Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/816123
F orty-seven years ago this month, some 200 construction workers walked off the job in lower Manhattan and waded into a crowd of about 1,000 hippies and anti-war protesters. Car- rying American flags and signs that read "Amer- ica, love it or leave it," the hard hats punched, kicked and beat the protesters as they tried to flee from the now famous Hard Hat Riot. Undeterred, the Democrats embraced the anti- war message and got clobbered in the 1972 elec- tion by Richard Nixon and his "silent majority." But as the years went by, liberals pushed even further leftward, abandoning the working class along the way to becoming the party of special interests and social justice killjoys. After Nixon, the Republicans spent four decades proclaiming family values and law-and-order boilerplate, but actually doing nothing for the working class. What also happened was that the working class and their political interests disappeared from the public stage. One reason is that in 1970 most journalists had some connection to the blue-collar world. Once journalism became a profession requiring a college degree, a selec- tion process weeded out those without the proper credentials and promoted those with a college-curated, progressive mindset. And jour- nalists, until recently, have had almost complete control over the national dialogue on politics and policy. Colleges also became economically segre- gated. In the 70s, plenty of guys worked con- struction during summer breaks. That doesn't happen anymore. Engineering, ag and construc- tion management degrees aside, college gradu- ates and their children today are now not only ignorant of blue-collar America, few have ever met anybody who has ever done construction, farming or factory work. The distance between those who work with their hands and those who do not has never been greater. College- level government jobs used to pay a pittance and construction used to pay good money. The people in power restructured society and now the reverse is true. Still, the working class never went away. Big corporations still sell our factory jobs to cheaper foreign labor, and politicians high and low starve our government budgets of infrastructure funds. Wall Street keeps blowing up the mortgage markets, and employment in the building trades goes up and down like a yo-yo. So, the blue- collar world has shrunk. But in 2016, Donald Trump was elected President primarily on the enthusiasm of those long neglected blue-collar Americans. Nixon's silent majority didn't have the media tools to enable their voice to be heard. Now they do. It's called the Internet. And the voice of these long disenfranchised blue-collar work- ers is decidedly less progressive, less global and less accepting of the crony capitalism and war- making machinery so adored by the denizens of Washington, D.C. Whether Trump can do anything for the blue-collar voters remains to be seen. So far, his actions bring to mind all the clichés of a circular firing squad. But politicians had better realize that the hard hats are back, and they're a little pissed. They wrecked the Republican establish- ment in 2016. They just might take down the Democrats next. May 2017 | EquipmentWorld.com 78 final word | by Tom Jackson Hello, we're back TJackson@randallreilly.com