Those of us who follow politics closely, and think that it is important to do so for the future of ourselves and the nation and the world, tend to be frustrated by people who do not seem to care or whose understanding of politics does not rise above the most naïve and simplistic sloganeering (“Cut government spending!” “Get rid of government regulations!”, “All government is bad!”, “Lower everyone’s taxes!”, “Cut social services!”, “Eliminating foreign aid and waste will balance the budget!”). We wonder how these people, many of whom belong to the middle or lower-middle classes, cannot see that they are actually harming their own interests, by undermining the very things that make current their lives tolerable or even desirable.

Such ignorance about the reality of politics also makes them easy prey for those unscrupulous politicians who do know better but use these slogans to deflect attention from the things that affect almost everyone (such as health care, salaries and benefits, working conditions, and public and social services) to those highly emotionally-charged issues that directly affect only a small fraction of people in any tangible way (such as abortion and gay and gun rights) or are almost entirely symbolic (prayer in schools, ten commandments in public places, flag burning, etc.).

Why, we ask ourselves, don’t these people invest at least a little of the time that is devoted to Casey Anthony or sports to learning more about how society really works? One answer may lie in a disturbing new survey shows that half of America’s families are in a state known as ‘financially fragile’ in that they “would not be able to cope with an unexpected expense that required them to come up with $2,000 within 30 days” which is the amount of money and time that “reflects the cost of an unanticipated car repair, home repair, medical or legal expense.”

This is worrisome. It is not hard to imagine a situation where one might suddenly need $2,000. To know that you could not lay your hands on it even in 30 days must be very stressful. Financial counselors advise people that they should have six months income saved to cope with emergencies. This study suggests that this is completely out of reach for most people since $2,000 would cover only two weeks for a family that earns the median income.

Perhaps as a result of this, people may be too busy trying to make ends meet or worried about their immediate state of affairs to seek deeper causes. And when they do have some free time, they would rather escape into a fantasy world where they can forget their worries. So we have people choosing to spend their discretionary time in pursuits other than politics, seeking escapism. It used to be the case that during difficult financial times in the past, attendance at films and sports events rose. This may not be true anymore since the prices of these forms of entertainments have risen considerably, to be replaced by TV watching.

It is interesting that poor people have disappeared from our TV landscape. It seems to me that there are very few comedy shows nowadays that have central characters who are poor or working class, perhaps reflecting the fact that people don’t want to see their own lives reflected on the screen. Instead they want to see their lives as they hope it might become. For example, are there any contemporary equivalents of All in the Family, The Honeymooners, or Sanford and Son, all of which involved working class families living lives that were consistent with their incomes?

Even the shows that do not have rich characters show them having lifestyles that are absurdly extravagant. Some of the Friends, for example, did not have steady jobs or had jobs waiting tables and yet they lived in apartments in New York that would have been impossible on their income. In Married With Children, the father worked as a shoe salesman in a retail store and the mother stayed at home and yet they managed to live in a nice home. Is this why Americans are notorious for living beyond their means, living in housing that they cannot really afford and pursuing lifestyles that can only be supported by going into debt, because they think that this is how people who have jobs like they do should be able to live? Seinfeld may have been the exception in that era, with the title character living in a modest apartment, doing his laundry in a public facility, etc. (As should be obvious from the programs mentioned, I stopped watching regular TV about a decade or so ago so I may be wrong about the current state of affairs.)

In the US, it is possible that political activism is largely perceived as just another form of recreation that some people can afford to indulge in or choose to do so, while others need ways of entertaining themselves to take their minds off their worries. A case can be made that until the realities of politics whacks people upside the head, political involvement will not be seen as a necessity by enough people for them to want to get seriously involved.

The sudden fall of powerful people is an interesting phenomenon to observe, especially if they are old. Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak was seen as an invincible strongman, ruling his country with unquestioned authority. But when he couldn’t quell the street protests, in a matter of days he began to look, even when he was still head of state, like a confused old man who seemed to have lost his grip. This new perception of decrepitude further emboldened the opposition and undoubtedly accelerated his departure.

We are observing the same phenomenon with Rupert Murdoch. This arrogant man was as recently as a week ago viewed as a powerful business genius to whom the political and business elites bowed obsequiously, treating his every utterance as if he were an oracle. Now suddenly, he looks like an old dodderer who has ‘lost the plot‘ and does not seem to quite know what he is doing. Even the photographs that are now published of him smiling weakly give the image of clueless feebleness, and are causing the media to pile on.

Being photographed out with his personal trainer, with his jowly jaws, and spindly knees sticking out of his running shorts, the mighty mogul had very clearly aged. Then, those pictures of him alongside someone who could have been a matronly nurse in mufti in his silver-grey Range Rover showed him looking not just old but fragile, too. You could almost see the power seeping from him.

His performance at the parliamentary inquiry today further strengthened the impression of someone who seems to be losing his grip but it is not clear whether this was a charade, pleading ignorance of most things as a way of forestalling any attempt to place the blame on him.

Those who worked for people like Murdoch and stayed silent when they were still seen as invincible now feel freer to defect and spill the beans. People who would not have crossed him in the past, and would have sought to curry favor with him, are now showing some backbone. For example, the British political leadership of all parties had long been under Murdoch’s thumb. But now the new Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, who had been seen as a lightweight whose tenure could well have been brief, has seized on this issue to make his name, aggressively attacking prime minister David Cameron for his close association with Murdoch’s people, much to the delight of his party’s backbenchers who had been disgusted at the sight of their previous leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown toadying to Murdoch.

We should not underestimate Murdoch, though. Such arrogant people who are used to getting their way will, when faced with a real threat, stoop to anything to wriggle free. There are still enough people in Murdoch’s media empire who will try and protect him because their jobs depend upon being in his good graces. It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

David Sirota provides ten case studies of rich people who seem to be so completely oblivious to the raging and widening inequalities in the US and the resentment it breeds that the apocryphal story of a princess (wrongly attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette) who upon hearing that the poor had no bread helpfully suggested “Let them eat cake” immediately comes to mind.

One of Sirota’s examples is billionaire Charles Munger who, in a 2010 speech to University of Michigan students, said that the unemployed, the homeless and the impoverished, whose lives are being torn apart by the recession, should stop whining and instead should “Suck it up and cope.” Yes, those very words. Sirota also said that Munger “first lauded bankers as people who “saved your civilization” and then urged all Americans to bow down and “thank god” that the bailouts preserved the financial industry’s profits.”
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