If his original statement boiled down to “religion is the opiate of the masses,” think of this as adding, “and what wonderful things opiates are.” He’s stuck with the insinuation about false consciousness: There’s no other way to read what he told the glitterati in San Francisco except as asserting that the working class’s interest in God, guns, and border enforcement is, to some greater or lesser extent, insincere. They might sincerely believe in gun rights but surely they wouldn’t vote those beliefs at the expense of their class interests unless they were being duped somehow by the bourgeoisie. Ed did a bang-up job in this post, but the more I re-read what Obama said, the more I’m drawn to the very end of it as the “tell” — i.e. “a way to explain their frustrations.” That’s where the false-consciousness logic really flowers. The choice of verb speaks volumes. |
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