The New Southern Strategy: Quote Ayn Rand to Blame the Middle Class

[marmar]

The New Southern Strategy: Quote Ayn Rand to Blame the Middle Class


It's a well-documented fact of history that for the past half-century at least, conservatives have used race resentment as a way of cutting the safety net in order to further enrich the already well-to-do. If the objective is to cut Medicaid or food stamps, bring up stories of lazy (black/brown) ne'er-do-wells, young bucks and welfare queens in the to steel the minds of white voters and fool them into destroying their own safety net. It's been a remarkably successful tactic, and one that is still being used with frequency to this day.

One of the keys to the race-baiting attack has been to take the social malaise that develops in economically depressed communities and attribute that malaise to some in-born defect of the people of the communities themselves. By blaming poor outcomes on genetic and cultural moral lassitude rather than pre-existing economic oppression, it becomes much easier to deny social services to those communities while lower taxes on wealthy white "producers."

Throw in some hippie-punching and a blame campaign waged against the cosmopolitan values of the post-60s to account for everything else wrong with America that can be fixed with economic libertarianism mixed with strict religion-based social controls, and you have the basic political and economic program of the Right. It has been very effective.

But that program is now becoming a victim of its own success. As economic libertarianism has dragged down middle-class wages and benefits, suddenly the social malaise that has long gripped minority communities is starting to make itself felt across the entirety of America, including among working-class whites. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/788883/the_new_southern_strategy%3A_quote_ayn_rand_to_blame_the_middle_class/

[DonCoquixote]

1. I admit to some schaenfruede

A lot of the people that are now being slammed and demonized were the same people who quoted Ayn Rand or Fox news all day, and added a bit of racism about "brown people", or "you Hispanics are lazy." Now, they realize they are just as disposable as the folks they helped shovel feces on. Not that they get it.

I really am trying to resist the pleasure, because I know that we need eahc other to beat the uber-rich. That being said, part of me wonders, what will happen when companies realize they can outsource CEO's as easily as anyone else, and keep the profits. I suppose some find it ok when all the rich faces are white, but when those people on the Golf Courses have yellow or light brown or dark brown skin, then they will start to show their true colors (see Obama, Barack H.)