Herman Cain: most comfortable when scolding others (Gage Skidmore)
Herman Cain continues the main theme of his campaign, which is that middle class Americans are spoiled little whiners who need to suck it up and let the rich get on with the business of the country. His latest effort is an editorial in the
New York Post on the subject of Occupy Wall Street. The
Post illustrates the piece with a picture of a protestor dressed up in historical garb: As you can imagine, the
Post has now decided that dressing up in historical garb is now a
bad thing; why people attending actual presidential debates dressed up as colonial military figures is a
good thing, by contrast, is left for all of us to surmise.
In any event, here is Cain, making his usual argument:
Visiting New York this week, I found the organized street protests against Wall Street were the talk of the town. But I’m sorry -- they lost me at hello.
Their rants to the media and those unfortunate enough to cross their paths have been all over the map -- from tirades over big business, to 9/11 conspiracy theories, to admitting not even knowing why they’re there -- but a common theme is that they’ve set their sights on rich people.
News flash: Extremely rich person says stop being mad at rich people. Also, you're all crazy. Entirely absent from Cain's missive is any acknowledgement whatsoever that the protestors are not simply "mad at rich people," but are angry about American policies towards rich people and large corporations, specifically unfair tax structures, the overlooking of criminal activities by large businesses, the treatment of workers versus their leaders, and the generally parasitic nature of a financial sector steeped in gambling and speculation for the benefit of a minute sub-tenth-of-a-percent of people, subsidized and socialized by everyone else. Cain, as usual, mutters not a word towards these complaints: In his mind, the only possible reason for anger at "rich people" is jealosy, or laziness, or both.
Continuing immediately from that dullard's beginning, Cain then switches to another argument popular among conservatives, which saves him from having to think of anything more substantive to say:
It’s ironic that protesters who have uniformly attacked the rich and corporate CEOs happen to sport iPods, iPhones and other innovative technological tools that entrepreneurs have worked so hard to invent, build and distribute to consumers.
Capitalism -- from Wall Street to Main Street -- is the economic engine that’s made the United States the superpower it is. It’s what allows us to enjoy all the comforts of modern life -- from electricity, to the automobile, to commercial airliners, to putting food on the table, to the latest high-tech gadgets.
I have a hard time imagining what these protesters think will come of this -- that Wall Street execs will come running out of their offices to write them a check?
Why is it ironic? Are the protestors against products? Are they against capitalism, truly? And for good measure, how many of these CEO's (I can name one, I believe) personally came up with these products sold by their company? How many of these products were produced by Bain Capital, Romney's company-liquidation vehicle? How many were produced by the CEO of Bank of America, precisely?
The crux of the argument seems to be: You use products produced by companies, therefore no matter what any other company may do, you should be damn grateful to them, should never criticize them, should never so much as turn on a lamp without swearing an oath of fealty to all companies involved and not involved. Anything less is treachery: Companies have given you automobiles and airline flights, and so you owe them. And you owe the top executives of those companies the most of all, because although they did not invent electricity, or automobiles, or air travel, or food, and even though none of them does any of the actual work of generating electricity, or growing food, or building the automobiles, or flying the planes, since all of that is left to workers, it is the shining brilliance of the executive that is truly master of all of it. So you must not criticize them, or you are a hypocrite. You must not point out offenses or injuries inflicted upon others by companies or absurd, asinine behaviors by the masters of the financial sector because iPod.
Is that the point meant? I must say, it sounds rather more stupid when fully spelled out.
So we've covered the protestors have no point and the protestors should be grateful to corporations and shut up. Now we get to what Cain is most famous for, which is telling everyone who is not a wealthy corporate executive that it is their own damn fault.
Rather than protest against Wall Street, those camped out in the streets should examine their own failures and take a hard look in the mirror.
When I grew up in the South during the era of segregation, my family had little money. But my father Luther and mother Lenora were rich in ideas, faith and love. They were hard workers and family oriented, and instilled those same values in their children.
