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(photo: mikebaird/flickr)
Item, from Rick Wolff’s website: “Charles Murray’s new book, Coming Apart, is criticized as a “blame-the-victim” argument applied to the white working class just as Patrick Moynihan applied it to the African-American working class in the 1960s. Murray excludes and thereby exonerates the economic system from responsibility for working class suffering and dysfunction; he blames instead character flaws somehow newly developed in that class. We develop a counterargument that locates the behaviors of both the 1% and the 99% in their logical responses to a dysfunctional economic system.” (You can listen to Wolff’s podcast on the subject here and here.)
Item, from Bluestem Prairie, a blog devoted to rural issues, wherein blog proprietor Sally Jo Sorensen cites a person defending Minnesota Republican state legislator Mary Franson, who recently called poor people “animals”:
In Dismayed by Franson fallout, Franson fan Hugh Myers writes:
Having read the comments allegedly made by Representative Mary Franson and the reaction to them, I am dismayed by the reaction itself.
I feel that the representative was referring to those who have been on the long-term rolls of our welfare system for a variety of reasons – valid and not so valid – and not those who have become members of the system because of the economic downturn in our country.
There are those who have been in the system for an extended period, not because they are unemployable but because it simply easier to be on the rolls than it is to put some effort into finding a job.
These are those that drive their newer pickups and smoke their $5 packs of cigarettes and are out drinking their beer, and that is all bought at public expense.
I applaud Representative Franson for stating her views because she is in a position to possibly make changes rather than simply sitting back and letting the past abuses become part of the future of the welfare system.
There is always someone out there who is looking to provide a misinterpreted version of something said by a public official, so that it will appear as something else.
Yeah, that’s the ticket. Perhaps it’s a testament to Clinton-era welfare reforms that those stereotyping the poor have had to trade in the Cadillacs parked in their imaginations for “newer pickups.”
This is interesting.
Apparently racism is starting to lose its luster as an electoral tool for the servants of the 1%, so now they have to broaden their focus from picking on nonwhites and nonconservatives to attacking the very white working-class voters on whose backs they’ve rode time and again to victory.
This is the end stage form of the oncological rule of the one-percenters: They’ve got to the point where they’re cannibalizing themselves, eating their own ideological seed corn. How much longer can they keep going doing this?
58 Comments
What you are not seeing is that moving prochoice republican women into Obamas camp, as a result of contreception is probably planned, by the money party. you also do not see that this will make the working class of all colors irrelevant to the democratic party and to the political system unless we move onto a new party! I would bet that in a year or two Charles Murray will be a mainstream dem!
With more and more white people added to the ranks of the poor and more and more voter disenfranchisement laws that target all poor people, the 1% needn’t worry about elections. Pretty soon they’ll be the only ones voting in them.
Is racism “losing its luster?” We seem to be seeing a lot of it, and even though no candidate could survive openly uttering the n-word, none of the Republican field is innocent of dog-whistling. Certainly we’re seeing the addition of a scapegoating of working-class white people, but I think it’s an expansion of a general scapegoating that started with working-class blacks and Hispanics and is spreading out as, like you say, the 1% perceive a greater danger to their lofty perch.
Good point.
Dameocrat
Pheonix is a died in the wool Democrat so she will ignore your point. Carry on. Do not waste any time or effort on her.
Just sayin’.
Hey that’s the virtue of democratic capitalism – it’s always teaching what not to do by example. There’s plenty left not to do, comrade. Threatening to assassinate your citizens by executive fiat, for example. That should generate some useful confusion.
They’re a creative bunch. And we’re happy with the turtles’ progress, no?
Why don’t you just ignore her posts, if you find them so worthless? This stalk-and-troll routine gets real damned old, real damned fast.
I don’t think that it is that they are “swapping” black for working class Americans as it is that they are adding working class Americans to their growing list of “them and us” Let’s hope that the guns and Bible folks get some brains and realize that they are being taken for a ride.
But if they think that voting for a Democrat will appreciably change their lives, their are equally stupid. It was a DEMOCRAT majority in BOTH houses of congress that defunded ACORN. It was a DEMOCRAT majority in BOTH houses of congress that voted to extend the BUSH tax cuts. It was a DEMOCRAT MAJORITY in BOTH houses that voted to send 100,000 more soldiers to Iraq in 2007 when they were elected on a mandate to end the war and bring all troops home by Dec of 2008
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I think, too. The 1% are simply making it abundantly clear that this is total class warfare, and the rest of us are all targets as far as they’re concerned.
Yup, I’m such a DFL hack that I posted this diary earlier in the week. Oh, that’s right – neither you nor your tag-team partner Alan Maki know bupkis about Marx, do you?
