Who convinced so many poor people to put the interests of the wealthy above all?

[Ardent15]

Was it Reagan with his "Greed is good" ideology? Was it Rush Limbaugh with his constant accusations of "class warfare?"

Was it Faux News? Was it the religious right?

It's just sickening to see so many people of below-modest means to vote for politicians who only give a fuck about their absurdly rich lobbyist friends.

[Catshrink]

1. One way is to use social issues to divide.

Social issues like race and abortion. People will vote for the anti-choice candidate even if it is not in their own interests. Or in the case of *, they wanted to have a beer with him or in the case of Palin, "she's just like me." :puke:

[Yurovsky]

38. You got it... anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-immigrant....

consolidate all that hate and it's a lot easier to keep the attention away from the fact that you're screwing them economically.

The Right seems to be anti-everything .... except "war". And sadly, it's these same poor kids who get suckered into volunteering to be cannon fodder for the warlords at the Pentagon.

And as others have stated in this thread, this whole sordid affair is openly encouraged by the right wing preachers every Sunday in towns small and large from coast to coast. Vile... simply vile.

[RoyGBiv]

2. Need to go back a bit further in time ...

Couple hundred years or so ...

IOW, this is not a new phenomenon. That so many of us treat it as though it is begins to answer why we so often fail.

[timeforpeace]

3. False premise. No one, especially poor people, put wealthy interests first. Got examples?

[Ardent15]

9. By default, poor people in Kansas or West Virginia or wherever voting for Bush....

...put wealthy interests first, even if not directly or intentionally.

[cali]

20. if they're not doing it intentionally then the premise of your op kind of falls apart.

[HughBeaumont]

19. SIIIIIIGGGHHH . . .

1980:


1984:


1988:


2000:


2004:


Any questions?

[KonaKane]

53. Better check again

See, this is one of those stubbornly ignored factoids that continue to do us harm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class">The lower middle class is mostly conservative, and votes that way in local and national elections. Now while they are not the same as "the poor", they still represent the group on the "outside" of rich and superrich fortune, ones most likely not to benefit at all by conservative policies.

As per the topic, probably the biggest victory the right wing has scored in this country was to convince the lesser monied sector of the economy that they will benefit by voting republican or conservative. Why they were able to do this is anyone's guess. Scraps falling from the table? Who knows. But you have to admit it was a masterstroke.

[devilgrrl]

61. Where has your head been lodged?

:popcorn:

[dkf]

4. Its the political consultants who know how to use psychology to manipulate.

[anonymous171]

5. The rich and their various self-serving ideologies like:

Social Darwinism, prosperity gospel, bootstrap doctrine, and any economic theory that promotes "free markets" as the solution to every problem.

[Zoeisright]

6. That's the biggest scam of the last 20 years.

Feeling sorry for rich people is ludicrous. And the fact that they've conned the poor into feeling sorry for them is just sick.

[asdjrocky]

7. Read "What's the Matter With Kansas"

That book goes far in answering your question.

[Ardent15]

11. It's on my list to read

I have Frank's "The Wrecking Crew", but that talks about the rise of the modern Right, not about this stuff.

[Politicub]

8. Their churches, IMHO

Many poor and rural folk trade the security of themselves and their children because they believe fundamentalist religious leaders who push hatred and fear of "the other."

[Andy823]

16. Yes

It has a lot to do with religion and fear tactics. The right has claimed the moral high ground and convinced many religious groups that they are the party that will bring religion back into politics, and have used the abortions issue as well as the gay issues to scare those religious people into voting for them, because they will put an end to all those evil things. Even though they have never done anything about those issues when they were in office, they keep on making false promises, and using fear tactics like they did with the "democrats will kill granny" crap to keep those same people voting for them year after year.

