Why do members of the middle class vote against their own economic interest by voting for the party that is doing its best to diminish and degrade the middle class while further enriching and empowering the very rich? In one form or another this question has arisen in many Fogbow (and Politijab) threads. It is not a new question; both political philosophers and empirical political scientists have tried to deal with it. It is also a focus within the field of political sociology. The current dominance of a historically aberrant sect of the Republican Party has made the question salient as never before.

Sophisticated theories discuss the fact that voters do not necessarily see their economic well-being as the paramount issue. Some are single-issue voters, often in opposition to a woman's right to choose or a fear that no one except an extreme conservative can or will protect their rights and liberties. Some see the "war on terrorism" as the imperative of this age, with support for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and (soon?) Iran as crucial. Unquestioning support for Israel is decisive for some. Others vote on the basis of complex clusters of issues in which is embedded the idea that the Federal government has grown too big and too powerful; they see Democrats as primarily responsible for this.

As Wall Streeters stand on the balcony and sip champagne, taunting the 99%/Occupy Wall Street protesters far below them, (http://wonkette.com/453955/heres-the-video-of-those-wall-streeters-drinking-champagne-above-the-protest), the question becomes even more urgent. Their mocking of the protesters was politically stupid, but I doubt that the party which they symbolize will suffer any loss of votes for this. They have seen angry young men and women, angry mature adults, and angry elderly persons protesting their practices and policies before. They have seen one of their own, John Corzine, speak out in favor of financial reform while in public service, only to return to the private sector to build a firm that would take even bigger risks than Goldman Sachs. Corzine had played their game plan very well -- speak loudly and do nothing. In fact, the Tea Party made some of the same points about TARP and Wall Street bonuses. They were also ignored by Wall Street. (TARP has been a mixed success, so some people across the political spectrum approve of its results, perhaps for different reasons.)

The Republicans seem to be yearning for someone who will proudly proclaim that he is the Koch brother's brother by a different mother -- or for anyone who will beat Barack Obama, no matter what that victor's principles might be. They accuse the President of having a Socialist agenda, even though his acts and words have been barely to the left of the center of American politics. They accuse him of deceit, corruption, and incompetence, whatever will peel a few more votes away from the President.

Their candidate might win the White House and help to shift the Congress further to the right. If the election were today and Romney were the Republican nominee, the results would be too close to call. Romney's very lack of principles might make the great middle of the American electorate comfortable with the guy who promises much running against the guy with upwards of 8% unemployment hanging over his head.

Why would the middle class vote for the party that has taken every possible step to harm them? The more complex theories sketched above may explain this. However, I suggest three simplistic reasons account for such a decision by many: (a) a specific sense of morality or religious principles, (b) a fundamental misunderstanding not only of economics but also of society, and (c) a lie that is widely and repeatedly told. The lie seems to me the strongest explanation. It may well be that more knowledgable and rational reasons account for some people acting against their economic self-interest; I am not dealing with those reasons.

(a) A specific sense of morality or religious principles: Being rich is a sign of virtue; being poor is a sign of sloth. Calvinism still holds power in American thinking even for people who are not religious. It is the moral obligation of a good American to work hard and succeed financially; as a corollary, it is immoral to accept help from the government. One's virtues are seen in one's financial success; the rich are the Elect of our Puritan forebears. Any hurdle can be overcome with sufficient effort, and gawd might be asked to lend a hand. (The Prosperity Preachers among today's Evangelicals are simply preaching an exaggerated version of this belief, founded upon "Ask and ye shall receive.")

A side note to the above is that Calvinism provides a safe refuge for the racists among us. African Americans, Hispanics, and some other racially or ethnically identifiable groups are poor because they are slothful and deserve to be poor. The supposed proof that the racists are right is Herman Cain -- one of the few admirable African Americans because he made it high in white-dominated society. Some racists offer a Biblical justification for their racism, just as their Puritan forebears proclaimed that slavery was mandated by gawd.

(b) Lack of understanding of economics and society: Many Americans insist that anyone, no matter what their origins, can make it in modern society. Racism is simply a fiction perpetuated by sociologists and other Socialists. The Horatio Alger myth is real, and his success is still attainable. Their's is a mythical economy in which everyone works with full information, everyone faces no friction in achieving legitimate goals (or overcomes those hurdles encountered along the way), and everyone operates in a free market in which willing buyers reach fair agreements with willing sellers. If what one is selling is labor, the seller recognizes that the buyer has no obligation to hire, much less an obligation to look out for the laborer's welfare. The free market dictates that some people will forever be at the bottom, because capitalism requires a reserve of desperate and willing laborers. Society's rewards are thus justly divided among those who have made themselves eligible for rewards. The top 20% who control 85% of the nation's wealth have earned every penny, as have the top 1% who control more than 42% of the nation's wealth. The fact that all this neoliberal economic nonsense is widely believed is evidence of how far to the right the nation's "political center" is.

