Us and Them

When this cotton-mill boy went down to the University in 1959, he noticed something at once. There was a division between the superior US (that is, them) and the inferior THEM (that is, us). The division had nothing to do with intellectual distinction or even athletic prowess, but the members of US definitely regarded themselves as superior.

THEM (that is, us) wore white or checkered socks, jeans, and whatever shirt we could find. The members of US were far more sophisticated. They wore black socks, button collar shirts, windbreakers with a special logo, and sometimes berberries . They were invited to fraternities. Some professors knew their families or their fathers who had previously attended. They even carried umbrellas, which where I came from would mark a boy forever as a sissy.

This is exactly what is going on today. US runs the country. They are the people with the right attitudes and the right connections, who went to the right schools. They are the people in the know. They have always associated with others just like themselves. We are THEM, that is, the deplorables, those who don’t have the sophisticated wisdom of US, the Americans who don’t really count.

The ruling elite of the country today, the blue people, are simply US who have grown up or at least gotten older. A lot of them have never done any real labour or had a relationship with a real American.

The important point here is to note that being part of US does not indicate any real superiority in anything that really counts. The upper ranks of the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the corporations, the armed forces, the church, the academy, the media are the domain of US. Look at the disastrous wars and policies, the pervasive mediocrity, dishonesty, and sense of entitlement of our “leaders” of recent generations. If America is still producing any people of genuine honour, learning, and independent character, you certainly won’t find many in Washington and you probably have never heard of them.

The BLUE leaders (US) are followed by the millions of lackeys who have the same intellectual and moral mediocrity and like to think of themselves as a sophisticated elite because they are “in the know,” that is, they have the right fashionable attitudes, unlike their deplorable, unenlightened neighbours.

​There you have it. The Blues are “US” and the rest of us are “THEM.” Their sense of superiority is not based upon any real quality. It is essentially snobbery.