If you can scare people enough they will listen when you say you have the answers, and if you can scare seniors and make them think the democrats are going to "kill them", or take away their SS and medicare, they will vote for you. Doesn't really matter if the facts show it's the "republicans" who want to do away with SS and medicare because they don't take the time to really check things out. What even more ironic is when republicans are in charge and do so much damage, these same people blame the democrats for all of it! The right is very, very good at brainwashing people!

[Odin2005]

10. The Religious Right.

If you think you will go to Hell if you vote for a pro-choice candidate you will vote for the anti-choice candidate even though he will screw you over economically.

[Edweird]

12. I think it's part fake morality and part "Horatio Alger".

The (R)'s are portrayed as the party that stands up for 'morality' (remember the 'Moral Majority'?). We all know that it's a bunch of bullshit, but people are given 'the hard sell' and buy into it. I guess if you are capable of believing the bible to be literal truth, you could be convinced that republicans are 'moral'.

The other part is that a lot of people have bought into the seductive fantasy that, they too, will be wealthy. So they want to make sure that when they win the lottery or whatever, that they aren't taxed to death.

[TCJ70]

13. Whoever told them that rich people create jobs...

...instead of rich corporations creating jobs. That's what makes it OK for people to take millions of dollars a year in bonuses. If the money was reinvested in the company then we may actually see job growth...instead we see wealthy people's bank accounts grow.

[anonymous171]

15. So pretty much the entire political establishment since JFK?

[TCJ70]

28. Pretty much

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that we need to add a few more tax brackets similar to what we saw during FDR's presidency which in todays dollars would come up to somewhere between 63-79%. Why not?

[Spike89]

75. Ding, ding, this is the key

You've nailed it. In the recent tax increase vote here in Oregon, the results were extremely odd at first glance. The measures up for vote were almost ridiculously progressive in nature...taxes on people making $125K+ and corporations. Among the poorest precincts, the measures failed, but among the very people who would be taxed more, the votes were overwhelmingly yes.

The most effective ads and the majority of anti-tax letters to the editor all focused on how taxing these "rich" people would cost jobs. Despite all evidence to the contrary, "common sense" among the working (and unworking) poor is that taxes equal job loss. As with any effective message, this has some truth--over taxing can cause business to leave a state. However, defining what over taxation is, comparing regional tax burdens, and truly measuring effects of taxes on business is too nuanced and boring for most voters.

[The_Commonist]

14. It was the TV machine.

Scrambling people's brains for 60 years now.
Vast wasteland, indeed!

[QC]

17. Racism, homophobia, and misogyny.

"You all know that if the Democrats get elected the {insert name of hated group or groups here} will take over."

[raccoon]

67. +1000. nt

[lumpy]

18. Sheep are easily led by fear.

x

[dixiegrrrrl]

41. I agree.

Fear and the pain of thinking too much.
slogans work better than sentences, which work better than paragraphs.
Pictures on tv work better than having to read.
And working 60 hours a week plus commute leaves little time to dig up your own information.

[Tippy]

21. The promise of wealth takes many forms......

How come republicans use the same stale argument that they never had to ask a poor man for a job?
Why would you have to ask a rich person for a job, when you can have your own business? Duh, its easy to see which one is more logical. Why wouldn't you want your own business? Why would you want all the money to go to people that are already filthy rich?, and the money and opportunity will never come your away as easily because unlike the rich, the tax cuts for them are 54% under the Bush Tax cuts but for the common working man its alot lower. Why not get rid of that person in your way, and do your own thing? Obama just like Clinton has given people the chance to get educated and gave people the opportunity to thrive to get to the upper echelon of society.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100130093827AA1FAq2

[zeemike]

22. you are all wrong....Ayn Rand

She was the influence behind Milton Freedman and the Chicago school of econimics....Rand was his hero.
and it was Rand that invented the "virtues Of Selfishness" and became a movement in the right wing particularly in the south.
Reagan was the success of the Randiean movement and all flowed from that.

[Doremus]

23. It's the same mentality that allows people barely scraping by to donate to a wealthy church

with a pastor living in a 5000 square foot mansion.

