Class Warfare- Why aren't we MADDER!!

[housewolf]

From DailyKos - read the whole article, there's lots of good stuff there


Class Warfare- Why aren't we MADDER!!

<snip>

The Bush Class does not really believe that the strength of the American nation comes from the middle class and the working class.

They believe that the Wall Street CEO class and those living off of massive inherited wealth are those who should determine all public policy in the nation. They are blinded by their Republicanism ideology and selfish greed.

<snip>

Every economic policy adopted by Congress, and by every state, assumes that the proper purpose of economic activity is the creation of private profit. In the current political climate, profit-making is even equated with democracy. Business schools treat increasing productivity--that is, the rapid and efficient accumulation of profit--not only as economically necessary but as a patriotic duty.

<snip>

Finally, It is not about GOD and the wing-nuts, Jeff Gannon or terrorists, although they have been entertaining diversions. It's The Money Stupid! Never in my most cynical moments did I think it was just the money. Now I do

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/11/62548/3604

[Enquiringkitty]

1. All night I have been posting that we have invited corporations...

to lead America and didn't know it.

Look at the changes they want to make.....same as corporations are set up.

Our personal rights and protections are watered down to the point they mean nothing....we just have worker's rights

Taking away any recourse we have in a dispute because we have less power as citizens.

Take away all means if self sufficiency in old age that can't be touched by creditors and we are bound by the corporations for life.

Remember tales of the old mining town days? The mine owned everything and everyone. You lived in company housing, shopped at company stores, cashed your check and paid bills at the company bank and you never got ahead so your kids would take up where you left off when you couldn't work anymore? This is where we are headed... with corporations having all of the rights and power and ...just the workers who support them.

This is a system that Bush and Chaney grew up in and can manipulate well. Other Repugs are going with it too....just look at who they are corporate types. Would be a wonderful world for them....to have everything and give little.

[SheilaT]

2. Basically, people do not understand

the nature of the very real class warfare that is going on.

Have you heard about the surveys that ask people if they consider themselves in the lower class, middle class, whatever? And where they expect to wind up? Something like 60 percent of the people expect to wind up in the upper 10 percent. They have no clear understanding of what it really means.

Growing up we're told over and over that any child can grow up to be president or very successful. And we read about Abe Lincoln who was born in a log cabin and Bill Gates who dropped out of college (Harvard) and is richer than anyone else on the entire planet. And we're not only led to believe that we can do those things ourselves, but any failure is completely our own doing and has no relationship to the system in place around us.

Over and over again we're fed lies about how universal health care would be terrible, how people in England have to wait two years for bunion surgery and isn't that a tragedy, how Canadians all flock to the U.S. because they can't get other surgery north of the border. And we're not told how no one in the rest of the world has to hold fund raisers to pay for kidney transplants, or how they don't have to declare bankruptcy because of huge medical bills. Nope. All of the burden to pay the outrageous cost of medical care in this country is squarely on the shoulders of the individual (and individual families).

And for so many of those who voted for Bush this time around, none of the economic things mattered to them, just that Bush was perceived as strong on defense, the Democrats seen as weaklings. They have no real understanding that there is a class warfare going on. Or if they do, they think it's something the Democrats are waging against them.

Oh, and in a side note about health care costs, keep in mind that physicians never get stuck with enormous medical bills because of "professional courtesy". So they have no real understanding of what a catastrophic illness does to ordinary people, even those with good health insurance.

[dand]

3. Wealthy people are a higher life form,

poor people should know their place and never be uppity. Don't you know anything?

[Mari333]

4. Depression is Anger turned inward

and plenty of people I know are depressed. But only a few people can pinpoint why their minimum wage go nowhere jobs are the only jobs they can get. I worked 11 days in a row...(socking it away as fast as I can while the economy tanks)..and many people are working 2-3 jobs just to put food on the table.
Plus, the unions are busted, so theres no cohesive way for workers to organize.
Remember, we are 49th in literacy rates in the world, also. People are just not exploring the whys of their personal situations, in many cases.

[Strelnikov_]

5. It’s Called The ‘Politics Of Aspiration’

For myself, the term ‘Potemkin Village’ comes to mind.

Based on a survey in 2000, 19% think they are in the top 1% of income, and the next 20 percent said that they expect to be there one day. (I wonder what the survey findings in 2005 would show).

To summarize and repeat, in 2000 39% of our countrymen thought they are, or will soon be, in the top 1% of income.

It works like this, “I know that the GOP policies only help the top 1%. But I am a member of that group, or will be some day.”

From: Cynthia Tucker, "Working poor can't expect any help from Washington"
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=15074

. . .

The myth of Horatio Alger success is so powerful that few concede they live at the lower levels of financial attainment. If they do, it's just a temporary condition -- or so they believe. A Time-CNN poll conducted during the 2000 presidential election asked voters whether they were in the top 1 percent of income earners. Nineteen percent responded that they were.

[Name removed]

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