The big political story today is about Mitt Romney's assertion that 47% of Americans are moochers (check out the first result, even "Forbes" magazine is calling Romney out). My awesome cohorts at Rumproast have written extensively on this latest Mittastrophe. Of course, the reality of the situation is more complex than Mittens or right-wing pundits would have us believe. Ironically, many of the "non-tax payers" paid a higher percentage of their income int taxes than Mitt Romney did, and these "moochers" tend to be overrepresented in heavily Republican states.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, the whole "47%" thing started as a wingnut response to the Occupy Movement's discusssion of the "99%". It reached its culmination, its "asspotheosis" if you will in a tumblr site started by Erick bin Erick. The We are the 53% blog is a bit of a train wreck- a lot of the people are proud to be working long hours for low wages in dead-end jobs, all of them would benefit from union representation. Just perusing the archives, I am struck with the pathos and horror of it all. These people are fools, backing an ideology that denigrates both actual work and fiduciary responsibility, backing a candidate who never broke a sweat in his life and doesn't pay taxes. They are the perfect patsies, proud to be taken to the cleaners by the grifters.
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4 comments:
Almost o.t., but I saw something at Artois that caught my eye.
I can understand the business model that Newsweek is pursuing: trolling the internet. But they're not actually all that good at it. There are true, quality, artisan internet trolls who have decades of experience and who finally have a way to monetize their unique skills. Newsweek should hire them.
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Ahh, but in your quite lucid analysis of the political ideology of the fascist wing or the Republican party you overlook the key overriding factor.
Hate. Hate and fear. Tribal hatred, bigorty, ignorance, fear of the 'other', paranoia and resentment.
They know perfectly well that they are voting against their own economic interests. It is a quaint prejudice of the progressive community that they are just too stupid to understand they are being duped. Indeed, they are willing participants.
Because it's not about economics, the political scientists are wrong because they refuse to factor in the hatred and fear. It is a fight for the heart and soul of American, a fight they will lose to the passage of time, and the rage and terror from the recognition of that utter inevitability is what's driving the current divide.
Oh. And if you think that American democracy is somehow exempt from large scale violence and mass murder of the sort that only happens in Syria and Pakistan and Iraq, well, hold on to your tinfoil hats. Because we've got more weapons, and more hate than any of them...
To clarify:
Those weapons are not in caches and depots, to be taken en mass by various factions and militias.
In America, they are a perfectly distributed system, 200 million advanced firearms and ten billion rounds of ammunition spread more or less evenly across the nation. Every one, from a scared evangelical to a hippie with an organic garden has equal access to deadly weapons. And everyone has an equal opportunity to die in angry, frightened predatory attacks as things get weird and people begin to panic.
Something that has generally not been an option in nations controlled by despots.
Yay for us?
Mikey:
"And everyone has an equal opportunity to die in angry, frightened predatory attacks as things get weird and people begin to panic."
I don't know, as soon as armed drones begin to fall into private hands, that equal opportunity to die bit will seem as quaint as a flintlock musket.
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