There are a lot of naive/stupid/gullible/idiotic people in this world.

And there are a lot of unscrupulous/evil/greedy SOBs who know exactly how to pull their chains.

[anonymous171]

25. By calling them stupid you are actually justifying their oppression

I don't know if you realize that, but just remember that "the poor are stupid" is exactly what the PTB want you and everyone else to believe.

[JoeyT]

50. What else can you call it?

If someone repeatedly tries to pull you out of quicksand and you angrily slap their hand away, what other word should be used to describe it? Though for the metaphor to be accurate, I guess they'd have to slap your hand away while demanding no one offer to pull any minorities, foreigners, or homosexuals up.

No one claims that "Poor people are stupid". They claim that poor people that consistently support rich people that only want to make them and everyone else poorer just so they can prevent anyone from being helped at all are being stupid.

Edited to add: Though I'd say anyone that isn't a millionaire that votes GOP is being stupid.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

55. No, stealing from and abusing somebody isn't less wrong if the victim is stupid. -nt

[Doremus]

56. First of all you selected one adjective out of a list I provided.

So basically YOU decided that "stupid" describes them better than the other options provided.

Better take a dose of your own medicine. While you're at it, make your own list of adjectives that might describe the action of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Thanks.

[riverbendviewgal]

24. You can find your answer in

the book
DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS by Joe Bageant...

[LaPera]

26. And people like pigman Limbaugh perpetuate it & pound it into the morons & the poor everyday like

lying greedy television evangelists....that they too will someday be filthy rich and that they too won't want to pay taxes nor should they have to share their wealth because it'll all be theirs & belongs only to them, why should they share it and help out their community, their society, their country....It's the Reagan philosophy, fuck everyone else just grab all you can for yourself.

[xchrom]

27. The modern history of this goes to the seventies: William f buckley

Paul weyrich, Grover norquist, etc
the rising belief in the Chicago school and supply side.

Those are the roots.

[FormerDittoHead]

29. Racism had a lot to do with it. I'll explain.

Follow how this happened.

The heart of the Reagan years was that welfare was bad. This was code for "stop giving money to lazy blacks". He launched his political career in Philadelphia, Mississippi, which was the heart of the "states rights" movement.

The understanding was that Blacks were (are) poor because THEY DESERVE TO BE POOR.

"The thinking" (ie: "what do we Southerns SAY to justify our hatred of black people while sounding intellectually honest?") was that people shouldn't get money from the gov't because it kept them from pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, living up to their potential, discouraged productivity, etc.

The UNDERLYING ASSUMPTION OF THAT IDEOLOGY, however, was that we somehow lived in a "fair" economy where people are rewarded proportionately for their contribution to the market. The market was self regulating, and people got what they deserved. Blacks, therefore, deserved to be poor, and the rich deserved to be rich.

( reference: http://open.salon.com/blog/je_robertson/2009/12/03/rush_limbaugh_says_poor_dont_deserve_healthcare )

Get that - the ONLY WAY to agree that we shouldn't give money to the poor is to accept that somehow the economy is fair and equitable in distributing money to people given their contribution to the market.

And that's where it becomes a Catch 22.

Because in order to take money away from the "welfare moms" (aka lazy blacks) they HAVE to agree that the trust fund babies and the overly rewarded (ie: lucky ones) somehow "deserve" their extraordinary wealth more than people who (UNluckily) found themselves in jobs which were exported, those whose technology became obsolete (chemical photo processors).

The suggestion that rich people didn't somehow fully and deserve the spoils of the economy to the extraordinary degree that they do would imply that poor people were then somehow NOT responsible for their condition and therefore WERE deserving of help outside of "the market".

And so in order to hold back welfare from blacks, it is essential to allow the rich (and those who've chosen a career which became very lucrative) to the full reward of their positions.

[Ardent15]

32. You should make that into an OP

Seriously, that ties economic and social issues together very well.