I’m not sure Dameocrat’s best served by listening to you, who happens to be a buddy of Michele Bachmann’s PRT pal Dean Zimmermann, otherwise known as the guy who aside from not offing an ex-girlfriend seems to have spent the 1970s doing an amazingly accurate Ira Einhorn impression:
For more on the O., go here.
Nah, Murray would never be that. The money’s much better on the GOP side.
And who started the smears?
That’s what so interesting about this.
Of course, Murray frames his attack on the white working class in terms of “why are you adopting these sick liberal values?” when in fact the policies pushed by Murray’s paymasters are what has made it impossible for traditional families to exist, as Rick Wolff points out in his podcast.
Danged if I know.
Actually your smear of Cavlan in Zimmerman looks kind of like how dlcers smear Jane for her alliance with Grover Norquist on certain issues. There is nothing conservative about the issue he united with Bachmann on, anymore than there is anything conservative about what Jane was trying to do when she allied with Norquist.
If money is better on the gop side, why does Obama have a funding advantage over all the gop candidates? why did he have one in 2008? you act as if their is not documented history of Obama racking in more wall street money.
Why oh why did Jane give my firedog to the veal pen?
Let me get this straight. Some Republican State Senator disses the long-term unemployed and some other creepy woman supports her, and voila! Racism has “lost its luster” and now “they’re eating their own ideological seed corn.” Bah.
Obama just signed the FAA Reauthorization Bill. It negatively affects all workers of all races.
Furthermore, the Republicans are no worse or better than the Democrats when it comes to privatizing every aspect of our lives. Their agendas are identical, because they have the same masters, and their masters don’t care about the color of a person’s skin. Their masters only care about maximizing profits. The politicians aren’t concerned about race and class. They are concerned about enriching their masters and thus themselves.
Bruce Dixon at Black Agenda Report:
“This was no compromise forced upon the president by unreasonable Republicans. This was the unprovoked and naked surrender of our rights to economic self-help, our rights to struggle for a living wage, for dignity and security for all our families by a Trojan Horse black president elected with black and union support, but governing on behalf of his real masters, the lords of capital.”
http://blackagendareport.com/content/barack-obama-deals-crippling-blow-unions-black-economic-self-help
Let’s also not forget that Scalia and Thomas made it through a Democratically-controlled Judiciary Committee and Senate. And Democrats voted to confirm Alito (58-42) and Roberts (78-22).
I’ve read this a few times now. Still don’t get it.
As long as there are rich wingnuts who keep writing checks, I’m guessing. It is fun watching these idiots dine on themselves, however.
Yo PW: You are most excellent at hammering trolls with, ya know, those pesky little fact thingies. A genuine pleasure to watch.
The GOP think-trough is much richer than the Dems.
By the way, Mary Franson’s doubling down on the nasty, framing it as “bravery”:
By the way, if you like Sally Jo Sorensen’s coverage of this, drop a few shekels her way — she’s the hardest-working journalist in Minnesota.
Well said…the Dems fake left and go right every time. After the election they won’t bother faking they are after the Republican role in politics.
They are working up from the bottom of the pyramid to feed the top. Look at the back of our money , see the disconnect of the top of the pyramid.
So who else would one think is next ? They are not stopping here , either.
There has always been those who blame the victim. It is easier to do that than try to fix the problem. When it comes to under employment or unemployment, do we really believe that cannot be fixed? Same for so many other social needs like education and health care. We need to get some people elected who are willing to use the power of the governments money to fix it. There is no way the fed can ever go bust. That is the biggest lie of all. That is the lie the right wing tells us all the time.
*bows* Why thank you!
That is another whole diary.
Ot. There they go again. The Newt is telling us to balance the budget. We have to get smart about this people. There is no fucking reason to ever balance the budget until such time as all our resources are being used, I.e. full employment.
When Newt says “balance the budget,” of course what he means is “cut social spending.” Only wingnuts deserve welfare.
Newt is the most completely amoral person I’ve ever seen. I thought Reagan was but Newt wins, hands down.
Not necessarily.
In their world view, there are winners and losers.
If they are the losers, it is their own individual failure, not the system’s fault.
They can not conceive the deck is stacked against them.
We’re pretty much all (small ‘n’ intended)negroes on the bus. We’re all disposable people; our race, status, religion and social standing keep devolving. Taibbi and Perlstein channel Corey Robin, and while Perlstein argues conservatists are in their strongest position ever, I agree with Robin that it’s a dying movement, and hamster-like, they are eating their (and our) young at an alarming pace. On one level, they know they are going to lose this November (whether they will or won’t),on another, they’re rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic with a, well, religious fervor. The TN Legislature is about as batsh*t insane group of people as exist anywhere (as I have written. See my posts for examples). Lee Atwater’s lament, “What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his own soul?” means nothing to them. They are the Pharisees of the bible, all form and no substance. They’re not worried about the future, but consumed by a mythological past. Paul Rosenberg reached for this a few years ago.
