We now quote from Antonio Núñez’ Amazon.com review of Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (Touchstone, 1983).
It is true that the traditional lower (rather than the underclass) and the higher classes have many things in common, among them a deeply ingrained conservatism and a fierce pride in their way of being.
[…]
[Fussell] notices that most people confuse the more visible upper middle class (called in the US the Preppies, in the UK the Sloane Rangers, in France les BCBG, in Latin America la gente bien, or la gente fresa) with the much more reclusive upper class, which one rarely sees, perhaps luckily, for they tend to be troublesome and violent (cfr., “The House of Hervey”, by Michael de-la-noy: party girl Lady Victoria Hervey has had a high profile dalliance with gangster rapper P. Diddy).
He sees the clear difference between the upper middle class “Patrician” mindset, and the upper class “Aristocratic” one (in order to tell them apart, when you think of the upper middle class, think XIX century, Victorian, prudish, earnest, hard-working, dark, and when you think of the upper classes, think XVIII century, Augustan, idle, colourful, cynical: it’s Dickens, Balzac and Jane Austen versus Lord Chesterfield, Boswell and Saint-Simon, or the Novel versus the Diary).
This is indeed a key difference between the American North and South. The North’s upper class (Saltonstalls, Cabots, Lodges, Ameses, Eliots, Adamses, Biddles) is distinctly Patrician, due to its deep Calvinist influence, whereas the South’s (traditional California landowners or Alabama cotton growers) is clearly Aristocratic (which is why only the South could produce William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom, and only the North could give forth The Education of Henry Adams). The US Civil War, seen in this fashion, is a re-play of the English Civil War between roundheads (Patricians) and cavaliers (Aristocrats).”
I have added emphasis and hyperlinks here. And, since it is Sunday and because it is an issue of class, we will ignore Mexican Independence, which is commemorated today, and watch instead this interesting Episcopalian footage on the post-Katrina Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. We will also read the Wet Bank Guide’s beautiful essay on the current situation. And he is right, the weather has been exquisite for two straight days.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
It is sometimes hard to have a good idea of where I fit in most in terms of Australia’s class system, because others’ perceptions, having a different historical root than my own, are extremely different from my own self-perceptions. For instance my direct speech and ease with myself is taken by the blue collar types as being a normal feature of human personality. Yet, those of the clerical classes (and some professors) recoil at such directness, as if I were challenging the system by trying to put myself higher up the ladder than where I deserve to be. So, whereas my interactions with those who have few pretentions are inevitably smooth, my interactions with those whose class I ought to be identified with (due to my education) are inevitably fraught with misunderstandings. This is exceedingly annoying to me, if not downright disturbing, to say the least.
According to Fussell (this is based of course on my reading of the reviews only) you, and also I, are probably in “Class X” (Bohemian-Bourgeois, or BoBo). It appears that I was raised with patrician, not middle class values, that the family is half patrician, half working class. These two classes can actually communicate, it seems – both have strong identities and neither fear directness.
It is the middle classes, particularly the middle-middle, who have the (to me) incomprehensible attitudes and behavior … behavior I associate, in my snobbish manner, with people in business, medicine, and law, but not in real academia … and the behavior and attitudes that Reeducation seemed to believe were necessary and desirable.