[raccoon]

71. I second that emotion. nt

[lxlxlxl]

33. +1

good answer

"determinism for other people, freedom for you" is the problem

[OHdem10]

30. The Mantra ---Businesses supply jobs. and they do. However,

it is parroted as if it came right out of St. John's Gospel.

It has been used by Business to threaten--we will send these jobs
overseas--to union workers trying to gain advantage in negotiations.

There are many more non-union than union workers. These have been
filled with stories about how unions run businesses right out
of business. For people depending on jobs for their livelihood
and perhaps not as sophisticated about business, they can be
manipulated. Add to that the Party of Big Business always
touting the virtues of Business.

Another line. You will never get a job from a poor man. In other
words, worship the rich. You are dependent on the rich.

Culture is very interesting. It is important to understand
culture and recognize the differences even in classes much
less the various regions of the U.S.

[theoldman]

31. Most people are poor because they are ignorant.

If you are ignorant you can be fooled into helping the rich more than yourself. I once read that people are willing to help the rich because they think that one day they too will be rich. Who are we to determine why fools do what they do? If you are not a fool, you will never understand how a fool thinks.

[Ardent15]

34. I'd say a lot of people are ignorant because they are poor as well

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

[GoCubsGo]

43. I know lots of wealthy and middle-class people who are ignorant, too.

Many of the ignorant of all social classes are willfully ignorant. It amazes me the number of people out there who are incapable of thinking for themselves. I suspect that has it's roots in religion, but I think our education system, both public and private, is also a culprit. Lots of teaching to the test and memorizing shit, rather than teaching the hows and whys.

[Name removed]

36. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LeftyMom]

47. Congrats!

You're now a finalist in the "dumbest shit posted on the internet in 2010" contest. I'll let you know at the end of year if you won, and arrange for the delivery of your Golden Sack Of Shit statuette.

[raccoon]

70. Disagree--nowadays there are many well-educated people who are poor.

edited for spelling

[begin_within]

35. The right-wing think tanks (with help from people like Karl Rove) thought up

a strategy which involves pulling in just enough people to vote for the Republicans to get them elected. They pulled in single-issue voters, such as the people who will vote for the anti-abortion candidate, period, and NRA types who will only vote for candidates opposed to gun control, or homophobes who will only vote for someone who publicly states they don't support same-sex marriage, or whatever the single issue is, death penalty, immigration, etc. Plus they brought in a lot of people on the "cut taxes" hook, because taxes in general are almost universally loathed, so anyone who promises to cut them will attract voters. Who wouldn't vote for a candidate that promises more money in your pocket? It's buying votes in the most blatant yet subtle way.

Then there was the gigantic lie (still basically uncontested) about "supply side economics" with cutting income taxes as a way to stimulate the economy and also bring in more tax revenues (volume). They have managed to convince lower and middle income people to vote for them on the faith that they will end up with more money in their pocket if they vote for them, so that's why those people still go for them again and again - yet they are still low and middle income. You'd think that scam would have lost its effectiveness by now.

They brought some people based xenophobia, using fears that we're all going to have different color skin or have to learn new languages or live next to people who look different from us.
Then there's always the good-old bogey man, formerly identified as the Communist, now identified as the Terrorist, for an additional specter of fear. National Security! We're the ones that will protect you! The Democrats are soft on (insert bogeyman here). And while they're at it, why not demonize liberals and the left while they're at it. "Liberals are really just communists or (lately) socialists!" is the unspoken, or sometimes explicitly spoken message, they are trying to drill in. They throw the words socialist and socialism around like a red hot potato, without even knowing or caring about the actual definitions of those words.

Basically, they make the public think everyone else in the world is the bad guy, and they are the only good guys fighting the bad guys. It's a huge lie, but people fall for it. The Republicans realized (to their credit) that fear and greed are by far the only strong motivators in the American public, and have manipulated those for decades now, pushing all the right buttons, and of course outright lying, to get those voters. And, of course when the votes don't add up enough, there's always mischief like "phone jamming" of Democratic donation phone numbers, deleting people from voter registration rolls, harrassment at the polling places, and as a last resort, clever and hard-to-prove manipulation of the electronic vote counts.

