An 1882 Labor Day parade in New York city's Union Square
Rarely will your eyes behold such forthright honesty flowing from the pen of the opposition than this masterpiece by former GOP staffer Mike Lofgren. There are no punches pulled, it’s all there; the mendacity, the complicit media, the hype and hypocrisy, ugly scapegoating and faux patriotism, oodles of religious opportunism married to craven greed. The entire wingnut apparatus focused, each oily piece turning like cogs in a vast machine, to relieve the middle-class of every last benefit and dime for no other reason than further enriching the already grotesquely wealthy. It was written several weeks ago and posted yesterday, but Lofgren should be required Labor Day reading:
If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren’t after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté. They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be “forced” to make “hard choices” – and that doesn’t mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked.
No Labor Day platitudes, no cheer-leading or warm fuzzies congratulating ourselves for the accomplishments of others. Just a concise dissection of the insidious tactics employed by the modern right with the single-minded ruthlessness of a hungry crocodile. There’s little to quibble with and much to applaud. I can only offer one refinement to this sentiment:
How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what?
That’s a good point, but the GOP also has a less difficult marketing job. It’s just easier to create simplistic, jingoistic bumper-sticker-sized soundbytes when 1) you’re willing to lie your ass off anytime, anywhere, about anything, 2) you’re playing to a simplistic, jingoistic voter base, and 3) well, Kevin Drum explains:
In modern America, conservatives are largely given a pass for saying crazy things. They’re just not taken seriously, in a boys-will-be-boys kind of way. It’s almost like everyone accepts this kind of stuff as a kind of religious liturgy, repeated regularly with no real meaning behind it.
Wow. Just wow.
I haven’t seen that much truth put in one place done in such a well-written manner in a very, very long time.
I agree. This should be required reading.
Well, actually, it is possible to make good soundbites. The democrats just don’t do that.
Possibly because they think it’s beneath them, possibly because if they do they’d have to actually be seen to act on them.
As one of our opponents has said: how’s that hopey changey thing working out for ya?
They don’t think it’s beneath them. They do it all the time, Culture of Corruption, the Republican War on Science, etc. But they could do better, and it is easier to sloganeer if even the barest accuracy is not a limiting factor. Ask any advertising exec.
In unrelated news: Mental Illness Affects Half Of All Americans During Their Lifetime
. . . and the ad running on this page reads (this time, anyway)
“STOP FORCED UNIONISM! SIGN THE RIGHT TO WORK ACT PETITION
Or, to put it a bit less succinctly:
STOP FORCED UNIONISM! SIGN THE RIGHT TO WORK FOR LONG HOURS FOR A PITTANCE UNTIL YOU BECOME TOO ENFEEBLED BECAUSE OF THE POOR HEALTHCARE, OR UNTIL WE FIND SOMEONE TO DO IT FOR AN EVEN SMALLER PITTANCE ACT PETITION.
There are facts in this article that you should be required to know, but certainly not many of Lofgren’s conclusions. Lots of weak argument and a lack of basic knowledge in the post. Oh, and he’s barely a RINO, so liberal tribesmen shouldn’t be getting all hot and bothered. Read a series of posts of my takedown at my blog, Norwegian Shooter. No relation to the terrorist, I had the name first.