Blacklisting the Middle Class

I admit it. Sometimes I'm slow to see the obvious.

I've mentioned here a few times that the purpose of some Republican talking points is preemptive strike: to defuse the power of accusations that they expect from the left. They expect these accusations because they know they are already engaging in the behavior they will be accused of.

For example, accuse liberals of undermining family values knowing you are having an affair. Compare Obama to Hitler to hide your own similarities. Mislabel end-of-life counseling as "death panels" to dilute the power of that term when it's correctly used to describe de facto operations of insurance companies.

I knew constant cries of "socialism" were preemptive strikes, but I could never figure out what they were trying to undermine. What were they worried about? I mean, who in their right mind looks at Stalin's reign and wants to emulate it?

It finally clicked when someone on Twitter was talking about redistribution of wealth, specifically how Reaganomics has sent wealth upstream from the middle class to the top 2% for about 30 years. I suspect that most Russians didn't consider the subtler points of political theory when they overthrew royal rule. They simply wanted a more equitable distribution of capital.

No wonder Republicans are worried.

I don't think that a revolution is the best way to redistribute wealth back to the middle classes. I don't think it's even in the top ten.

But isn't it interesting that Republicans seem to think so?

This is the bigger picture that I missed until now: not just favoring the rich, but relabeling a healthy middle class as socialism. Rushing toward plutocracy despite the fact that plutocracy has been shown to reduce quality of life for even the elite class.

No wonder they are afraid we may act irrationally--they already are.

And certainly it casts the tea parties in a new light. Certainly some of these people are just racist, and some are protecting their wealth. But some have legitimate unfocused anger about economic conditions. "Their America" that they want back is the one with a healthy middle class.

These people have been lured in by tea party rhetoric and an easy target for their anger: the government. They now believe that taxes are responsible for 30 years of slouching toward plutocracy.

Taxation is one of the more powerful and less violent tools to redistribute capital. Yet ignorant citizens have been programmed to protest even taxes that help them. (They are useful idiots, a term for political pawns coined by Hitler and recently resurrected by Republicans in Congress in another preemptive strike.)

Republicans have been effective with their "reeducation campaign" redefining pluralism as socialism and all tax and regulation, the tools of economic balance, as bad. But there are gaps. After the market crash, even free marketers have wondered if maybe regulation can have a positive impact.

Democrats made a start at winning the hearts of voters in 2008, but the biggest reason they won is because none of them was George Bush. Plenty of poor and middle class voters still believe that conservative politics is their best way to wealth, and it's not.

Before we can get any real change, we have to get more people behind the idea that a healthy middle class is good for everyone, and that the tools of wealth redistribution--regulation, taxation, and so on--are tools for nationwide good, not just social good, but economic good as well.

Preemptive Strikes Updates

Preemptive Strike is my name for when Republicans accuse Democrats of things that they, the Republicans are themselves doing (cf John Ensign/President Clinton/Adultery). I am also including those WTF moments that happen when Republicans say up is down.

Paul Ryan accusing the Obama White House of a secret fascist agenda
This week Rep Rep Paul Ryan (the budget guy) said he voted for the bank and auto bailouts even though he didn't really approve of them because he knew that if he didn't, the recession/depression would have been much worse. That sounds quite sensible until you realize that his worst case scenario is not about greater hardship, fewer jobs, or even lost productivity. It's about preventing Obama from getting the economic disaster he needed to be able to suspend laws and create a police state. He knows this because he read Liberal Fascism.

Curses, Obama is foiled again! And he tried so hard to kill democracy! Heaven knows his predecessor did much of the job for him, yet Obama still couldn't get it right.

Republicans and the little guy--WTF?
Daily Show--John Oliver interviewed Republican delegates at a party meeting in Hawaii (definitely worth seeing if you missed it). The party line--we know because several delegates practiced it on Oliver--is that Republicans are the party of the middle class and Democrats represent the "moneyed elite."

This is some kind of promotion for the new Alice in Wonderland movie, right?

Sarah Palin tells tea partiers what to do: refuse to listen to liberals telling you what to do.

