The age of resentment

[Bgno64]

http://lancasteronline.com/blogs/smartremarks/2011/04/21/the-age-of-resentment/">Smart Remarks:

Conservatives believe – and have been taught – that redistribution is a moral evil. We touched on this briefly last week; but what you must understand is that a hatred of redistribution lies at the very heart of conservatism. Conservatives believe it immoral to take the fruits of the labor of one and give them to another. Period. End of story.

Except that it isn’t the end of the story. ...

<snip>

An opposition to redistribution was always a core value of those who had the most to “redistribute.” But how and why have workaday conservatives – who frankly have very little to “redistribute,” and have benefitted from “redistribution” – signed on to oppose it?

In large part, it’s because they see the dysfunction of urban America and think: Why should my tax dollars go to support any of that? Why should the money I have earned to go pay for welfare and food stamps and housing assistance and God knows what else when all this money I’ve paid, over all these years, hasn’t solved these social problems and won’t solve these problems and yet I’m still on the hook for ever-more money, every single year, forever?

Until liberals can deal with that argument, they don’t even know what they’re up against. That is a legitimate argument.

And the answer to it is – look bud, your tax dollars supports the United States of America as it is. Do you think I, as a liberal, believe that my tax dollars should be used for perpetual war being waged for perpetual peace? Why in the world should my tax money be used to fund military bases in Germany more than half a century after the end of World War II? More than that, I believe our interventionism in the Middle East and in general to be immoral. I do not believe we have either the responsibility or right to stick our nose into other countries’ affairs. And yet we do it; it is a cornerstone of our foreign policy and my tax money goes to support this.

So your money is used for things you don’t like and my money is used for things I don’t like and yet all of it is the foundation of this society in which we live – in which our interventionism, whether I like it or not, keeps the price of oil for my own car low enough to be affordable (er, not so much anyomre). And the money of yours that goes to support programs designed to help the poor helps pay for a certain degree of stability for the poor, and their communities.

Get it? We have a (for now) stable society because of the money that comes out of your paycheck and mine. And if, all of a sudden, we’re going to start to say that my money shouldn’t be used to support this or that – there will be consequences.

The consequences of the Ryan proposal on Medicare is that older Americans simply will not be able to afford the health care they may need. That. Is. A. Fact. That’s the entire point of his proposal.

His proposal is built around the notion that “redistribution” is a greater moral evil than a society that allows its old people to struggle to pay medical bills in their twilight years.

It is built around the idea that however little I may have, I got mine – so you go get yours.

In a nation where people feel their own personal prosperity slipping away, this sentiment is only going to be amplified. If you haven’t received a raise at work for two or three years, and the value of your home is falling, and you’re behind on your credit card bills – of course you are going to resent the notion that your money is being taken by the government to help prop up somebody else.

And the folks with the biggest piles of money, who have always resented this, have exploited this sentiment. Limbaugh and Fox News and the rest of the conservative media in particular have been the messengers, nurturing the ideology, reinforcing the rationale, stoking the resentment. Good lord, why do you think Drudge amplifies every single instance of horrific urban violence?

[cliffordu]

1. The argument is this:

The correct social programs can turn welfare moms, inner city kids (spelled brown) and all them immigrants into:

TAX PAYERS.

head start, food stamps, pell grants...Job corps, some of them old community training programs - (CETA???) all help.

Hand up instead of a hand out, etc, etc, etc......

TAX PAYERS.

and for the disabled, the infirm, the least of our brothers and sisters, a little charity does the soul good.

[patrice]

2. You touch on some points that I learned only a couple of weeks ago, for example,

While reading the comments on yet another case of horrific child abuse, I came across someone who made the point that if the abusers' economic class did not receive welfare they likely would not have had the child whom they horribly killed. Though I deeply believe in our responsibilities for one another, for EVERYONE, I couldn't deny the logic of that comment, especially when expanded from the specific case, in which it may or may not have been true, to millions and millions of people over the decades.

There IS something deeply broken in the minds and hearts on both sides. In regards to one's self or in one's perceptions of others, pretending that brokenness isn't there, or that it can be fixed by dressing it up in an acceptable persona, only perpetuates all of the problems.

[WingDinger]

3. To catapult the propaganda, they instill hypervigilance

this hardens a mans heart. The GOP are using psyops to go to war against those lessers that would be better gone, so the worthy can prosper.

They also fetishize the nukular family, again, to instill hypervigilance. It is cynical, and calculated.

[Bgno64]

4. It's designed specifically to divide and conquer

That's why it's so vital to know what the exact arguments are.

Too often we, and they, make cartoons out of each others' arguments. Well, it's easy to refute or lampoon a cartoon. But the real arguments have to be acknowledged to be refuted.

[Demeter]

5. It Isn't THEIR Money--It's Illegally Stolen Looting of the Economy and the Workers

Having ALREADY redistributed the economic proceeds to themselves, OF COURSE the Rich (or Obscenely Wealthy, as I fondly call them) don't want it "distributed" back to the people who generated the wealth in the first place, and their dependents....

[starroute]

6. There are better arguments for why all this is all a necessary part of the system

Our society has settled on something like a 5% unemployment rate to hold down inflation. But that means the 5% who are unemployed are not slackers -- they're (unwillingly) doing their part to keep the system stable.

We have a large permanent underclass who serve as consumers but not as producers -- not because they're lazy, but because it takes fewer people to produce the goods we need than to purchase them. So the welfare money that comes out of the paychecks of the gainfully employed is going to maintain the level of consumption that keeps them gainfully employed. It may be inefficient but it's the way things are currently structured, and you can't end it without provoking social and economic turmoil.

We have also decided it is worthwhile for society to support the elderly because otherwise the burden will fall on their children, who are already struggling to make the mortgage payments and send their own kids through college. Without Social Security and Medicare as we currently know them, they would have to pay their parents' medical bills, or take them into their own homes to provide end-of-life care, or at the very least find that the modest inheritance they were hoping for has already evaporated.

I could go on, but those are the most obvious examples. These "redistribution" measures are what keeps the system stable and functioning smoothly, and those who complain the loudest are probably benefited from them the most.

[txlibdem]

7. And yet so many voters have swallowed the TeaPublicans lies hook line and sinker

And they're dangling on the line but instead of struggling to break free they are swimming toward the rod and reel. Now, in that situation, what do you think happens eventually?

But what do I know. Maybe the coming Thousand Year Reich will end better for the citizens than the last one.