Breaking news: Margaret Thatcher has died

[Syt]

CNN Breaking News:

U.S. President Barack Obama pays tribute to Margaret Thatcher as one of the "great champions of freedom and liberty."

One of the last great Cold War leaders to croak. Leaves only Carter, Schmidt, Kohl, Gorbachev.

You forgot Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

And Henry Kissinger. He and Helmuth Schmidt meet up once or twice a year in Hamburg.

[Kleves]

RIP. 

[Habbaku]

   RIP.

[crazy canuck]

I expected better from you

[derspiess]

I expected better from you

I honestly don't understand that mindset.  I couldn't fathom dancing on the graves of Carter, Clinton, or Obama when they pass.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I can imagine pissing on Carter's grave.

[Sheilbh]

RIP. She was a great.

[Jacob]

I honestly don't understand that mindset.  I couldn't fathom dancing on the graves of Carter, Clinton, or Obama when they pass.

Check out the link I posted in the legacy thread.

Anyhow... I'm not British, but I think it goes something like this:

1. First off, in the UK class identity occupies roughly the same sort of position as race does in the US. It underpins a whole bunch of issues; it has a long, complicated, and contentious history; and it is key component of how many people identify themselves and how they are viewed. It doesn't matter all the time and everywhere, but being"working class" or "middle class" in the UK is as fraught with hot-buttons and identity as being "African-American", "Asian-American", or "white".

2. Thatcher's policies absolutely devastated a huge number of working class communities. Towns and communities with hundreds of years of history went from being prosperous and content to basically being inner city Detroit after the collapse in the span of a few years.

3. These policies  - however you justify them - explicitly hurt, and sometimes specifically targeted, the working class while benefitting specific sectors of the middle and upper classes, and especially the financial industry in London.

4. This was combined with explicitly vilifying working class leaders and the newly disenfranchised working class, and with the clear goal of destroying their political and economic power. They were treated as the enemy by Thatcher, and shown antipathy rather than sympathy as they were going through some tough times.

Now, leaving aside for the moment any argument about how inevitable and necessary Thatcher's policies were, I'd expect that if something similar had happened in the US but with discrete racial groups suffering or benefitting, and the suffering group being explicitly treated as "the enemy", members of that group would hate the equivalent of Thatcher in that scenario as viscerally as Tyr and other Northern working class Brits hate Thatcher.

I don't think Carter, Clinton, or Obama has hurt you - and the group to which you belong  - and destroyed your economic wellbeing as directly, and as explicitly treated you and people like you as the enemy to the extent that Thatcher did that of the British working class, especially in the North. It's not comparable.

... at least, that's how it seems to me. Does that make more sense to you?

[garbon]

Jake, I think one problem with your comparison is that we've already historically had discrete racial groups suffering or benefiting from policies.

[Jacob]

Jake, I think one problem with your comparison is that we've already historically had discrete racial groups suffering or benefiting from policies.

... yet you've had no people who are personally reviled as a results of the policies they enacted in those contexts?

[crazy canuck]

Jake, I think one problem with your comparison is that we've already historically had discrete racial groups suffering or benefiting from policies.

... yet you've had no people who are personally reviled as a results of the policies they enacted in those contexts?

Sure but most people are not so low as to celebrate a death.

[Jacob]

Sure but most people are not so low as to celebrate a death.

I'm not celebrating

In any case the visceral reaction to her death is hardly surprising, I'd think.

[Josephus]

I expected better from you

Yes. But it was my passive aggressive reaction shown to the vitriol spewed on the Chavez thread...there was the same nonsense there.

[Jacob]

Heh: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-dead-worried-cher-1818681

[garbon]

Jake, I think one problem with your comparison is that we've already historically had discrete racial groups suffering or benefiting from policies.

... yet you've had no people who are personally reviled as a results of the policies they enacted in those contexts?

At the time, probably not. After all, the historical trend had been pro-discrimination against minorities.

That said - yes, I'll agree with your larger point that policies that address inequalities and change up the balance of power/privileges among social groups will often spark strong emotional actions, particularly among the group that feels it is "losing".