One of the big themes of the McCain/Palin campaign has been about how elitist Obama is, how he and liberals in general snidely look down upon those in rural areas, with “common” American lives and values.

I have said it before and will say it again: it’s conservatives, and at least some rural people who seem to be elitist, feeling that their way of life is far superior, looking down on the urban liberals. Back in the San Francisco Bay Area, anyone who made snide remarks about “hicks” would be excoriated and generally regarded as an ass; in the notably liberal atmosphere of the college office where I work, anyone who put down rural America just because of their lifestyle or common values would be instantly looked down upon with scorn. Those are “San Francisco values.” Apparently, they don’t have the same kind of values in the GOP.

Apparently, at least among conservatives, it is perfectly acceptable to look down on urbanites for no other reason than the perceived arrogance, and to presume a superiority inherent in their own preferred way of life. Note that when people like Palin sneer at the straw-man “elitists” they create, they then act like it is their own way of life that is superior.

Imagine if a Democratic politician went before a crowd and said the same kind of thing in reverse–instead of putting down “Washington elitists,” they put down “small-town hicks,” and generally lorded the urban experience over rural folk. Imagine if Barack Obama had made this speech:

A writer observed: “We produce good people in our big cities, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.” They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America … who manage our businesses, run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a big city, working as a community organizer. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a community organizer is sort of like a “small-town mayor,” except that you actually help people.

Imagine that Obama then sneered at how right-wingers actually looked down on working people, saying, “We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in New York and another way in Podunk.” Now imagine the conservative response. Would this, or would this not, produce cries of “liberal elitist!” from the right wing? Would they not decry it as a call of left-wing arrogance? Would they not attack Obama for taking on airs of smug superiority? And yet, that is the text from Palin’s speech, with the terms reversed, from right to left.

I recall a member of one of my Linguistics classes back in college who made an interesting point about wealthy families and the way people in the middle class perceived them. Not just the stereotypes, but the specific language used. Wealthy people don’t use words like “chauffeur,” they use “driver”; they don’t say “mansion,” they say “house” or “home.” The point being that the popular view of wealthy families was one that presumed a haughtiness, a smug arrogance that, more often than not, did not in fact exist. It was an imagined attitude, a straw man opinion that made it easier to look down upon rich people, seeing oneself as superior. In short, manufacturing the illusion of arrogance on the part of another in order to justify one’s own arrogance over them.

That’s what we have here: the entire “elitist” mythology is a carefully constructed straw man created for the sole purpose of justifying an arrogance conservatives want to themselves enjoy. Like an office employee imagining his company is corrupt as a way of justifying his embezzling from it, the idea of liberal elitists is nothing more than a way for conservatives to commit the very wrongs they assign to others.