A coarsening of modern American culture

Joe,

I'm sort of a newcomer to your writings, but from what I've read so far, I think you're right on about so many things! I've noticed that one theme running through much of what you write is the condition of the working man in modern America, a subject which I have thought about a great deal.

I come from a solidly working class background, both my mother and father being children of immigrant parents. Neither finished high school because they had to go out and help support the family during the Great Depression. After World War II my father settled into a modest-paying job in a shop doing custom metal work; my mother was a housewife in a two-family house we shared with my uncle and aunt. We had one very used car. Typical working-class 1950s setting. They both scrimped and saved to put me through college. I became and engineer and now live in a nice middle class suburb. While not living the full-blown American Dream, I am not exactly hurting, either.

What I see of the American working class, particularly the younger people, really disturbs me. I regularly visit a local large outdoor flea market which is heavily frequented by young working class people. While appearances don't tell everything, they do tell something. Many of these guys look sloppy and act loutish. Their wives or girlfriends tend to be ill-kept and slutty looking. Their ill-behaved kids try to look and sound like ghetto gang-bangers. I tend to see expensive NASCAR and team jackets but bad teeth. Probably half their meals are fast food or over-processed junk. They drive maxed out full-size pick-ups, have all the latest beepers and electronic crap, and are up to their eyeballs in debt.

Now, back to circa 1956. My father and mother took pride in their appearance, wore inexpensive but clean and neat clothing, acted with decorum in public, and made sure that their only son looked and acted like a little gentleman. Hard work and thrift were taken for granted. My father never hired a repairman and could fix literally anything, and my mother was an expert cook. She kept an almost compulsively neat house. Large festive family gatherings with like people were the norm. There were ethnic traditions. These people were determined that their children would have it better than they did, and for the most part they succeeded. I would have to say that while my parents were working class people, they did not look or act like the "proles" of today (with all the negative connotations attached to that modern slang version of the latin 'proletariat).

So, the question I have is: What is the difference between proles circa 1956 and proles a half century later? What has changed? I know it's not just a difference in income. There is something much deeper at work here.

I've toyed with several possible theories, but the ones that make the most sense to me are (1) contemporary 'prolishness' is but a manifestation of the general coarsening of modern American culture, and (2) The Bell Curve is at work, and the prole gene pool circa 1956 had a much higher percentage of intelligent people with more on the ball than today's crop. (I have not ruled out the possibility that it's just a case of creeping old-fartism on my part and that nothing has fundamentally changed.)

However, I see some evidence for the Bell Curve theory, as my father was an extremely intelligent person, who through circumstances beyond his control was forced to remain in the working class. Today, he probably would have been an engineer or an accountant. The same is true of many of my uncles and aunts. Perhaps, what we are seeing with many of today's proles are some of the dregs left behind, as many of the children of my parent's family went on to college, the profession, and the middle class. The children of the dumb ones tended to stay in the working class.

One thing is for certain though, the future for anyone in the modern American working class doesn't look bright. These days it doesn't look too bright for anyone in the middle class, either.

Edmund
Wilmington, Delaware