Republican Class Warfare: Lower & Middle vs. Lower & Middle

[stickdog]

1) Afirmative Action

Rich people already have their own form of affirmative action. Bush is the prime example.

The "hot botton" issue of affirmative action exists to play on the emotions of middle and especially lower class white males, many of whom grew up with their own disadvantages.

Rather than focusing on the obvious and ubiquitous truth -- that our entire so-called meritocracy is actually rigged by the already rich and powerful to strongly favor the already rich and powerful -- the spotlight has been turned on a tiny helping hand that is sometimes given to groups that have been traditionally discriminated against.

Note that Affirmative Action could be changed from a racial basis to an economic basis. But, of course, that wouldn't provide nearly the same level of divisiveness.


2) "Special" gays rights and gay "marriage" and gays in the military

Let's look at gays in the military as the most blatant example. God knows anybody who is desperate and/or deluded enough to want to risk his or her life and limb in the US military has my complete sympathy.

The idea that gays who can thrive in such a structured and disciplined environment are some sort of a threat to their hetero military peers borders on the absurd. In any case, it's significance as a national issue places it just under OJ's guilt or innocence.

So why are these themes played up by Republicans and the compliant corporate media? The answer is simple: they divide natural economic alliances that might otherwise solidify the lower and middle classes into an unstoppable political force.


3) Welfare "cheats"

Has 2% of the federal budget ever been more universally maligned? Why? Because it creates a false division of jealousy between a subset of the lower class and the rest of the lower and middle class, all of whom are struggling to survive in a "meritocracy" the upper class has rigged against them.


4) Religious vs. secular

What the hell is the importance of this issue in a federal government that is supposed to practice a clear separation between church and state? And yet at least 10% of the voting population votes against their own financial solvency based on this single divisive issue alone.


5) Gun control vs. gun rights

Hey, how can we divide the rural lower and middle classes from the urban lower and middle classes? Yep, here's our new "hot button" issue du jour!


6) Unions vs. Non-unions

This exploits the jealousy that middle class "professional" serfs who work 60 hour weeks have towards the few working class folks who still manage to earn a fair living wage through their union contracts.


7) Racial Profiling for Terra-ists

Even Bill Maher falls for this crap. The idea here is to make us fear brown people and applaud Republicans who have the "courage" to trample only on their rights. You could get the same or better security results by making noncitizens undergo extra scrutiny, but that "issue" wouldn't divide middle and lower class voters as well.


8) Bloated government "bureaucracy" vs. Walmart-like privatized "efficiency"

The idea here is to spend less of our tax dollars paying Americans living wages to perform necessary services for other Americans and instead hand most of this money to the already rich and powerful so they can cut worker benefits and/or outsource these jobs to cheaper foreign labor.

[redeye]

1. That's not class warfare

That's plain old social and cultural conservatism. Class warfare is only one of two things: the poor trying to rob the rich of what is rightfully theirs and implicitly destroy enterprise (e.g. nationalization of industries, confiscatory taxes), or the rich trying to rob the poor of the aid they deserve and implicitly destroy labor (e.g. gutting welfare, no minimum wage).

[fabius]

3. p/s/ for redeye

You said "...Class warfare is only one of two things: the poor trying to rob the rich of what is rightfully theirs and implicitly destroy enterprise (e.g. nationalization of industries, confiscatory taxes), or the rich trying to rob the poor of the aid they deserve and implicitly destroy labor (e.g. gutting welfare, no minimum wage)."

I can't think of any actual instances of the "poor trying to rob the rich of what is rightfully theirs..." except in cases where the maldistribution of wealth led to a non-functional society (as in the French and Russian revolutions). Poor people as a rule have been pretty tolerant of rich people as long as the abuses are not too egregious. Even in Tsarist Russia up until the very end.

Another thing, the most confiscatory top tax rates US history occurred between about 1945 and 1960, accompanied by the greatest economic growth rate. So how did that destroy enterprise? I'm not saying it couldn't happen but "confiscatory tax rates" have not been around for a long time in the US and the phrase is a straw man used to great advantage by the kleptocracy to get more of what they want: money and power.

[InkAddict]

5. Here's your case

"The Invisible Man" thwarted the well-ordered elitist system.

If they don't want to hire us, then, by golly, the productivity of the next rung up is going to drop precipitously as we bombard the secretaries, etc., with daily unremitting phone calls to disturb THEIR busy busy work. The unemployed are not good "consumers," but we can be good wasters of others efforts and materials.

