No one ever seems to get what the “proletariat” is, either.

Visit enough countries around the world and you’ll eventually get to see how same-y the average person is, regardless of location. Working class people just live for getting through the next day and the small happinesses that life brings.

But political ideology is in the habit of molding the proletariat into whatever model citizen concept is pushed by the owner class. They construct a more convenient idea of the Everyman that fits their brand of politic and punish those who fail to adhere to that model.

This makes it more convenient for world governments to push nationalism like “Americans do X, Chinese do Y, and that’s why we hate each other,” based on the platonic concepts they envision their respective proletariat to be. The reality is that everyone is way more alike than they are different, and the ideologues in power hate that fact.