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Compassionate Conservatism is...well, neither


(Also published at What Would Jack Do?)

Here’s your problem: if you start adding up unions and progressives and liberals and people too poor to pay income tax and people who wanna tax millionaires — wow, it’s gotta be tough to love America so much, but hate almost three-quarters of the people living in it.

- Jon Stewart

If you look at what Republicans profess to value, and how little of that they ascribe to anyone but the top 1-2% of income earners in this country, you really have to wonder how they’ve managed to attain (and retain) so much power and influence. After all, it’s not as if their policies make them the party of the majority…and yet they’ve managed to convince/propagandize millions of Americans that voting against their best interests is the way to keep America strong.

Eric Cantor’s making a career out of elevating the concerns of the Wall Street over those of Main Street. The Tea Party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries. Mitch McConnell’s “Job One” is making certain that Barack Obama is a one-term President. Peter King’s priority is hating Muslims. Too many “small government” Social Conservatives in Congress are primarily concerned with…wait for it…abortion and birth control. Uh, I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but we have an economy circling the drain, unemployment hovering around 9%, and millions of Americans have given up hope of finding a job. In an economy with more than 4 unemployed people for every available job, it’s no surprise that so many have given up.

And yet Republicans continue to fiddle while Rome burns. WTF??


Jack Cluth October 26, 2011 - 9:15am
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( categories: Miscellany )

How?

"...voting against their best interests..."

1) Buy or otherwise control the tools of propaganda so voters only see one argument.
2) Demonize the opposition.
3) Underfund and pervert education so they can't evaluate facts.
4) Whip up public emotions over immaterial issues to distract them.


"When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day.
Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries."
- Anton Chekhov

steeleweed October 26, 2011 - 9:55am
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It's been a great many years

It's been a great many years of concerted effort to dispense propaganda an institute particular pathways of thought. You will win every argument if you control the framing of them.

This idea of "voting against their interests" though is bunk. It's a Democratic Party rationalization of the party's failures. It can't say that it actually represents the working class, fights for it or legislates on its behalf. In fact, since at least 1992 it might as well be a wing of the GOP.

Look, I just came out of "blue collar" employment and I'm still deeply connected to it (as in I spend all day every day with union tradesmen). I'm tired of being preached to by people whose blue collar credentials are the jobs their parents worked or a college summer in a factory. I won't speak for others, but i bet I'm not the only one.

The GOP makes a PR effort to appear to care about some important things to a lot of people. Of course people will respond to that when the other party clearly isn't going to fight for you and then denigrates things that are important to you.

Lex October 26, 2011 - 11:15am
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Seem you and the late Joe Bageant

had a lot it common. If you haven't already heard it, listen to Joe discussing Middle Class liberals.

I grew up in a ranching community where the only work that wasn't blue collar was banking, teaching and preaching. Went hi-tech after college but my current crowd is about 50/50 blue/white collar. Both have their faults and virtues.

I agree the Dems have sold out their old-time constituency and true liberalism has become merely a badge of smug ivory tower folks looking down their noses at the philistines. They need something to prove to themselves they're not George Babbitt.

The problem with voters is ignorance. They cannot understand the difference between what the Plutocrats say and what they do; the real effect of their policies as opposed to the false justifications publicly given. While saying 'all politicians lie', they continue to believe them. People tend to believe what reinforces their existing beliefs or what they would like to believe.. The GOP media is very good at telling them what they want to hear.

Telling people what they don't want to hear is spitting in the wind, and that is particularly unfortunate today, when there's a lot of bad news that needs to be better understood by everyone. We have some hard choices and difficult times ahead. The sooner that sinks into the common consciousness, the sooner we can start taking action - and the longer we wait, the worse it's going to be.


"When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day.
Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries."
- Anton Chekhov

steeleweed October 27, 2011 - 12:31pm
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The psychology

If you are middle class, and un- or under- employed, and particularly if you have seen better times, during which your 'hundred-thousand-aire' stock portfolio was actually gaining value instead of losing it, the tendency is to deny your situation.

You want to believe your situation is just temporary. You want to believe that one day soon, the skies will open and you too will get to climb the magic stairway to financial freedom.

Your lifestyle, work history, debt structures, and current economic situation may clearly put you in the 99%.

But secretly, you know you are a 1%-er just waiting to blossom.

And the 1% know how feed that part of you with false hopes while continuing to nickle and dime you literally until your death, and beyond if you leave any surviving family members they can go after.

The psychology of denialism is rooted in deep secret hopes, that your current reality is somehow not your real reality. Sure, the odds may be 200 million to 1, but you know, secretly, and with 100% certainty, you are the 1, not one of the 200 million.

And every self-help book, every cheerleading pop song, every supermarket tabloid re-inforces this view. You're not a regular person - you're a star! - just everyone else doesn't know it yet.

So all those graphs that show your real situation - they don't apply. When the 1%-er's smile and wink at you from inside their million-dollar ad campaigns, and tell you that you are just like them - why that's the Truth!

yogi-one October 27, 2011 - 1:13pm
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