We can also get educated about employment contract processes. A recruiter called the other day trying to set up "new hires" for a state contract the client hadn't even yet won, even the bidding deadline and criteria had not yet been set - can we say "bidding war" in the works - Hey, since you want a committment right now, and it's so very early in the game, how about discussing my exit clause and a "good faith deposit," on hiring preference, non-refundable should the client lose the bid or fail to hire me cause they found a cheaper body down the line. The negotiation itself took quite a long time to flesh out and truth to tell, no real work at that far off future date had been offered, only waved tantalizingly in the face. ONE BURNED, TWICE SHY!

Demand the clerks attention as one changes your mind three times and then buy nothing, since they don't know you've got no cash/credit anyway. It'll hype their BP way up there. That way, those clerks' stocking/inventory etc...won't get done either and it all hits their employers' bottom lines and maybe even puts them on the rack too. If you can't win, be a bad, bad loser!

[redeye]

9. That's exactly class warfare

Thanks for proving my point, anyway.

[redeye]

7. You can't?

First, it doesn't mean that this Marxian form of class warfare can't exist.

Second, there are in fact many cases: all communist revolutions in history, bar none, as well as Sweden's confiscatory tax rate, nationalizations, and tenure for every worker once he works for a certain probation time (IOW, he can be fired only for "incompetence," which you cannot prove in court, or redundancy, which means you don't hire anyone else in his stead).

Third, there are certain myths prevalent about the postwar boom. Those myths include the following:
1. The high taxes myth - if you think that the rich paid those taxes, think again. IIRC, the prevalent attitude in the 1950s was "what's good for GM is good for the USA."
2. The cause of growth - most growth was due to technology developed in WW2, not due to fiscal policy. This is evident in the end of the postwar boom in 1973, which was arguably the result of all technology developed over a very short period of time reaching its saturation point in terms of development and consumption (everyone had a color TV, a tone phone, a car, and so on).
3. The myth of prosperity - one quarter of the Americans in the 1950s were poor. That's worse than the 1990s, which featured a boom caused by the Internet, he progress of the genome project, a moderate fiscal policy, and a pretty good monetary policy.

Fourth, I don't care who uses the terms I use. Even if Reagan says the same thing, it doesn't make it wrong. Anyway, I don't at all think that the current tax rates are too high; in fact, according to my economic knowledge the government should aim at a top income tax rate of 50% accompanied by a corporate tax at the same level - most Republicans and conservative Democrats would of course call that level theft. But when tax rates become too high - as they were in the 1950s (ninety-fucking-one percent? What was it - fucking world war two?) - confiscatory is exactly the word that shoudl be used.

Fifth, rich people have been pretty tolerant of poor people, too. The top 5% of the USA tended Republican only slightly, and in many cases are involved in charities. The problems begin when socialists try to rob rich people of the product of their enterprise or when corporatists try to rob poor people of the product of their labor.

[camero]

4. How much is "rightfully thiers"?

That is what we haven't figured out and the upper class constantly tries to confuse the issue by setting the numbers of the top 1% at an artificially low level.

How about Ken Lay? Was that money "rightfully" his?

Being wealthy is fine, but after a certain point, with only so much money in circulation and finite resources (aka... property) they are really taking from others what is rightfully theirs since every person should get the fruit of their labors.

[redeye]

8. "Every person should get the fruit of their labors"

Labor, as I explained, is only one part of the equation, the other part being enterprise. Libertarians and corporatists on the one hand and socialists and communists on the other continually try to devalue the other side's product, but both parts are essential for the production of anything. The job of the worker isn't solely his, just like the company of the entrepreneur isn't solely his - everything comes from the cooperation of the two parts, the two classes.

To further complicate your statement, in many cases more than one person is essential for the same product. Let's put the labor/enterprise thing aside and concentrate only on labor - what if a computer software is written by more than one person? What if a product is reached by the cooperative efforts of 300 people? And what about an electronic machine that has several designers, as well as several people who own the machines used to produce it?

And no, what Ken Lay grabbed was not rightfully his - most libertarians would agree with that, too. He's a thief who should be prosecuted. However, most rich people are not thiefs, at least not in so straightforward a way.