In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe writes about the horrific film of the doomed pilot, who’s last words are, “I’ve tried A! I’ve tried B! I’ve tried C! I’ve tried D! Tell me what else I can try!” . Conservatists are crying, “I’ve tried A, I’ve tried A, I’ve tried A, there’s nothing else I can try!”
It’s got to be someone else’s fault. To quote Rick Perlsein one final time,
It goes back to Charles Pierce and Idiot America, “There’s gold in them thar fools.”
Book Salon up with Rasmus Kleis Neilsen’s Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns hosted by Benjamin Kallos
This is bullshit.
Perhaps I missed it, but has anyone else noticed no quotes or videos of the offensive speech? Surprising? No, because it didn’t happen. PW is either too lazy to listen to the actual verbiage, or is just throwing out emotionally charged BS in order to manipulate the commentariat. And yes, I’m being charitable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijWu7lK7Hss Starting @ 1:49
Any questions?
Since I was a little girl growing up in the deep south during the 60s and 70s I learned about slavery and how this exploitation of human beings is approved by society. First, I learned about it from what I saw around me as blacks lived in desperate poverty and could be seen about doing horrible back breaking work in desperate heat and yes, looking like they were suffering.
White people condemned these blacks at every turn openly. Their suffering was justified, that was an important element of southern reality. It, of course, has a deep history.
What many people don’t understand about slavery and exploitation of workers in general is those that benefit, start and maintain this control by demanding that the person or persons being exploited,… deserves it.
They deserve to be fired, their contracts will not be honored due to their inferior character, they suffering will be accepted as a state of how things should be, etc, etc, etc.
Now that the one percent is basically justifying taking everything for more and more people, not just blacks and the working poor, but now the inferior and flawed middle class.,, basically everyone. Abuse will be justified more and more and it’s going to get worse. The Repub candidates are openly on board and Obama is actively on board while carefully saying nothing.
We have more than dipped our toe into Marshall Law and JUSTIFICATION is what makes the masses stand down and allow all of this and abuse and exploitation in general.
Just how simple minded and childlike will the masses become to all of this self appointed authority is the question. Will you pee in a cup, allow your vagina to be probed, allow drones to hover over you home taking infrared readings, allow you internet searches to be crunched into an algorithm that will determine if you should be black bagged.
Will people submit to “leaders” and others like alter boys to pedophile priests.
Stand up America, you are all being measured for shackles and told to behave like helpless children. When you stand up for yourself you are threatened, beaten, imprisoned. This is past shades of gray. We are being herded for complete control and fleecing.
Please wake up people. Please stand up.
This is the exact reason I didn’t worry about the Tea Party groups in the long term. Much of the anger of the Tea Party is aimed at the criminals of Wall Street and K-Street and the bailout of the bankers. In fact, Occupy and the Tea Party have an intersection of interests on financial matters. Only matters of culture and style keeps the two groups for working on areas of commonality. The Republican establishment (which is really the evil Bush family and its criminal cronies) were never going to accomodate what they considered a bunch of dirty peasants. This is why the Republican establishment has gone all in for Mitt Romney. The Republican establishment is trying out a unique and losing electoral strategy which basically presumes that they don’t need the Tea Party or the rank and file voters as long as they have the Kocj brothers money.
One of the possibilities I’m seeing if the left can overcome 150 years of various schisms is a coalition left party in 2016 that positions the Democratic party as the conservative party it now is and consigns the increasingly insane GOP to the dustbin of history.
That will require a lot of hard work on the left extending their geographic reach, penetrating the Wall Street Media iron curtain, and being more persuasive in their arguments to their personal networks.
RTFO – nailed it.
“…servants of the 1%…”
The Obama Administration?
Obama is a fraud.
The Democratic Party is a fraud.
Vote progressive third-party.
De-elect the self-proclaimed murderer-in-chief and his treasonous Democratic concubines in Congress.
This is not new. Only people who long ago abandoned the economic and labor issues that are the foundation of leftist politics, for identity politics bean-counting and the american democrat-republican political football game would be suprised by this.
This is where I am headed as well. I think operating on the assumption that the present two parties are permanent features is wrong and destructive!
WTF?
Go blow a dead goat, troll.
Not swapping, just adding to.
Comrade, people have become morally disarmed by capitalism and fake religion and capitalists are making the most of it.
The biggest difference between the hostile democratic and republican policies towards the working class of any color appears to be rhetorical.
