Total War Rome II Rise Of The Republic-CODEX Cheat Engine
Tabatha Pasqua
He recognizes this might not be the most popular topic. When he tells people he's writing a book on class in America, "it is as if I had said I am working on a book urging the beating to death of baby whales using the dead bodies of baby seals." America likes to think of itself as a classless society. Sure, there may be vast wealth inequality, but at least there's no nobility; beggars and billionaires are the same type of citizen.
Paul Fussell will have none of it. He believes America has one of the most hypertrophied class systems in the world, that its formal equality has left a niche that an informal class system expanded to fill - and expanded, and expanded, until it surpassed the more-legible systems of Europe and became its own sort of homegrown monstrosity. He says he prefers the term "caste system" to "class system" when describing America, conveying as it does a more rigid and inescapable distinction, and that he uses "class" only out of respect for conventional usage.
Anyone imagining that just any sort of flowers can be presented in the front of a house without status jeopardy would be wrong. Upper-middle-class flowers are rhododendrons, tiger lilies, amaryllis, columbine, clematis, and roses, except for bright-red ones. One way to learn which flowers are vulgar is to notice the varieties favored on Sunday-morning TV religious programs like Rex Humbard's or Robert Schuller's. There you will see primarily geraniums (red are lower than pink), poinsettias, and chrysanthemums, and you will know instantly, without even attending to the quality of the discourse, that you are looking at a high-prole setup. Other prole flowers include anything too vividly red, like red tulips. Declassed also are phlox, zinnias, salvia, gladioli, begonias, dahlias, fuchsias, and petunias. Members of the middle class will sometimes hope to mitigate the vulgarity of bright-red flowers by planting them in a rotting wheelbarrow or rowboat displayed on the front lawn, but seldom with success.
Those who sell executive desks and related office furniture know that they and their clients agree on a rigid "class" hierarchy. Desks made of oak are at the bottom, and those of walnut are next. Then, moving up, mahogany is, if you like, "upper-middle-class", until we arrive, finally, at the apex: teak.
Destitutes and bottom-out-of-sights eat dinner at 5:30, for the prole staff which takes care of them wants to clean up and be out roller skating or bowling early in the evening. It eats, thus, at 6:00 or 6:30. The family of Jack and Sophie Portnoy ate at 6:00, an indication of the prole pull on them despite his having a middle-class job, barely, that of an insurance salesman...The middle class eats at 7:00 or even 7:30, the upper-middle at 8:00 or 8:30. Some upper-middles, uppers, and top-out-of-sights dine at 9:00 or even later, after nightly protracted cocktail sessions lasting at least two hours.
Many of these didn't make sense to me (full disclosure: by birth and profession I'm probably what the book considers middle-to-upper-middle class, but by nature I'm not a very classy person). That's fine. I don't think Fussell claims that people actually think "being upper class, I will make sure to plant rhododendrons but not chrysanthemums". I think the claim is that those are the flowers people will end up planting, using reasoning that doesn't seem to refer to class at any point. This was where the book started to get spooky.
For example, apparently Super Bowl parties are a working-class custom. And apparently it's an middle-to-upper-middle-class custom to make fun of Super Bowl parties, either throwing them ironically or not at all. Even in 1983, Fussell describes "the satiric anti-Super Bowl party" among the middle class, where people deliberately get together on Super Bowl Sunday to conspicuously not watch sports and feel superior. This hits a little closer to home than the rhododendrons. Or: contempt for clothing with obvious brand names on it (eg a jacket that says ADIDAS in big letters) is apparently a middle-class reaction to a working-class preference for this sort of product. Or: your list of "grammatical pet peeves" is a suspiciously good match for the differences between the upper-middle-class dialect and the working class dialect (whether you keep a distinction between "less" and "fewer", for example). Also, I regret to inform you that the dead hand of Paul Fussell is reaching out all the way from 1983 to tell you that your contempt for people who overuse apostrophes is a class signaling game.