[camero]

18. It doesn't have anything to do with politics

I was speaking of the fact that we all occupy this earth, rich and poor alike. The modes of production of which you speak are not necessary for survival. I can live without my computer as much as I enjoy its convenience.

I am speaking of the basics. Food, water, housing, health care, etc.
And yes, money, because even money is finite and having too much wealth is just another example of gluttony.

One would need only look at the gap between CEO pay and that of the average worker to see that something is seriously wrong with our system of exchange and what we value as a society.

It doesn't make me a socialist to want a fairer means of exchange in society so that all have a chance to prosper. And like it or not, government is the regulator.

[fabius]

2. Rethuglians playin' Bubba like a fiddle.

I agree with your analysis. Of course, this is a time-honored strategy used by ruling classes for centuries to keep themselves in power. It's time we woke up!

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

15. this is the fault line in the GOP

Bubba is - he can be swayed to vote Democratic. We can't write off white males, because once you are between the coasts they are an even stronger block, and are key to the Senate for one.

Bubba belongs with us anyway, ever since FDR.

[Ein]

6. Class warfare was declared long ago.

When the National Guard started turning out to murder at labour protests. When the rich started benefiting from the government.

It's easy to say the Republicans declared the warfare, but they just prolonged it, along with Democratic complicity and sometimes initiative.

The bourgeouis as a whole started class warfare, long ago, probably before this country even started. The entire of 'civilized' history seems to read like class warfare to me.

[jiacinto]

10. I respond between sentences in bold

1) Afirmative Action

Rich people already have their own form of affirmative action. Bush is the prime example.

The "hot botton" issue of affirmative action exists to play on the emotions of middle and especially lower class white males, many of whom grew up with their own disadvantages.

The real issue is nepotism. That's how I see it.

Rather than focusing on the obvious and ubiquitous truth -- that our entire so-called meritocracy is actually rigged by the already rich and powerful to strongly favor the already rich and powerful -- the spotlight has been turned on a tiny helping hand that is sometimes given to groups that have been traditionally discriminated against.

Note that Affirmative Action could be changed from a racial basis to an economic basis. But, of course, that wouldn't provide nearly the same level of divisiveness.

I think Affirmative Action should be shifted to an economic basis, rather than a racial one. I think that by making it available to all disdavantaged people, regardless of race, it would be a much better problem. Remember that it was Nixon who created AA via the "Philadelphia Plan".


2) "Special" gays rights and gay "marriage" and gays in the military

Let's look at gays in the military as the most blatant example. God knows anybody who is desperate and/or deluded enough to want to risk his or her life and limb in the US military has my complete sympathy.

Why do you look down on people serving our country? I really don't understand why you have to call someone in the military "deluded". Maybe they want to serve our country. Why do you look down on that? I never understood the anti-military sentiment I see here at DU among certain posters. Maybe I am misreading you, but I fully respect those men and women who choose to serve our country.

The idea that gays who can thrive in such a structured and disciplined environment are some sort of a threat to their hetero military peers borders on the absurd. In any case, it's significance as a national issue places it just under OJ's guilt or innocence.

But I do agree that gays should serve. If anything were to happen, given the anti-gay attitude, such soldier would be punished with interest right off the bat. I think it is insecurity on the part of some soldiers. Gay people can fight and frankly their insecurity is no reason to deny homosexuals and lesibans the right to fight for our country.


So why are these themes played up by Republicans and the compliant corporate media? The answer is simple: they divide natural economic alliances that might otherwise solidify the lower and middle classes into an unstoppable political force.

I agree with you here. They need the "cultural war" issues to divide what would be a naturally Democratic base.


3) Welfare "cheats"

Has 2% of the federal budget ever been more universally maligned? Why? Because it creates a false division of jealousy between a subset of the lower class and the rest of the lower and middle class, all of whom are struggling to survive in a "meritocracy" the upper class has rigged against them.


Here is something where I would disagree. Welfare needed to be reform. The old system of giving and giving to people was not helping them. And frankly I do think that making people who are physically able to work is quite reasonable. However, where I depart from this agenda is education, child care, and job training. These three requirements are missing notoriously from welfare reform. And they need to be in place so that people could be empowered to improve their lives.

However, I do have a problem with people getting checks for not working. That part of the system needed to be changed.

4) Religious vs. secular

What the hell is the importance of this issue in a federal government that is supposed to practice a clear separation between church and state? And yet at least 10% of the voting population votes against their own financial solvency based on this single divisive issue alone.

