In last night's The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon opening monologue, Jimmy showed a clip on CNN last week where two black women who are part of "Stump for Trump" showed up and made some statements. From the bit Jimmy excerpted:
We don't need a handout, but we need a handup. And I always say [...] he can give you a fish you gonna eat for a day, but if a man show you how to fish you eat for a lifetime."
Just for some perspective: when the first iteration of the phrase was used in the 1880s, fish were inexpensive and a poor man's food, so the phrase had to do with subsistence. Now they are expensive and more for the wealthy, so a lot of people use the phrase in the modern day to indicate that education is a key to wealth.
The phrase used by the "Stump for Trump" ladies is actually a fair representation of Republican rhetoric. It's also thoroughly inaccurate as a representation of both Republican and Democratic policy. For a deconstruction of the old saying and how both parties approach it, head below the fold.
The saying "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, but teach a man how to fish and he eats for a lifetime" is often used by Republicans to oppose various forms of social safety net spending, especially modern versions of Welfare and food stamps. How their policies stack up to the rhetoric is another story.
Republican policies oppose governmental social safety spending, meaning they oppose government giving hungry people fish for a day. They also oppose fully funding public education, meaning they also oppose teaching people how to fish unless they learn at a private fishing school. They oppose and undercut the Environmental Protection Agency and major limits on pollution of streams and rivers, meaning they want fewer fish available for people who fish and are not conserving the rivers and streams where people fish, among other things. They oppose any fishing limits done to preserve and conserve fish stocks, meaning there will be less fish later on for everyone. They are in favor of giving wealthy boat owners more fishing nets, meaning they will give wealthy people more of the dwindling stock of fish.
Democratic policies support expanding social safety spending, meaning they want more people who need sustenance to have fish each day. They are for strong and functional public education, meaning they want people to know how to fish. They support expanded EPA funding and authority and want reduced pollution in our rivers and streams, meaning they want more people fishing (and doing other things) in clean, clear lakes and streams. They are in favor of reasonable protection of fish stock in case of small schools of fish, meaning there will still be fish for later generations. And, they are generally in favor of giving fishing poles to people who need them, meaning people have the tools to fish.
When Republicans oppose government doing something, they always talk about letting charities or the private sector handle these important needs. They seem to forget that non-governmental charities cannot handle all of the need for charity in the US, and that the private sector cannot be trusted with public goods. This is why we went to government in the first place. Since they don't want to conserve fish stocks for later or conserve fishing grounds, I don't think they should be called "conservative" either.
Republicans don't want to give a man a fish, teach a man to fish, give him the means to fish, or even leave him with anyplace good to fish. Unless he's as rich as Donald Trump, that is.
Enough is enough. If the radical right wants to keep using that phrase, they damn well better explain how they will teach a man to fish and how there will still be fish that are safe for him to eat when he finally learns how.
By contrast, Democrats will give a man a fish until they finish teaching him how to fish, make sure the fishing spots are still good when he's ready to fish, and then they will give him a good fishing pole.
The scary thing is that Trump's numbers keep going up.