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Opinion

Prole Drift and Coping with Downward Social Mobility

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John Slaughter
Oct 05, 2025
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“Prole drift seems an inevitable attendant of mass production, mass selling, mass communication, and mass education.” - Paul Fussell

Every age invents a euphemism for decline. Ours calls it “authenticity.” Remove the cheap label and you’ll find what Paul Fussell called, prole drift. In his 1983 book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System Fusse…

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