What follows is pure conjecture, but conjecture that is steeped in close observation of politics, economics, history and sociology. It came to me in a flash of insight while I pondered how Democrats and the forces of progressive thought could have allowed the right to so eviscerate this great country over the last 15 years. Here's my theory after the jump...
If you had to hazard a guess (and perhaps I take too much away from Apple's TV ad campaign) which of the two computer industry icons -- Steve Jobs and Bill Gates -- was a Dem and which was a Pug, what would your inclination be? For me, Jobs seems more aligned with the Left and Gates moreso with the Right. Using this purely speculative delineation as a starting point consider the following.
While the people with higher levels of education, greater creativity, liberal attitudes on risk taking and spending, etc, were busy doing the actual work of building the New Economy through the Tech Revolution of the 1990s, the parasitic grifters and cheats of the right were busy finding ways to greedily inflate their own pocketbooks.
Gates' prime achievement more closely mirrors the parasitic ethos of republicanism than Jobs'. Gates essentially stood on the shoulders of the technical innovations and achievements of Jobs and Wozniak who made personal computing possible; starting out in their garages in humble suburbs. Gates, with the keen eye for ways to exploit markets, (as opposed to working for the betterment of society) realized that it would be easier to leverage the windows style operating system than to invest time and resources in building better hardware to support it. A master stroke really, which gave Microsoft an advantage that Apple has not been able to overcome since. But it was a theft of sorts. Hardcore capitalists say, "That's business" and maybe so. But follow my logic (I know it is tortured) a little further.
In similar fashion, while all the creative, forward thinking, adventurers and entrepreneurs were taking real world risks to test the new paradigm, starting countless new ventures in the new medium, the righties were quietly making fortunes as VCs, usurious lenders and by developing ways to use the boon in productivity to eliminate positions. PAying fewer Americans less to do more work using these new productivity-enhacing technologies was their game.
So for a decade while Liberals were making phenomenal changes and quantum advancements in the way the world communicates and transacts business, these bastards were quietly looting the treasury and undoing the very systems that enabled American greatness in the first place. We were just too busy doing work to uplift humanity to notice. This is how a Democratic president, who presided over the largest expansion in US history, was able to leave a balanced budget and surplus to the incoming asshats, er, um, I mean republicant administration and Congress. During this time of record productivity and output, the righties were busy finding ways to steal our national bounty. It took eight years of toxic Republicant "governance" to disrupt things to the point that the Left was ultimately compelled (as a means of survival) to lay down the work of advancement and focus on stopping the damage.
In short, left thinking people typically do the hard work of innovation, advancement and promotion of social growth while the historically regressive rightists figure out ways to siphon off the cream and salt the fields as they move on. What do you think the ratio of left to right is among Wall Street types? There's a reason Dante put the usurers in the 8th ring of hell. Only the faithless and pedophiles were lower than that.