Budweiser recently announced that it would rename its beer “America” for the duration of the US election season. The rebranding was described as a testament to the “shared values” of Budweiser and America, and their marketing firm Fast Co stated: “We thought nothing was more iconic than Budweiser and nothing was more iconic than America.” Who can disagree with that? No one, because it doesn’t make sense. But that’s beside the point.

Negative responses to the re-branding have generally taken two forms. First, folks on social media are gleefully pointing out that Budweiser is owned by a Belgian corporation. While there is some obvious cognitive dissonance happening when a Belgian corporation brands itself as America’s beer, they’re certainly not unique among products manufactured overseas that use American patriotism as a marketing tool. At least Bud is brewed in the US. But a second response to the announcement is the evergreen accusation that Bud both tastes like nothing and tastes like piss.

I’ve never been able to sort those two claims out. To be fair, I’ve never tasted piss. But I have drank my share of Bud and, while its no flowery and bitter double IPA, it does in fact taste like beer. It’s light, and the “drinkability” of Bud Light was a long-time marketing slogan. Whatever your opinions of cheap, light beers they are undeniably the object of scorn by beer enthusiasts everywhere.

I’m a bartender. In my book, rule number 1 of bartending is that you don’t judge people for what they drink. A few months ago, a man came in with his friends and ordered a Diet Coke with vanilla vodka. His friend immediately started shaming him for ordering a “bitch drink.” There’s always a calculation for me about whether or not to make the personal political when I’m behind the bar. As in all hospitality, my pay depends on not pissing people off. I asked myself, should I call this guy out for shaming his buddy? At that point he had a $50 tab running, so it was a risky decision. But yes, I decided. I should.

“Don’t be mean to people for what they drink. I didn’t make fun of you for ordering Grey Goose even though most people can’t tell the difference between that and well vodka.” Yes, I am aware of the irony in my snarky I’m-totally-not-shaming-you jab. Still, it made me mad. People of any gender should be able to drink whatever the hell they want. You just paid $11 for a drink that you probably couldn’t differentiate from a $6 drink. Grey Goose drinkers, please send your hate tweets to @bsummitgil.

When I hear someone scorn cheap domestic beers, I cringe. I admit, I used to be the worst about this. But now, they’re my go-to when I’m pacing myself for a late night or when my wallet is light. I even cut my beer-drinking teeth on Bud Light. Still, for years I cracked jokes about cheap domestic beers tasting like piss and/or water. And I have come to believe that most of this sneering is not really about the supposed quality of the beer; it’s about the supposed quality of its drinkers.

Cultural theorist and working-class intellectual Raymond Williams wrote of his experiences at Cambridge:

“I was not oppressed by the university, but the teashop, acting as if it were one of the older and more respectable departments, was a different matter. Here was culture, not in any sense I knew [as a working-class person], but in a special sense: the outward and emphatically visible sign of a special kind of people, cultivated people. They were not, the great majority of them, particularly learned; they practiced few arts; but they had it, and they showed you they had it.”

Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism.

Williams was asking a simple question: why were these supposedly revolutionary Marxists at Cambridge sneering at the very people they purported to liberate? When they spoke of the “badness” of so-called “low culture,” that of the British working class, Williams wondered “where on earth they have lived. A dying culture, and ignorant masses, are not what I have known and see.” Culture, Williams argued, was ordinary. It was not confined to the museums and music halls and Cambridge courtyards. It was in the tavern songs and labor newspapers and beach trips just as much as it was anywhere else.

Growing up in a working class neighborhood, raised in a working class family, I have distinct memories of bottles of Bud in the fridge, the cooler, and the built-in cup holder of our second-hand La-Z-Boy. I remember being sent to the kitchen for another round of beers, passing them out to a room of grizzled welders and mechanics. They were a permanent fixture at mud bogging and fishing trips. They were a ritual for the men in my life when, after a long day of physically taxing labor, the first beer was opened, the cap flicked somewhere near but rarely into the trash can across the room. They’re not all fond memories. But I have a deep psychic connection to that label. It was a part of my culture. It was extremely significant, and entirely ordinary.

A recent essay excoriated the “smug style in American liberalism.” I won’t delve into the knitty gritty of the essay and the subsequent criticisms. But look no further than any Facebook page with “liberty” or “freedom” in the title to see just what many working-class Americans think of liberals. Entitled. Elitist. Snobbish. Out of touch. Smug.

Even Budweiser knows it. Their 2015 Super Bowl commercial turns the table on beer snobs, deriding “pumpkin peach lagers” sipped by men with waxed mustaches, juxtaposed with pickup beds brimming with cases of Bud. Their 2016 Super Bowl commercial features sports teams and physical laborers; it’s not “soft” and it’s not a “fruit cup.” It’s for “people who like to drink beer.”

It’s impossible to separate the beer snobbery that characterizes so much of the social media response to Bud’s announcement from the broader classism and disdain for “ordinary” people who like beer that is cheap and easy to drink. And with Donald Trump’s recent joke that his candidacy inspired the rebranding, plenty of people are taking the opportunity to ridicule Bud drinkers and Trump supporters in the same breath. Countless tweets and Facebook comments on how unsophisticated “redneck” Americans like shitty beer and shitty politicians demonstrate just how alluring this narrative is.

Budweiser is not a good company. Its move to Belgium was in no small part an effort to pay a ridiculously low tax rate. Its numerous OSHA violations put manual laborers—the same demographic that it so often markets to—in serious danger. It has a history of union disputes and unfair labor practices. But the most widespread criticism Bud faces is its taste and, by extension, the “taste” of its consumers. Sneering at the tasteless masses is a time-honored tradition in this country. It’s as Merican as apple pie and, well, Budweiser.

Britney is on Twitter.