If despite all their time-tested techniques and shenanigans, a Democratic or Liberal candidate gets popular and comes close to a win, or even wins, then they have to pull out the big guns: character assassination. They can't do actual physical assassination any more (though that is debatable) so they have perfected the art of the smear and are very sophisticated at it, so that you don't even realize it's a smear. They inject it into the popular culture like a medication and eventually it takes effect. They did it to Sen. Thomas Eagleton, California Supreme Court Justice Rose Bird, Michael Dukakis (the Willie Horton thing), Bill Clinton in his 2nd term, John Kerry (the swift boat thing) and countless others. But to answer your original question, basically they attract voters by dangling some kind of promise (usually lower taxes) or holding up some kind of fear-inducing idea, but once they get the vote, they screw those same people again and again - yet somehow never get blamed for that part.

[Turbineguy]

37. I don't think it's any one individual

more of a systemic problem of culture. You too can become rich and famous! And then there's always the lottery. I don't want to tax the rich, I mean, what if I become one?

[Greyhound]

39. Sigmund Freud's cousin, IIRC.

He invented using psychology in advertising.

[bvar22]

40. I used to ridicule "Middle Class" Republicans...

...for voting AGAINST their own Economic Interests.

Now, the "Centrist" Democratic Party is asking me to do the same. :shrug:

A super-majority of American voters support a Public Option "like Medicare" .

[Union Yes]

42. Here's how we fix it..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7612954

knr

[leftstreet]

44. Stop blaming impoverished people!

Half the eligible voters in the country don't vote

The better question is, why do 'middle class' people keep voting against the interests of the impoverished?

:shrug:

[alberg]

45. It wasn't an accident it was a planned and executed strategy by the power elite.

. This is not simply a story about the rise of mean-spirited buffoons such as Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Michael Savage. Nor is it simply a story about the loss of language, a growing anti-intellectualism in the larger culture, or the spread of what some have called a new illiteracy endlessly being produced in popular culture. As important as these tendencies are, there is something more at stake here which points to a combination of power, money and education in the service of creating an almost lethal restriction of what can be heard, said, learned and debated in the public sphere.

And one starting point for understanding this problem is what has been called the Powell Memo, released on August 23, 1971, and written by Lewis F. Powell, who would later be appointed as a member of the Supreme Court of the United States. Powell sent the memo to the US Chamber of Commerce with the title "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System."

The memo is important because it reveals the power that conservatives attributed to the political nature of education and the significance this view had in shaping the long-term strategy they put into place in the 1960's and 1970's to win an ideological war against liberal intellectuals, who argued for holding government and corporate power accountable as a precondition for extending and expanding the promise of an inclusive democracy. The current concerted assault on government and any other institutions not dominated by free-market principles represents the high point of a fifty-year strategy that was first put into place by conservative ideologues such as Frank Chodorov, founder of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute; publisher and author William F. Buckley; former Nixon Treasury Secretary William Simon, and Michael Joyce, the former head of both the Olin Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. The Powell Memo is important because it is the most succinct statement, if not the founding document, for establishing a theoretical framework and political blueprint for the current assault on any vestige of democratic public life that does not subordinate itself to the logic of the alleged free market.

[rucky]

46. The cold war.

Everything potentially bad for the rich is communist.

[checks-n-balances]

48. It was the RIGHT WING THINK TANKS, stupid!

They've been at it for almost 50 years, since the Goldwater defeat. They're the ones who have come up with the legislative and social ideas, takeover of the media, etc. All or most of the ideas listed throughout this thread came from well-funded propaganda mills and they've been working their evil for decades, while Democrats have mostly been busy living their lives and, before the days of triangulation, trying to govern fairly as DEMOCRATS.