I disagree with the anti-Pledge of Allegiance rhetoric and hostility toward religion shown here. However, I do think that removing the 10 Commandments monument was the right decision in accordance with the separation of church and state. But the hostility toward prayers at graduation ceremonies and the Pledge of Allegiance to me is taking it too far.


5) Gun control vs. gun rights

Hey, how can we divide the rural lower and middle classes from the urban lower and middle classes? Yep, here's our new "hot button" issue du jour!

People have the right to own guns. I used to be totally anti-gun. Then my position changed. I think that there should be background checks to own guns, but people have the right to defend themselves too.


6) Unions vs. Non-unions

This exploits the jealousy that middle class "professional" serfs who work 60 hour weeks have towards the few working class folks who still manage to earn a fair living wage through their union contracts.

I am pro-union clearly.


7) Racial Profiling for Terra-ists

Even Bill Maher falls for this crap. The idea here is to make us fear brown people and applaud Republicans who have the "courage" to trample only on their rights. You could get the same or better security results by making noncitizens undergo extra scrutiny, but that "issue" wouldn't divide middle and lower class voters as well.

I don't like racial profiling. The better way to do it would be to make it statistically random or to go after all non-citizens. But there does need to be more security at our airports.


8) Bloated government "bureaucracy" vs. Walmart-like privatized "efficiency"

The idea here is to spend less of our tax dollars paying Americans living wages to perform necessary services for other Americans and instead hand most of this money to the already rich and powerful so they can cut worker benefits and/or outsource these jobs to cheaper foreign labor.

The government is bloated and inefficient.

[stickdog]

11. Reply

1) One issue is nepotism. The entire issue goes far deeper. The upper class has EVERY POSSIBLE ADVANTAGE in our "meritocracry."

2) I agree.

3) You are misreading me. I'm was merely commenting on risk vs. reward.

4 & 5) Agreed.

6) However, welfare HAS been "reformed." Yet "welfare cheats" are still maligned by the right to this day.

7) Who cares?

8) Whatever. I accept Dean's view that it depends on locality.

9) Agreed.

10) Agreed.

11) The solution is to reform government to make it more efficient, not to privatize it. Or, at least if you privatize it, a huge preference should be given to small US businesses with taxpaying US employees and owners.

[jiacinto]

12. I have mixed feelings on privatization

nt

[jiacinto]

13. I agree with you that the upper class has every possible

advantage. I know that all too well. As someone who is just starting out of school, saddled with large student loan debt and a very low salary, I know what you mean fully.

[DBoon]

14. My response

1. Affirmative Action

Framing this as a nepostism issue would be absolutely killer. Antagonism towards affirmative action comes from "why should people who aren't qualified to begin with get preference?". The right has taken a solid position and warped it to fit their agenda.

We should be against all special preferences, and start exposing those that allow the incompetent monied to unfairly get theirs.

2. Gun control

This is an urban versus rural issue, not really a right vs. left issue. I wouldn't make support for gun control a litmus test for progressive candidates. Unfortunately the extremist nut cases in the NRA have made this an "either you are all with us or we will destroy you" issue. Ideally a whole spectrum of options should be politically feasible, in reality the most modest gun legislation gets polarized by NRA nuts.

3. Welfare cheats

So we shift the emphasis of the social democratic agenda from "welfare" (support for those without jobs) to helping the working poor. Much more polically acceptable, and we are helping out a much broader population. The earned income tax credit is something we should be publicly proud of. Think of programs for medical care, housing, etc. that could be targeted to "ordinary working people, to help them get ahead".

4. Goverment inefficiency
I'm sorry this is BS. I used to say that anyone who thought the private sector provided better service than the government never tried to get a dial tone from GTE (if your phone service ever came from GTE, you'll understand). Setting up an appointment with the local DMV is a peice of cake compared to getting support from my ISP. In this age of downsizing and outsourcing, private sector customer service has reached new lows.

[jiacinto]

17. Well

I will say that in some cases the private sector can be just as incompetent as the government. But please don't talk to me about the DMV. I spent seven hours at the FL DMV this week to transfer my license from DC to Florida.

[DemNoir]

16. The real mystery is...

You can always count on the middle class on down to vote against their own interests. The quote from "Gangs of New York" holds true, "You can always hire half the poor to kill the other half".