The official numbers are out, and I just don't get it. It's now a documented fact: middle-class Americans are worse off today than they were 14 years ago, in 1997. I get the fact okay. What I don't understand is this: you can trace middle-class plight to their own political behavior. They did it to themselves. And why? Why?
Maybe the only answer is that middle-class Americans actually have a death wish when it comes to The American Dream. I mean, how else can you explain a 10-year span of chronic suicide that can be directly traced to Americans' lethal blend of both perversity and passivity in the political arena.
Consider middle-class Americans' stupefyingly self-destructive performance: In 2000, the country stood by and watched, without protest, as the Supreme Court actually forbid the counting of votes that might have elected Al Gore, anointing instead George W. Bush. No one appeared on the steps of the Supreme Court to howl in protest at the most anti-democratic decision in the court's history. Apathy was universal, but especially puzzling among the middle class considering that Bush displayed a smarmy passion for currying favor with the wealthy and vested industrial interests that was as vivid and ugly as full-blown acne.
Instead, they also elected a Congressional majority all too willing to be co-conspirators in presenting a trillion-dollar tax kickback to the wealthy, while despicably endorsing trillion-dollar wars of choice which they didn't have the guts or decency to pay for: "Charge it to the children" seemed to be their mantra. Thus began the tsunami of deficit and debt now devastating Americans' dreams.
Astonishingly, middle-class Americans re-elected George W. Bush in 2004 after a campaign in which Bush, addressing a tuxedoed, gowned, and bejeweled ballroom full of the super rich smirked, "Some call you the 'haves', and some call you the 'elite'. I call you my base." Heh, heh, heh. Anybody who drives a pickup to work who thought that George W. Bush had his interests at heart was indulging in either massive denial, or a desperate hope that one day he, too, would be seated at one of those tables sipping champagne with W's buddies. How else can you explain it? He made it so clear whose interests he wanted to serve. But they voted for him anyhow. Perhaps it was just that he sounded more like the kind of guy you'd want to spend a day fishing with than did Kerry, whose monumentally inept campaign was as effective as Dr. Kevorkian could ever have been in aiding and abetting the middle class' termination of a better life for themselves.
Others have adequately documented the litany of ways in which Bush and the Republicans systematically rigged the game to favor those of us who don't need more money and to screw those who do, all the while turning 50,000,000 of our neighbors into medical beggars who face each day without health insurance. The particulars of that shameful process are no longer in doubt and continue unabated with our Republican Congress. But what I'm still trying to get at is this question: "Why would ostensibly sane people countenance and even vote for leaders who act so blatantly against their best interests?"
Beyond the aforementioned options of abject denial and/or delusional aspirations to evolve into one of the super-rich, there are other possible explanations. One that has to be considered is what I might call "The Animal Farm effect". Readers will recall that in George Orwell's painfully prescient novel, the Seven Commandments by which the community ostensibly managed itself were subtly re-written late each night by the pigs to enhance the pigs' power and privilege, while the barnyard citizens blissfully slept unawares. Few noticed the changes upon awakening, and any potential protests were swiftly smothered. Eventually, the pigs not only dominated the day-to-day wellbeing of the other animals but also re-wrote the community's history to provide a fictional foundation for their hegemony. The continual tweaking of the Seven Commandments finally morphed them all into just one undeniable declaration: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
Sounds all too familiar to me. The changes in the rules that affect the middle class' economic wellbeing have been taking place subtly over the course of this last piggish decade. Banks and investment banks morphed into too-big-too-fail manipulators of everything from the amount of money in circulation, to the value of investment vehicles, to the glowing ratings assigned to these near-worthless securities. Liars in high places pretended that the wealthy would use trillion-dollar tax bonuses in ways that would create good jobs for the middle class, knowing all the while that those extra dollars would wind up fattening portfolios, not ringing cash registers. And those who most loudly revere our Constitution eagerly reinterpret that historic document as a selectively spun piece of Scripture that, by their lights, would invalidate every advance our country has made that benefits middle-class Americans.
Perhaps the middle class has simply been bested by those who understand the non-rational aspects of human behavior and take full advantage of them. Advertisers certainly know that people's economic behavior is far more manipulable by appeals to emotion than by appeals to reason, and political campaign appeals now also reflect that understanding. If there were ever any doubt about that, a brilliant study done at Emory University during the 2004 campaign laid it to rest once and for all. When asked to evaluate the consistency of clearly self-contradictory statements made by their own favorite candidate and similarly self-contradictory statements made by his opponent, subjects in the research easily overlooked their candidate's blatant inconsistency but pilloried the opponent's. That much was pretty predictable. What made the researchers' work so stunning was how they electronically monitored the subjects' brains during their evaluating the two sets of statements: it revealed that the areas of the brain that process rational thought were flat-lined, dead as a doornail, while the emotional regions were sparkling like Fourth of July fireworks.
If it is true that middle-class Americans (and all the rest, too, for that matter) are actually overmatched these days by those message-mongers who know how to end-run our critical faculties and trigger stupid responses, what to do? For starters, I wonder if voters might do well to adopt a simple process that my wife Patti and I employed with our children when they were very young and very vulnerable to the appeal of TV commercials aimed at their tender psyches. During the very limited hours we permitted their watching any non-public TV, we turned the commercials into a game -- a puzzle to be decoded. We would sit with them and pose one pretty easy question followed by a more challenging one: "What do the makers of this commercial want you to do?" (the easy one) and "What are they doing in this commercial to make you feel like it's a good idea?" The kids instantly jumped into the game of playing detective and couldn't contain themselves in scrambling to outdo each others' answers: "They have the camera really close to it, to make it look bigger than I know it is", "They make it look like all the other kids have one, so you'll feel left out if you don't have one, too", "They show everybody laughing, like it's really fun, but why would you want to play with that for more than a minute or so? After that, it'd be boring." By the time the kids were five or six, they saw the manipulation for what it was and were commercial-proofed. Certainly they had felt the feelings the manipulators stirred up in them -- there's no stopping that -- but they trumped the manipulative effects by analyzing and dismissing them.