Add your own!

THE REPUBLICANS’ GAME: PREEMPTIVE STRIKE

Did you ever notice that many of the things Republicans have accused Democrats of are things that they are already doing or supporting to a greater degree? For example:

· John Ensign’s righteous indignation over Clinton’s assignations while Ensign was having a full-blown affair with a staff member who was the wife of another staff member. For a while it did seem like the Democrats were linked with sex scandals and Republicans were linked with money and personal privacy scandals, but now the Republicans have pulled ahead in all areas.

· Accusing Democrats of “politicizing national security” just before the release of a book accusing the Bush administration of timing the release of national security-related information for political ends and suggesting they also overstated the danger level for political reasons.

· Accusing Democrats in general and Obama by name of racism (though since Republicans had been openly stirring the racial violence pot before the election, this doesn’t quite fit the preemptive strike scenario)

· Accusing Democrats of hiding in health care legislation “death panels” who will make life or death decisions about who receives treatment and who doesn’t. There are no death panels in the legislation, but there are de facto death panels right now. They work for the Republican-supported insurance companies, and when they deny coverage, benefits, and treatment, they and their shareholders win and sick people lose, maybe even die.

· Accusing Democrats of wasteful spending when Republicans have been spending our national debt into the stratosphere for 30 years. The last big spending Democrat was Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. Clinton reduced the annual deficit. Why does this myth persist?

· Accusing Democrats of manufacturing public support for health care reform and other issues

· Accusing Democrats of manufacturing scientific evidence supporting climate change and other issues

· Accusing Democrats of trying to turn the country into a fascist state.

Simultaneously, Republicans accused Democrats of trying to turn the country into a socialist state. I have to add here that these two together bug my 16-year-old daughter to no end. She just got an A in history, and she understands that fascism and socialism are drastically different. Under socialism (in theory), production and distribution of goods and services is owned by the public with equal rights for all. Under fascism, the strong eliminate the weak, which is closer to Republican extremism than Democratic.

Then there are accusations of doing what Republicans are already known to have done, like collect an enemies list (Nixon for sure, Bush likely) and take too many vacation days (Bush took many more vacation days at this point in his term than Obama has). Do you remember Republicans accusing candidate Obama of bad taste and poor judgment in asking for campaign contributions last fall as the economy slid into recession?

Why do Republicans accuse Democrats of doing what Republicans are already doing? Is it guilt? Is it lack of imagination? I believe it is tactical: a preemptive strike.

Why is it better to be the first to accuse? First, there is a certain origination value when an accusation is first brought to light whether it’s true or not. People remember it and seem to cede the first accuser the moral high ground. Second, it puts the innocent party on the defensive. Before you can have any credibility accusing the real guilty party, you must clear yourself. Third, the first accusation dilutes all similar accusations that follow. The second to accuse looks like a copycat or worse, spiteful. His or her motivation is immediately suspect. In short, a preemptive strike accusation takes impact away from any later accusation against the original accuser.

In the past, this would have all backfired on the first accuser when the truth came out. Far better to be just guilty than be a guilty, lying hypocrite and false accuser. At least, that’s the way it used to be (though at least Glenn Beck got some pushback for saying Obama hated white people).

Lately, our hypocrisy meter seems to have broken. We’ve moved away from ‘an eye for an eye,’ which is great, but that doesn’t mean we have to turn the other cheek every time, nor do we have to remove every speck from our own eyes to see that giant wooden park bench sticking out of the eye of that lying, smiling, corrupt hypocrite over there. These are Christian metaphors—not ones I’ve heard used by any politician—but you don’t have to have religion to have a good head of righteous indignation steam over this.

I’ve always been a fan of turning bad actions back on the wrongdoer whenever possible—let him shoot himself in the foot, so to speak. So here’s what I propose. We have learned that when Republicans accuse Democrats of something, it’s often a tactic to protect themselves while doing or supporting the same thing. Republicans will always know what they’re up to before anyone else, so they have the advantage in first strike capability. But let’s use that. Consider that first accusation a clue telling investigators where to start turning over rocks on the Republican side.