“If money is better on the GOP side then why does Obama have a funding advantage over all the GOP candidates?”
Now there you go, Dameocrat, dropping another reality-turd into the punchbowl of:
“The republicans are so terrible that we must spend practically ALL of the bandwidth on pointing out their idiocy, while ignoring the fact that Barack Obama, after we helped him beat them senseless in 2008, has done wondrous rehab on them.” :o)
You should be ashamed of yourself, going off-topic and I-jay-hacking the ed-threa.
:o)
Seriously. (for the moment…) The more overt the racism, the more it helps Obama.
And, the crazier and more repulsive the utterances of the flat-earthers and the peckerheads, the more it helps Obama, and the more it helps the “Obama sucks less!” cheerleading squad who, as you say, seem to be making move to take over the site and try to chase off those of us who feel that the best pressure we can put on Mr. Centrist is to keep an eye on him and to keep talking about what he’s saying and doing. (Mostly, what he’s saying, since he did piss-little when he had the big congressional margins and even less since he lost them…)
“…peeing in a cup; vaginas being probed; drones hovering over us; and internet spying, etc….”
All of that has either been sustained or escalated with the tacit approval if not the direction, of a gentleman by the name of Barack Obama.
But of course, the real threat is that Sarah Palin calls him a socialist, while wearing really shitty lip-gloss, so let’s have some more threads on THAT, pretty please?
My, my, Phoenix is out of the closet and saying that leftist dogma, not patriotism, is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Word, little centrist: We could be parroting every syllable ever written or spoken by Marx, Engles, Lenin, and anyone else on the left side of the spectrum and it wouldn’t mount to a decimal point with three zeros in front of it compared with the misery and evil that knee-jerk “my country right or wrong” has ginned up on the human race.
But I’m delighted to see you climbing on the jingo-bus and going after the “extremists” who want to hold Barack Obama accountable for pissing away an historic opportunity to start mounting a salvage operation for all of us, and instead, mounting a salvage operation on the republican party.
Welcome to our little town-hall meeting, and don’t forget your kevlar underoos; the fun is just beginning. :o
“why oh why did Jane give my Firedog to the veal pen?”
I don’t think she’s given it to them. I think she just likes a good, lively, debate.
And if some of the threaders keep herring-dragging for Obama, that will certainly happen. :o)
So this is how you respond to facts? You’re no better than Sean Hannity?
Admit it, T: You’re just angry at me because I interrupted your threadjacking over at Pam’s House Blend the other day.
I see you’ve met my stalker. Charming, isn’t he? Here’s some more about him and his friends.
Facts???
This, from someone who thinks that leftist ideas about a government that exists to serve all of the people are the last refuge of scoundrels?
The big “fact” that you don’t want to talk about is that Barack Obama came into office with the clout and the mandate to run the republicans right under the troll-bridge, and he proceeded to rescue them, almost single-handedly.
You may want to reward him with another 4 years for doing that, but a shitload of americans, of all political stripes, sure as hell don’t.
And that’s a fact. :o)
Great story, thanks. I don’t think racism will ever lose its sparkle for the right, it has been their go-to tactic for so long it has become boilerplate strategy. Don’t expect that to change. This new line in the sand, this new calling out against the white working class, is an attempt to solidify right wing support in the middle class. It is meant as a dog whistle for the guy who wears a suit to work, and to his secretary as well. Anybody who doesn’t get their hands dirty for a living. They are posing a question, “Who are you? Are you one of us, or are you one of those nasty people who smoke cigarettes and drink cheap American beer and drive a truck to work, and join unions…are you the white trash who sucks at the public teat, or are you a rugged individualist, who knows we all make it on our own?”
Just another attempt to further fragment the middle class…they are breaking it off in little pieces wherever they can, and will continue to use racism to try to keep these broken fragments from re-uniting. Their camp is getting smaller and smaller as they get desperate to harden support. They are tipping their hand, showing us that their policy is the privileged few against all the rest of us.
So, honestly, I see the open introduction of clear and climbing class lines to the republican arsenal as a good thing…they’re losing ground and know it.
Heh. I’m suuuuuch a good Obama-worshiping Democrat, I posted this piece on Marx the other day. But you don’t mention that because that interferes with your word-picture of me.
Whatevs, T.
Good point. They’re essentially doing the old “liberals are dirty” schtick and implying that anything they don’t like is dirty and, worse, un-American.
exactly. Obama is a right wing Trojan Horse. I’ll just write in someone if I have no one but a Repub or Obama to vote for. Obama has and is selling us out to endless war, Marshall Law, and complete control by financial elite.
There’s some noise out there saying that ObamaCare will enforce a direct link to banking accounts. this is getting really scary.