Certainly there must be other, better means to help middle-class voters defend themselves against self-destructive behavior at the ballot box, and it's not a moment to too soon to bring them to light and put them into practice. For the inescapable truth is immutable: in a relatively pure democracy like ours, we get exactly the government we deserve. And given the now-devious role government is playing in the fortunes of the middle class, that cruel truth applies equally to the fate of the American Dream.
Find a good recipe and follow the directions (research candidates and vote accordingly)
Periodically check on it (pay attention to the news but use critical thinking to interpret)
Taste for balance (get involved and stay involved… even a phone call is doable)
Stir or the bottom will sometimes stick (clean out career or outdated politicians)
When the government is in balance it works, just as food cooked properly comes out near perfect.
Our problem is too many Americans are buying "Fast Food."
The Locke liberal founders fought the Burke conservative 1000 richest families and their multinational British Empire, to create the Democratic Republic, the USA, and so many people now vote for the conservative Tories who want to bring back the rule by the super rich.
The Tea people think the Boston Tea Party was against small government and taxation. It was against big business.
"The directors of the company attempted to avert bankruptcy by appealing to Parliament for financial help. This led to the passing of the Tea Act in 1773, which gave the Company greater autonomy in running its trade in America, and allowed it an exemption from the tea tax which its colonial competitors were required to pay. ...The arrival of tax-exempt Company tea, undercutting the local merchants, triggered the Boston Tea Party in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, one of the major events leading up to the American Revolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
Wake up, Grow up, vote for the CPC progressive primaries, dems general.
So when the ruling party or class - and this is all about class. We have a ruling elite. They say get back, the middle class obey. That is the middle class. Am I middle class? Probably, only cuz I can't earn more, but I sure as don't obey.
Something the pug trolls will certainly attempt to pick apart.
But we can conduct an experiment and compare.
There are states that consistently elect republicans at the local and state level. And there are states that consistently elect democrats.
If you are poor in states that elect predominately democrats, do you have a better chance of getting an education? A Job?
With a few notable exceptions (I think health care is one of those. Liberal states have been much more successful in providing at least a minimum health care standard to the impoverished), it isn't clear that someone making 50k a year is better off in New York State, than they are in Texas
Certainly they pay fewer taxes in Texas.
So all things being equal, I can see where they would rather vote for a republican than a democrat.
It isn't just about changing the message that democrats have at the national level. It's about executing at the state and local level such that they prove their principles are better not just for the impoverished (they don't vote anyway, so it doesn't really matter). But for the lower working class (30, 40, 50k). These people are too wealthy to take advantage of expensive liberal social support systems, but wealthy enough to feel the impact of sales taxes, property taxes, and other fees that hit them on a daily basis.
Mike
That idea that 'My taxes are supporting an entire poor family'. But the thing is that some very rich person is NOT supporting a corresponding number of families. And these, for lack of a better term, rednecks don't seem to get that.
How much better do the Rich and the Super Rich do in these R states as opposed the the D states?
median income, poverty rates, unemployment, and lack of health insurance for all 50 states. of the Ten are Red States that voted Republican in at least 3 out of the last 4 presidental elections, the exceptions being West Virginia and Arkansas,which are both swing states that tend to lean a bit Republican. I got this information from the Wikipedia page on Red and Blue states. It doesn't appear as if voting Republican has helped the average person at all. In fact, it appears detrimental to quality of life for the residents in these states. We do not need Republicans running the country in the same manner as they've run the states they've controlled, not unless we enjoy poverty.
For comparison, Wall Street 24/7 also published America's 10 richest states: Hawaii, Colorado, Utah, Massachusetts, Virginia, Alaska, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. 6 are Democratic Blue states, the exceptions being Alaska, Virginia, and Utah are Red states, and Colorado is a swing state.
This suggests that you are more likely to live above the poverty level, have insurance, and be employed in a Blue state.
We have corrupt politicians, an ineffectual media and a national crisis of conscience.. and I must say... it was lovely to hear someone say the words you did, out loud, for all to hear!
It might be because we remember a kinder, more honest, undivided American brotherhood and so see the contrast between then and now.. that once upon a time we could joke at our differences with acceptance, instead of using those same differences to separate us. We've been manipulated into a very sorry state... I don't know how much more proof they need that we have been systematically broken and not even close to what we should be or near to what we used to be.... and it's a damn shame.
Hopefully many will hear the truth in your words and be as outraged as I have become over these last 11 years.
The right has also been having a moral debate in it's messaging (or debate for the lack of morals more precisely) for the last 30 years, and the left hasn't bothered to counter one bit. All of this is a recipe for fail, coupled with the dumbfoundedness of left wing politicos that raise their hands and ask "why" and we are doomed.
It's like watching a society collectively commit slow-motion suicide. Very bizarre indeed.
Last Presidential election I actually had a coworker tell me the most important issue to her was Gay Marriage. It kind of freaked me out.