This has been my personal motto for the past few years. It is a restatement of the title of Hillary Clinton's book, "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child." It is also the perfect retort to the GOP's "We built it" bullpoopy and their claims that President Obama is a socialist.
Everyone can relate to teamwork, team achievement, collective efforts to accomplish things that no one human alone could accomplish. The truth needs to be reinforced that every successful enterprise got that way as a result of the input and efforts of many people in addition to the person who had the original idea. There may be a few freak instances of one-person successes with no supporting cast, but I'd wager the percentage is miniscule. Athletes, actors, musicians, all give the appearance of individual achievement, but it is an illusion. They all had teachers, coaches, mentors who influenced and encouraged them. They also have others in their lives who help to make them financially successful - agents, accountants, lawyers, etc.
Unfortunately, over the past twenty years or so, the Republicans have become more devoted to the success of Team GOP than to Team America. They started this nonsense back when Bill Clinton was elected and had a Democratic Congress his first two years. Republican Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole devised a strategy whereby the Republicans withheld their votes for every single bill in Congress. There was to be no bipartisan agreement on anything. Anything that was going to pass would have to be tailored to garner the votes of the extreme left in the House of Representatives. The GOP then ran in 1994 against the extremely liberal Democratic Congress and the failed Hillarycare.
They ramped up the obstructionist tactics big time when Obama won in 2008. With an unprecedented number of filibusters and an intransigent Tea Party in the House the past two years, it has been impossible to get anything passed to actually help speed the economic recovery. This has been fine for the GOP base because very few of them are truly struggling. But many people in the middle have been living on the edge for years, uncertain whether they will still have a job after this paycheck, wondering if they will be able to afford gas to get to work, food to feed their children, much less anything that might be considered a luxury - like a 6 pack of good beer. From what I understand, the wealthy have still been buying yachts and airplanes though.
And after deliberately obstructing America's economic recovery these same Republicans have the gall to campaign on Obama's handling of the economy. They acted as traitors to Team America to enable Team GOP to prevail politically. Meanwhile, they've spent the past four years denouncing teamwork in favor of their myth of rugged individualism - just like Jesus Ayn Rand preached.
Here is what I wrote on this topic on Facebook earlier. It was accompanying a link to Nicholas Kristof's post, The Secret Weapon - All of Us, which I found via teacherken's reclisted diary this morning.
Oops! In addition to the FACT that their convention theme is based on a demonstrable lie, the businesswoman that the Republicans presented as the face of their, "We Built It" theme has received $2 Million in government backed loans via the Small Business Administration and $15 Million in government contracts. She also gave a presentation earlier this year in which she praised the value of government assistance to entrepreneurs.
She simply helps to point to the truth embedded within their lying - WE did build that, all of us, directly or indirectly ... We, the people of the United States of America using the public commons managed by the federal, state, and local governments, have provided the road and bridges that make markets available, make transportation of products and raw materials possible. We have provided the education system, public safety services such as fire, police and sanitation - All basic needs of society. These are the things provided by the taxes we pay. In addition, there are programs such as those used by Ms. Valenzuela which help to supply needed capital to enable small businesses such as hers to grow and prosper, spreading prosperity as they add jobs to the economy.
This incident also points to one of the basic logical contradictions of the modern Republican party. They rail against government while asking to be given control of the same. They also prove their thesis, that government is bad, by being bad at governing. Look at the mess that their policies made of things in the first decade of the 2000's. When George W. Bush took office, Bill Clinton had left the federal budget in its best shape in decades. The deficit was shrinking and actual budget surpluses were projected as far out as projections were made. Bush immediately cut taxes, substantially for the wealthy, with a pittance thrown to the middle class to get their support.
Where are all the jobs this should have produced? According to Republican mythology, all this money in the hands of the so-called job creators should have resulted in an explosion of jobs. Instead it resulted in an explosion of gambling on Wall Street using people's home mortgages as the chips. Instead of jobs we got hyper-leveraged investment strategies, unregulated due to howls from Wall Street at the mere suggestion. And it all came crashing down shortly before the 2008 election. And now, after four years of obstructing progress and screaming about "the deficit" when Bush's wars and tax cuts are the biggest causes of that deficit, the Republicans are trying to blame the slow pace of recovery on the President for not doing enough. THEY are the ones who blocked progress and now they blame him for their, not inaction, but active opposition via an unprecedented number of uses of the filibuster in the Senate, and Tea Party House members who refuse to compromise when they are given almost everything they demand.
And as I said, this choice of Ms. Valenzuela is the perfect emblem of Republicanism. First, there is an inherent dishonesty in presenting her as someone who "built it herself" - a glaring dishonesty, quite frankly. Second, it highlights their basic incompetence. WHO VETTED THIS CHOICE? Seriously, they managed this pretty much as well as they manage governance - not well at all. Not only are they constructing their entire theme around a lie, they can't even competently present their lie because they are so poor at actually managing. Of course, they don't ever "manage" or govern, they reign - top down, my way or the highway reigning. That's probably how this "unfortunate" choice happened - as a dictate from above. Authoritarian personalities just can't help but fall in line.