For almost 40 years Republicans have pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy intended to convince working-class whites that the poor were their enemies. The big news is its starting to backfire. Republicans told the working class that its hard-earned tax dollars were being siphoned off to pay for welfare queens (as Ronald Reagan decorously dubbed a black single woman on welfare) and other nefarious loafers. The poor were them -- lazy, dependent on government handouts, and overwhelmingly black -- in sharp contrast to us, who were working ever harder, proudly independent (even sending wives and mothers to work, in order to prop up family incomes dragged down by shrinking male paychecks), and white. It was a cunning strategy designed to split the broad Democratic coalition that had supported the New Deal and Great Society, by using the cleavers of racial prejudice and economic anxiety. It also conveniently fueled resentment of government taxes and spending. The strategy also served to distract attention from the real cause of the working classs shrinking paychecks -- corporations that were busily busting unions, outsourcing abroad, and replacing jobs with automated equipment and, subsequently, computers and robotics. But the divide-and-conquer strategy is no longer convincing because the dividing line between poor and middle class has all but disappeared. They are fast becoming us. ~MP
Posted on: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 13:30:00 +0000
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