Choosing the Wrong Side in the Class War

Tom B had a good piece Wednesday on the not-so-great generation, in which he wrote:

... virtually 100% of these people... my lifelong friends who grew up in the same places and under the same conditions that I did... are among the most vociferous and hateful of the Tea Party base, spewing racial, religious and class hatred as if they were something special, and busting their butts to deny to their own children the help and assistance that they themselves needed and relied on from time to time.

But it's not just Tom's contemporaries. It's Florida voters of all ages who overwhelmingly support drug testing of welfare recipients even though it's already been proven a massive waste of money.

And it's anti-abortion freakazoids who pride themselves on being "pro-life" whooping and cheering for executions.

Steve M:

Now, you'll say that the death penalty is "big government," just like government intervention in the marketplace, so America's dominant religious conservatives should oppose capital punishment. But we know how that works when it comes to foreign policy -- military intervention (at least when initiated by conservatives) isn't "big government," either. It's morality. It's God working through government. It's barely seen as "government" at all. So it's OK.

What America's dominant religious conservatives oppose, I think, isn't government per se, but government showing mercy. What the free market does is God's will. What the criminal justice system does is God's will (at least when it's punishing people). So don't mess with it.

SNIP

If you think we all get what we deserve, and you think government social-service programs are "big government" intervention but the criminal justice system isn't really government at all, then you'd assume that all the people who end up on Death Row belong there -- they put themselves there (success = ability, therefore failure = lack of ability). A wrongful conviction isn't intrusive government. Reversing a wrongful conviction is intrusive government. God's way is for you to wind up where you deserve to be. Whereas human mercy, whether it's unemployment insurance for the "undeserving" or a pardon from the clemency board, is sinful.

And so we're a nation of Rick Perrys, executing without doubt.

Tina Dupuy at Crooks and Liars finds an answer in a pseudo Obama bumper sticker reading "Because everyone deserves some of what you've worked hard for."

Why does this anti-wealth distribution sentiment resonate with him? Why doesn’t he want banksters and CEOs to pay up?

“Because everyone deserves some of what you’ve worked hard for.”

This message was written and uploaded before the tea party, when the economy was still in free fall. And even though “thinkers” like Samuel R. Staley, a fellow at the Reason Institute, wrote the unintentionally hilarious talking point now being repeated by GOP lawmakers: “It appears we are two years into a ‘lost decade,’” the fact of the matter is the middle-class has already had a lost decade – the ‘00s.

In the middle-class wages are flat. The three million jobs Bush created in his eight years in office were moot since the population grew by 22 million. Prices have gone up, salaries have not. Home values have fallen, retirement plans are gone, savings are drained. Not since the 1930s has a generation been less prosperous than the one before. In 2008, the economy for the middle-class went from long-term stagnation to suddenly much worse.

And this reasonably caused a fear reaction in this Saturn driver. What is he concerned about? Wealth distribution. Why?

It’s usually assumed that the reason Americans specifically don’t want to see taxes raised on the rich is because, in spite of driving a defunct GM brand four-door, they think of themselves as the “soon-to-be rich.” But a paper published in the National Journal of Economic Research in July suggests otherwise. They offer that it’s not hoping to be on top that makes us not want the wealthier to be taxed more – it’s the fear of being at the bottom. It’s referred to as “last-place aversion.”
The Economist wrote, “In keeping with the notion of ‘last-place aversion,’ the people who were a spot away from the bottom were the most likely to give the money to the person above them: rewarding the ‘rich’ but ensuring that someone remained poorer than themselves.”

So taxing the rich isn’t about the fantasy that we’re going to someday be rich – it’s about the very real visceral fear of being, well, the poorest. If the government helps those below you, then they’ll be at your level – that’s the unfairness they’re afraid of.

Named one of the worst CEOs of 2008, GM head, Rick Wagoner received a $20 million dollar retirement package and an owner of one of his beaters has a bumper sticker decrying higher taxes for him.

The driver isn’t fantasizing about being Wagoner – he’s terrified of being driven even lower in the middle-class. And the GOP has successfully exploited that fear.
Because when people are afraid, they do all kinds of irrational things…like vote Republican.

The reason repugs can get away with claiming that the slightest effort toward equality on the part of liberals is OMG CLASS WAR HOW DARE THEY is that for 35 years, liberals have refused to fight back against the repug war on everyone who is not a rich, white, straight, male, xian. So any move on defense - let alone offense - on the part of liberals can be easily spun as a major attack.

Repugs want everyone to think scary liberals have the country under siege? I say fine. Let us scary liberals put the country under siege. Tax all income over $250,000 at 90 percent and use the money to create 10 million new, public, unionized jobs.

It's been class war for decades. Time for liberals to start fighting it.