Virtue Hoarders, the PMC class

By Catherine Liu

Notes:

Transgressing the Boundaries of Professionalism - the backdrop of PMC development from the 70s to today

this section gives a brief history of the rise of the PMC and liberal ideologies that are heavily influenced by high academia and elite circles. poststructual (postmodern) theory, radical relativism and liberal pluralism are central to all analysis of the PMC of the current social and political problems. Most importantly, the “New Left” rejects old left ideas of class struggle and historical materialism, instead opting for meaningless symbolism and pluralistic approaches to solving socioeconomic problems. 

• Sokal’s mockery of post-modern ideology by writing that even fields like physics claim to be objective, but are actually just like social realities, fundamentally social and linguistic  construct
• influenced by poststructural theory, radical relativism and liberal pluralism
• the field of cultural studies was heavily influenced by such ideology
• The Occupy movement was influenced by such theories as they applied poststructuralist ideologies to the movement which was one of the reasons that it did not fundamentally attack the financial system, as material realities were entirely detached from their analysis
• Occupy became a PMC elite formation that did not result in transformative policy proposals or real threat to the financial market
• only downhill from there: by the late 2010s, the PMC became more and more tied to big money and looked down upon poor working class people which lead to the rise of Obama and Clinton
• 1619 project is a direct result of these trends
  • rejects the norms of historical research
  • NYT backed
  • attempt to erase historical materialism
  • argues for the impossibility of working class solidarity
  • insists that it is race not class that is the key issue that has caused the social and economic problems in America
  • sees racism as a transhistorical fact that is fundamental to America
  • sees black people as an “interest group” that advocates for themselves as a collective
• liberals have abandoned history because consciously or unconsciously they believe they are superior to both elites of the past because of their virtues and vangardism of “those below” while also snubbing the working class because they lack the social capital of the liberals 
• the worst part is that liberal ideologies are not possible to argue with because they are based in moral grounds rather than meaingful debate of intellectual and political ideas
  • they don’t even accept debate as a form of advancing knowledge

The PMC has children

PMC parents want their children to be “perfect” which leads to their micromanaging children on a path to success. This process causes a significant amount of stress and anxiety for PMC parents. But the worst effect of PMC parenting is their stance against welfare and individualistic approach to education. They are not supportive of programs that would help working class parents and children and see their children as entitled to education even if it means it is at the expense of others. 

• PMC parents think of the child as possessing potential that has to be optimized and maximized
• fear is one of the distinctive features of contemporary middle class parenting
• parents feel that they must “manage” everything their children do so that they would be “on track” to success
• pmc parents are perfectionist af to the point that they will not stop to tell childcare workers and caretakers about (unproven and unscientific) “best practices” of parenting and childcare such as negative effects of vaccines, screen time, video games, and especially vulgar things like gun shaped toys 
• pmc parents are also against welfare and do not care for the working class
• Dr Spock’s ideas about individual “knowing” of childrearing also became popular in pmc parent circles
  • represents the anti materialist and anti traditionalist views of the new left
• pmc also supposedly rejects stable marriages and traditional nuclear families
  • ironically they are more likely to marry and remain married
  • rarely if ever marry outside of their class
  • in an increasingly austere government policy society, the pmc anxieties of child rearing is amplified since they are not getting the same benefits their parents used to get
• Chua’s book of Tiger Mom perfectly exemplifies the pmc mindset 
  • successful cultural groups have the triple package
    • superiority complex
    • inferiority complex
    • better impulse control
  • the major issue of the ideology in this book besides the cringey frankness of the disregard for the poor is that it completely ignores the backdrop of politics, class, society and collective 
  • instead, there are various “groups” competing for advantages 
• contrasting with the pmc perfect parenting style, there are other emerging ideologies that do not demand perfection but rather a realistic expectation of caretakers
  • one that is enough, but not perfect
  • gives room for children to explore and adapt to the world
  • also gives the children the idea that the caretaker also has needs and must attend to them as well
  • most importantly, that childhood is a public good 
    • which means that childrearing is a collective and mutual task that requires people to work together
    • and the support of the caretakers is a social and collective responsibility of any society
  • dependency is not feared or demonized but rather seen as a part of collective social responsibility 

The PMC Reads a Book

• the book that symbolizes the PMC mindset is To Kill a Mockingbird
• essentially pmc believes that individual acts of empathy and private self-cultivation would produce justice in the larger picture and solve all social problems
• which fits with the other individualist ideologies of the pmc class where atomized individuals, through self-improvement, think that they will change society
• also affects education as programs such as the Common Core and Race to the Top all represent attacks against unions and lower ranks of white collar professionals
  • even though most of the rhetoric against teachers blame their performance and student achievement, the actual agenda is to undermining job security and autonomy won by teacher unions
  • the mastermind behind RTT was Coleman, later to become the CEO of the College Board
• TKM was nothing more than an effective piece of Cold war anti-communist propaganda: good white people defending black people against bad and poor white people
• pmc class always has some new self-improvement fad such as various diets and “returning to the land”, etc because of their need to be “good”
• this also means mastering languages of liberal tolerance that are used against the working class to show that they are more “progressive” 

PMC Has Sex