood that Black Lives Matter is a racket.
I think that just about everything celebrated by our ruling class in its role as the Ally of the Oppressed amounts to a racket.
That’s a shame, but, of course, if we had a ruling class of the ordinary middle class, it would start setting up its own rackets to use taxes and government to line its pockets and reward its supporters.
‘Twas ever thus.