Joe Conason: Another fake crisis from Bush's minions

[Dudley_DUright]

Evaluating the President's proposals to raid, ruin or -- as he prefers to say -- "reform" Social Security should begin by contrasting what his minions tell the public with what they tell each other in private. They are manipulating us with images while they mislead us about their purposes.

The most inspiring and venerable image was provided by Progress for America, a front group for the Bush White House, which recently aired a television commercial promoting the partial privatization of the pension system. The ad shows Franklin Delano Roosevelt signing the original legislation that created Social Security in August 1935; it praises the late President for the "courage" he displayed back then and proclaims that similar fortitude will be required to "protect" the system now.

The ad's not-so-subliminal suggestions are that George W. Bush equals Franklin D. Roosevelt, and that Mr. Bush seeks to honor Roosevelt.

While that reassuring ad was still running on the cable networks, a confidential White House memo got leaked to the press. Written by Peter Wehner, an aide to political boss Karl Rove, the memo outlined the President's strategy for pursuing changes in Social Security. After explaining why the White House must create a sense of crisis about the system's future, and arguing that there should be sharp cuts in benefits, Mr. Wehner touted the true ideological aim of this campaign.

"For the first time in six decades," he wrote, "the Social Security battle is one we can win -- and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country." Of course, the last time Republicans "lost" the Social Security debate was in 1935, when they tried to block the program's creation. They lost again in 1964, when their Presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, wanted to abolish the system and lost all but six states in an historic landslide. Mr. Wehner's remarks raise the suspicion that he means not to protect but to overturn Roosevelt's landmark achievement, which remains the most successful social program in American history.

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http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=18401

[Arkana]

1. We need more people like Joe Conason

Excellent article. He's right about the Pugs gutting Social Security.

[PurityOfEssence]

2. If we don't fight Class Warfare frontally, we'll be destroyed

We should use the term, too. It's not enough to intimate that they're misguided, we have to point out that they're deliberate liars, specifically attempting to eliminate Social Security for ideological and economic reasons. They have no compunctions about calling us traitors and leeches, we need to muster the courage to call them slave-masters, freeloaders, thugs, liars and monarchists.

If we merely say they're misguided, it doesn't stick. It implies that their hearts are in the right place. What needs to be pointed out is that they're cowardly bullies who hide behind sweet lies as they systematically steal everything for themselves and drive the rest of the world into subjugation. We have to point out things like this, and accuse them in the strongest language. This is war.

It's sick that the greedy need to crush everyone else just so they can feel better about their superiority, but it's a sad and true facet of human nature. Use emotional appeal, but definitely use the argument that society simply can't survive without social controls.

[Raster]

3. It IS class warfare, and they aren't misguided. They're arrogant, greedy

and just plain ol' evil.