[moondust]

49. Guns, God, and racial identity.

[musette_sf]

51. one of the perps:

[Lyric]

52. Religion, mostly.

They usurped Jesus' message of love and used it to convince the poor that voting for Republicans was the same as doing God's work. The poor are so desperate and so eager to find SOMEONE to blame for their problems that they were easy pickings for the conservative elite. Now, the right-wing is trying to kill meaningful public education in order to KEEP it that way.

[Initech]

54. I'm gonna say all of the above.

[GeorgeGist]

57. Who?

Artificial People, aka American Corporations.

[The Gunslinger]

58. Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh

Especially Rush. He taught his sheep to hate liberals so much that they dont even realize a Democratic agenda is good for the middle class and would improve their lives.

[CanonRay]

68. Amen

[ipaint]

59. That's a stupid question.

Last time I checked both sides of the aisle consistently vote for a large majority of bought off, elite, top 1% millionaires to run the country.

I didn't hear the words, poor, homeless or working class in the SOTU the other night.

"Democrats in search of clues as to why voters are unhappy may want to take a look at the report. In 2008, a startling 91.6 million people - more than 30 percent of the entire U.S. population - fell below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, which is a meager $21,834 for a family of four."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/23-7

FDR earned the votes of the working class and poor with aggressive action directed to help them. When our current crop of spoiled, live life in a bubble representatives start acting like they gave give a shit maybe they'll earn our loyal support too.

[JVS]

60. The rich people

[B Calm]

62. Ass kissers will do anything if they think it will help them. I work along

side of these ass kissers everyday.

[LatteLibertine]

63. I'm always baffled by it myself

Folks will support and defend those who; are already loaded yet steal their tax dollars, overwork them, under pay them, and possibly lay them off so they can get an annual pay increase. They treat them as invisible, or expendable.

For folks like Rush promoting economic and social justice = "class warfare".

Drawing poor and middle class folks together to fight for social and economic justice is the defining issue for me. Or that is, it stacks up number one. It's my raison d'etre.

Current issues like health care reform tie into this, as does financial sector reform.

[Cleita]

64. Relentless propaganda and a lack of free press.

It's how the Nazis convinced good Germans that what was going on in their own neighborhoods was all right. We don't have a free press because our press has been bought up by corporate interests who make sure their agenda is the one on top and of course that purient gossip crowds out anything else like the real news.

[Echo In Light]

76. +1

[Kablooie]

65. Obviously, the wealthy.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

66. The American Dream and the idea that we'll all someday be rich.

If you think that one day you, too, will magically be rich, you're willing to go along with all their moronic schemes.

[Iggo]

69. The wealthy...specifically, the bible-weilding wealthy. (n/t)

[Marr]

72. As if Democrats were champions of the poor.

If Democrats refuse to make the class argument, how can you say poor people are putting the interests of the wealthy above all? They see two parties that are mostly concerned with the interests of Wall Street, and make a choice based on social wedge issues.

[rudy23]

73. Because "big fish eats the little fish" is "natural." Liberalism is an aberration, like Robin Hood

To have the little fish swimming alongside the big fish would be to turn nature on its ear. Also, the GOP gets the little guy to see their lives in relation to the impoverished. So in their minds, they are just like the robber barons who always have people on the bottom TAKING from them. They develop like minded ways of thinking in this way.

[kctim]

74. Its not "who," its "what"

A poor person who cares more about their individual rights and freedoms don't give a crap about how much money another person has. They will vote to support their standing on their pet issues before they will vote for what somebody else thinks is best for them.
This is one of the biggest differences between the far-left and the regular Joe kind of Democrat. The far-lefty thinks he knows what is best for everybody and everybody should be forced to support that, where the regular Joe Dem believes people should be free to think for themselves.

[grahamhgreen]

77. You need to watch the first 3 minutes of "Century of Self" - link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUYFr-uDQgg