They aren’t ready to hear this yet, but the anti-poverty activists who work tirelessly to promote the interests of low-income Canadians need to ask why so many of them voted for Stephen Harper last week.They won’t like the answers they get. They won’t understand how food bank users and social housing tenants could think the Prime Minister is on their side. They’ll be tempted to interrupt or object.
But their feelings are not the point. There is a serious gap in their knowledge.
Ah, the ol' "you people are too stupid to understand" meme. There's a long history of this kind of elitist condescension, most lately given voice by Thomas Frank's 2004 book, What's The Matter with Kansas?, in which he bemoans the public's refusal to vote for Democrats because they are, well, stupid. A mistake that our benevolent media are happy to point out by calling people, uh, stupid.
Which seems at best to be strategically, shall we say, stupid. But what do we stupid peasants know?
(To be fair, Carol Goar is not arguing that point; rather she's cautioning against it.)