This piece is not about today's headlines, but is, rather, a composite of "headlines" from the last 7 years and the impact they've had on my old friends. The compelling issue is the separation of people from one another along ideological lines, even though logic is not necessarily involved. Your comments about your own experiences will help all of us feel a little better about what we're doing on Daily Kos and in our activist lives.
My high school graduation class numbered a few over 400 students in 1960. The school sat in a middle class suburb east of Cleveland, OH. The basic demographic was of European ancestry with a smattering of “other” ethnicities. There were only 3 African-American students in our school and two of them were from one family. The voting tendency was strongly Democrat as most of the households were working class. Those Republicans were of the old school, but not so old that they had forgotten the Progressive Era when the abuse of labor was “normal” to the business environment.
For some odd reason I’ve been in contact with people from that class and those from my college days at Ohio University recently. With two exceptions, they are all Republicans, or claim to be conservative. How did that happen?
Well, several of them went into private business and followed the American tradition of no taxes, no regulation, jingoistic patriotism and the cheapest labor available. What is really disappointing is that most, but not all, of my former friends and acquaintances continued to follow the “modern” Republican mantras of ultra-conservatism and fierce anti-Obama attitudes. It’s almost as if they went to a tea party and met the mad hatter. What got into them that they lost their ability to reason and see facts that were true, simple and undistorted? Why did Fox News get into my friends’ heads and ruin perfectly good brains…at least politically?
One of the dog whistles I get from these folks is the “your President” preamble to some distorted or flatly incorrect notion about policy…especially economic policy. So, here’s a reminder:
*It is Congress that establishes budgets, spending and taxation, not the President.
*President Obama inherited a $10 trillion deficit left him by his Republican President and Congress for 1½ terms. We are now paying interest that adds to our yearly debt.
*We are still borrowing money for the endless war in Afghanistan and against ISIS after finally getting most of our military out of Iraq. Illegal, endless war is the Republican idea to keep feeding the stock portfolios for those invested in the military-industrial complex. Who says government spending doesn’t create jobs?
*We are still borrowing money to make up for tax cuts given to those who can most afford to pay them so that we can meet our obligations to the poor, the seniors and the sick.
*We are still trying to re-regulate Wall Street and the banks so they won’t cash in again on bad loans while leaving the taxpayer holding the bag. The stimulus that was only half a loaf was made on borrowed money. The good news is that most of the banks have paid it back.
*Bailing out the auto industry used borrowed money, but saved over a million jobs including many in those rust belt areas where my classmates and I grew up and enjoyed a relatively comfortable upbringing from the auto industry.
The Republican caucus in Congress has been hijacked by the Tea Party that is willing to burn down the house rather than spend a nickel on the people the Congress is supposed to govern. Maybe if they had to live like the 50 million poor and starving people in this country they might have a different view.
The gridlock in Congress is a direct result of several things: (1) The Tea Party’s intransigence toward anything that works for the working classes. (2) The obvious commitment by the Republicans to favor the top 2% at the expense of everyone else. (3) The so-called Norquist pledge that supports 1 & 2. (4) The inability of the Democratic caucus to call the bluffs of the Republicans and/or actually form a consensus in either house of Congress. (5) Voter apathy that set new records for voter turnout in the 2014 mid-terms. The President is equally at fault for not presenting stronger leadership for the Congress and compromising too much during his first term. His rope-a-dope game didn’t work for the first term. He failed to fully understand how deep and wide the racism and backwardness of the monied special interests was and how much they control the Congress - especially the Republicans in Congress.
The continuous sound of racial dog whistles during the last campaign reminds us all of how organic racism still is in the United States despite having killed over 600,000 of our fellow countrymen to “solve” that moral problem. I guess having a short memory about such painful segments of history is how we learn that repeating them – in whatever form – creates more incompetence than it eliminates.
De-regulation of Wall St. plus NAFTA allowed, indeed promoted, the off-shore shipping of American jobs and the hoarding of profit in foreign banks outside of the tax laws and created a huge counter-economic environment: No taxes paid by people in good jobs, plus a loss of tax revenue (some data shows it to be over $30 trillion) from off-shore profits made by American corporations and banks.
The Tea Party and their conservative brethren cling to the same things that turned off the majority of the voters and continue to blame everything that hasn’t been fixed or addressed on President Obama. Why don’t they blame the Congress? Why don’t my Republican friends and classmates jump on the counter-productive fools who would burn down the House rather than compromise on solutions to our gridlock? Is their dislike of anything having a liberal label so evil because it actually tries to help and develop a more vigorous nation through public assistance until new jobs are created?
I wonder how my friends will react if their politics are successful and their Social Security benefits are cut, or those of their children are cut/eliminated? I wonder what they’ll say when their physicians say they no longer see Medicare patients, because the Affordable Care Act didn’t go far enough? Or, how will they feel when their hoarded fortunes are absorbed by their failing health and not available to pass along to their heirs? That makes the estate tax questions moot.