My father worked three jobs to fulfill his dreams -- a house for our family and a Cadillac. My mother was a maid. They both believed in the American dream, and made their dreams come true. Though their circumstances were tough, they never played the victim card. They never made excuses.
Good for you. I know there are many people out there who are looking for one job, but cannot find that. You may have heard of something called "nine percent unemployment" and a lack of jobs, at some point. And good for your family full of ideas, faith and love. It may surprise you to know that many of the working poor have families with the same attributes.
I do not quite know what to make of a presidential candidate who equates protestors with failures. I suppose if you honestly believe that everyone in America would indeed be rich merely by working hard at their job, and you further equate not being rich with being a failure, it follows, but it still seems a deeply obtuse presumption. Again, Cain cannot recognize any possible reason for middle-class discontent aside from mere jealousy of their betters. He does not so much want to be president as to be recognized as our king, naturally endowed with a higher morality and work ethic than any of the rest of us.
Cain may not acknowledge the assistance of anyone or anything else, when it comes to his family and his own life, but I think the government he so easily dismisses, and the civil disobedience he so despises, had more than a little to do with his own opportunities for success. It seems hard to imagine Cain becoming either a wealthy man or a presidential candidate had other people not worked very, very hard to end the segregation that Cain idly mentions as hardship-not-to-be-complained-about.
From what I’ve seen of these protesters -- including one news clip of a young man shouting at an elderly passerby that he wouldn’t work a $7-an-hour job -- it seems they would rather have a handout than work.
Than you haven't seen very much, and you need to see more. That would be like me saying that all brown-eyed people are shiftless, because I once heard a brown-eyed man tell a lie. Cain devolves too quickly into stereotyping others, which is the probable reason behind all of his misconceptions, whether they be of Muslims, of poor people, of protestors, of immigrants, or anyone else.
What they should learn is that you don’t help the poor by hurting the rich. That’s not America -- and not how American dreams are made. Empowerment is the key to success, not entitlement.
So to those asking for a handout on Wall Street, my message is this: “If you’re not rich, don’t blame the rich -- get out there and work for it. You have to earn it.”
Is this really, then, what Herman Cain believes these protests are all about? The financial sector gets bailed out on every taxpayer's dime, simply because we "can't afford" to let the speculators wither on the vine, and Cain tsks at the protestors for wanting a handout? A group of people object to a tax structure that treats money earned by the wealthy as being inherently "better" than that earned by actual labor, and doles out lavish tax breaks to the former, and it is a sense of entitlement that causes the non-wealthy to object?
I am sure, I am absolutely positive, that Herman Cain believes the protests are all about hurting the rich, and that the protestors have no points to make, and that they are all lazy, shiftless, barely employed and looking for free money from their harder-working betters. But that is because Cain knows not a damn thing about the country he seeks to govern. Cain rails against entitlement, while basing his entire premise on the entitlement of the wealthy. Cain demands empowerment, while dismissing protestors who are currently putting themselves through a tremendous amount of work in order to better empower themselves. Cain scoffs at the middle class, with their iPods and gadgets and electricity, and says that being angry at the wealthy heads of those corporations is hypocrisy, but never once acknowledges that every car he rides in, and every plane he flies, and every bit of clothing on his back was actually made, or delivered, or driven, or repaired by the lesser classes (either here, or in other countries around the world) he so peevishly dismisses.
If the ultra-wealthy stopped working tomorrow, Mr. Cain, perhaps the world would be injured: If the middle class went on strike tomorrow, water would not even come out of your tap. Being angry at wealthy figures who pay less in taxes than the middle class is not entitlement. Being angry at the casual socialization of financial sector incompetence, and at the apparent indifference of financial sector fraud, is not wanting someone to write them a check. And being told that corporations are allowed to have literally unlimited influence in politics, but common workers attempting to bend politics is somehow corrupt, or shiftless, or suspicious, or dangerous—now that is too much for any honest person to take lying down.
Think of these protests as citizens united. But in this case, we mean the phrase quite literally.