Poncho Luoncho

How I see the natty tourney: 1-MU 2-KU 3-RU 4-AQ 5-SCAD 6-WP 7-IT 8-Benny

This and its successor post in the thread are very much worth contemplating, but I’ll quibble a little: Anglo-Protestant society absolutely engages in status bullying - it just doesn’t do it with -things-. This actually makes for an interesting Fischer’s Folkways analysis, so here goes: —Yankeedom judges status by moral righteousness, so it absolutely will pick on your things and habits…but from a spiritual rather than wealth standpoint (your Ferrari gets you no points; at one point, your Prius did) —Quakerdom judges status by one’s Friends (as in It’s A Wonderful Life), and affects to despise material goods (and says things like “Don’t judge a book by its cover”) - it’s probably the folkway most likely to completely decouple physical signposting from status…but the CEO in the jeans and tattered windbreaker at the company picnic owns your town and has many Friends, so beware; you’re expected to know —The Borderers/Greater Appalachia don’t like pretty aesthetics any more than Quakerdom (with which they’ve always shared space), so those won’t help you there - but -overt- bullying (including of people who look too pretty but can’t stand up for themselves physically or socially) is just how this culture does business —And the Cavalier South, at least traditionally, does it backwards: You can get away with looking pretty if you already have status; trying it the other way around is “aping your betters” But it’s an exclusively Anglo thing - it doesn’t carry over elsewhere. New Amsterdam wears wealth as rank pips (that $10,000 suit means something on Wall Street); New Spain loves outward displays of it (a Ferrari in Miami means exactly what it looks like); New France would just like to have some (and, in its heartlands, is famously gauche). But yes - judging people based on factors other than raw wealth is indeed Anglo-American, and quite possibly a fading norm.