The upper class is old money. The people you think of as rich and famous - tech billionaires, celebrities, whatever - aren't upper class. However privileged they started off, they still had to put in at least a smidgeon of work to get their money, which disqualifies them. Real uppers inherit. Even famous people who come from old money usually aren't central examples of upper class; the real upper class has no need to seek fame. They mostly just throw parties - but not interesting parties, because that would imply they have something to prove, which they don't. They live in mansions - but not awesome mansions they designed themselves with some kind of amazing gaming room or something, because that would imply they have something to prove, which they don't. They live in meticulously boring mansions and throw meticulously boring parties. They have the best and classiest versions of everything, but it's a faux pas to compliment any of it, because that would imply that they were the sort of people who might potentially not have had the best and classiest version of that thing. They fill their houses with Picassos and exquisite antique furniture, and none of them ever express the slightest bit of satisfaction or praise about any of it. You have never heard of any of these people, although you might recognize the last name they share with a famous ancestor (Rockefeller, Ford, etc).
The middle classes are salaried professionals, starting with the upper-middle class. Jeff Bezos, for all his billions, is only upper-middle-class at best. So are many of the other people you think of as rich and famous and successful. The upper-middle-class likes New England, Old England, yachts, education, good grammar, yachts, chastity, androgyny, the classics, the humanities, and did I mention yachts?
The middle class is marked by status anxiety. The working class knows where they stand and are content. The upper-middle class has made it; they're fine. And the upper class doesn't worry about status because that would imply they have something to prove, which they don't. But the middle class is terrified. These are the people with corporate jobs who say things like "I've got to make a good impression at the meeting Tuesday because my boss' boss will be there and that might determine whether I get the promotion I'm going for". The same attitude carries into the rest of their lives; their yards and houses are maintained with a sort of "someone who could change my status might be watching, better make a good impression". They desperately avoid all potentially controversial opinions - what if the boss disagrees and doesn't promote them? What if the neighbors disagree and they don't get invited to parties? They are the most likely to be snobbish and overuse big words, the most obsessed with enforcing norms of virtuous behavior, and the least interested in privacy - asserting any claim to privacy would imply they have something to hide. Their Official Class Emotions are earnestness and optimism; they are the people who patronize musicals like Annie and Man of La Mancha where people sing saccharine songs about hopes and dreams and striving, and the people who buy inspirational posters featuring quotes about perseverance underneath pictures of clouds or something.
Proles do wage labor. High proles are skilled craftspeople like plumbers. Medium and low proles are more typical factory workers. They have a certain kind of freedom, in that they don't have status anxiety and do what they want. But they're also kind of sheep. They really like mass culture - the more branded, the better. These are people who drink Coca-Cola (and feel good about themselves for doing so), visit Disneyland (and accept its mystique at face value), and go on Royal Caribbean cruises. When they hear an ad say a product is good, they think of it as a strong point in favor of buying the product. They feel completely comfortable expressing their opinions, but their opinions tend to be things like "Jesus is Lord!", "USA is number one!", "McDonalds is so great!", and "Go $LOCAL_SPORTS_TEAM!". They are weirdly obsessed with cowboys (Fussell says cowboys represent the idea that poorer people are freer and more authentic than rich office-worker types, plus the West is the prole capital of the USA) and with unicorns (Fussell: "I've spent six months trying to find out exactly why, and I'm finally stumped"). When they have unique quirks, they tend to be things like "collecting lots of Disney memorabilia" or "going powerboating slightly more often than the other proles do". There's also a sort of desperate prole desire to be noticed and individuated, which takes the form of lots of "Personalized X" or "Y with your name on it", and also with making a lot of noise (see: powerboating). Fussell describes the most perfectly prole piece of decor as "a blue flameproof hearthrug with your family name in Gothic letters beneath seven spaced gold stars and above a golden eagle in Federal style".
Fussell tries to come up with some general principles about what sorts of things are more likely to be upper vs. lower class coded. They don't quite explain the geraniums vs. rhododendra, but they're helpful for a couple of other things:
1. Anything artificial is lower-class, anything natural or organic (derived from a living thing) is higher-class. The most prole piece of furniture is "folding chairs made of aluminum tubing with bright-green plastic-mesh webbing". The most prole fabrics are nylon and polyester, especially if worn with pride because they're "high-tech". Plastic or particleboard furniture is low-class, "real wood" furniture is upper-class. This applies even to yachts, where the average yachters uses a fiberglass boat but the very classiest use all-wood boats (which have no advantages, but are much harder to maintain). Upper-class fabrics are wool, silk, cotton, and linen; upper-class buildings and furniture are built of wood and stone. Lower-class foods are "processed" (read: made with technology), upper-class foods are "organic" and "all-natural".
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