Working Class Zero

[EmeraldCityGrl]

912'ers, Birthers, Teabaggers are a day late and a dollar short.


"Now consider the people who showed up in a state of generalized rage in Washington over the weekend. They have no leaders, save a self-described rodeo clown — Glenn Beck of Fox News — and some well-funded Astroturf outfits from the permanent lobbying class inside the Beltway. They are loosely organized under a Tea Party movement, but these people are closer to British Tories than 18th century patriots with a love of equality."


http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/working-class-zero/

[Warpy]

1. They're not well educated and they're actively disinformed

by corrupt media outlets that have turned to partisan, corporate propaganda.

They might not all be bad people, but they've been screwed without getting kissed for the last 40 years and they know it.

They just don't have enough upstairs to put it together that the people who have been screwing them are the same people who are disinforming them.

I'm not angry at the suckers. I'm furious at the slick types who are suckering them.

[elleng]

2. And those slick types are republicans

seeking to grow an otherwise faltering 'base,' thats the real problem imo. We CANNOT ignore these undereducated, disinformed, as they ARE the repug base, and they will keep making noise and cause big problems.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. Also Democrats who refuse to name things as they are

and keep telling us that bigots are good people and honest brokers. That amounts to singing back up for Beck and Company.

[izquierdista]

3. I know a sucker

Maybe you do too. And you are right to be furious at the ones who are pulling the wool over their eyes. But the suckers feel so proud that they have processed some information, that it is difficult to tell them to put it down, it is false information they have processed. After all that effort that they put in to memorize a meme, they are resentful when it is pointed out that the meme has a false premise (there's gonna be death panels!) or is based on faulty logic (government run health care will be so bad that the insurance companies won't be able to compete!).

It's at this point that you have to learn about the compassion and wisdom that a third grade teacher has when her young students come to class filled with old wives' tales and mumbo-jumbo that their parents and grandparents have told them. There is no law preventing children from being told the earth is 5000 years old, the Flintstones is a documentary, and the moon is made of green cheese. If young children are laughed at for erroneous beliefs, they quickly learn to shut up about them and adopt more accurate thinking. Not so with adults, when their erroneous beliefs are pointed out, they more likely get angry with the person challenging them and will argue and fight.

No, adults need to come to the realization that they have been duped in private, away from ridicule and embarrassment, for the last thing they will ever do is admit to being conned. The best we can do is to ask them a probing question, one they have to go away and think on for a while, and then, maybe, the light will come on and they will come to realize that they have been led astray all along. One of the best ways is to use that Dr. Phil favorite line "How's that ______ working out for ya?". As in, when talking to someone who has been denied treatment from their insurance company "How's that for-profit insurance working out for ya?". But you can't be too cocky administering that line. What needs to happen is for the suckers to go home and reflect on things until they come to the realization, 'You know, this isn't working out so good'.