(c) The lie: The Senate has just rejected a part of the President's jobs program because it would be funded by an increase of about $13,000 in the taxes paid by people who are making more than a million dollars each year. The reason for the rejection? The tax would hit the very people who create jobs, the owners of small businesses. It would thus lead to job losses.

That is the big lie that has worked so well for the Republicans: it is the rich business owners who create jobs in America, and anything that imperils a fraction of their wealth imperils the creation of jobs. That $13,000 in added taxes would doom the economic recovery.

Perhaps because they have not been clearly and repeatedly told, many Americans do not know that very few small businesses net their owners a million dollars a year in taxable income. Most new jobs are indeed created by small businesses, some of which are themselves new, but these are small businesses. Those small businesses that actually create the jobs would not have been affected by the Democrats' effort to raise taxes on the very rich by a small fraction -- a 0.7% increase in taxes.

Who would believe the nonsense spouted by the Republicans in their rejection of this part of the President's jobs bill? Among the believers would be those who insist that the major issue facing this country is jobs and who have no understanding of who creates jobs. Among the believers would be those who think that reversing America's plunge into increasing income and wealth inequality would be a Socialist program, the "redistribution of wealth" that "Joe the Plumber" clumsily condemned. Among them are those who equate the raising of taxes on the very rich with class warfare.

Maybe Elizabeth Warren can destroy that lie. She has the brains and the guts to pound the Orrin Hatches of the world into their finely groomed lawns. If Massachusetts did not need the Senator that Warren would become, she would make a fine candidate for Vice President, replacing a good man who is past his prime.

We need warriors for the middle class, as the President has sometimes claimed to be. I think he is afraid to trumpet that slogan widely, fearing that the great American political center will see it as a Socialist or even Communist goal.

Economic inequality is the biggest domestic problem facing this country today. It ought to be at the center of 99%/Occupy Wall Street. It ought to be at the center of the Democrats' platform. If Democrats lose because of that, they will have lost fighting for a noble cause -- one that will soon come roaring back into American politics. Champagne on the high balcony will be something that the 1% come to regret.

I was not as erudite when I asked and attempted to answer the same question on PJ a long time ago in a thread I started called "Why Are White People So Stoopid"?

For the most part, African Americans and Hispanics understand who is on their side and who isn't. Not so with White people, who are easily distracted and panicked by very clever fear mongers.

Which is one of the reasons why I again call out Eric Cantor - a shanda fur die goyim.

History will not think kindly of any of them. Even their revered Ronald Reagan, whom they wouldn't elect today, will be seen as someone who helped bring America down.

Thank you for a fine essay on the most important issues we are facing. I would only disagree about putting Elizabeth Warren on the ticket. The VP does not have any real power and she needs to be in a position to get changes made. Certainly, if she replaces the current Republican, that vote will make a difference. Her voice on Senate committees will make a difference.

I would also add that the media aids the propagation of the big lie as do all the money of the superpacs. Citizens United has only made the situation worse. A real war is being waged against democracy in our elective process.

The Onion gets it: http://www.theonion.com/articles/guy-wh ... rpo,20646/

Guy Who Got Laid Off Just Glad Multi-National Corporation Will Make It
JUNE 2, 2011 | ISSUE 47-22

DANBURY, CT—After learning that he had been laid off Friday by global conglomerate Honeywell International, senior sales associate Edward Morway expressed relief that his employer of 14 years would be able to scrape by. "When [department head] John [Condos] called me into his office and explained the tough business climate, my heart just sank for the company," said Morway, adding that he "immediately understood" how cutting his $79,000 annual salary would help keep the multibillion-dollar corporation afloat during a feeble economic recovery. "Sure, I'm worried about providing for my wife and kids and making my house payments, but Honeywell executives have 128,000 employees and stockholders in locations all over the world to think about, so it would be unfair to even compare my troubles to theirs." Morway also said that the decision of the Fortune 500 corporation to fire him right before he received matching retirement funds was a "really smart move," given the lean times Honeywell was currently facing.

I agree that it would be good, even necessary, for Elizabeth Warren to represent Massachusetts in the U. S. Senate. I had another role for her in mind, however: getting President Obama re-elected. She could be a major asset in the campaign. Perhaps she could play that role from the Senate.

It amuses me that conservatives seem to be so convinced that the corporate media are liberal. I do think the media are a major part of the problem. That is not new.


P. S. I had a lot of time on my hands while sitting in a warm motel room in Rhode Island. The cats helped. Cisco is particularly fond of Warren. Sammy is still loyal to President Obama and cannot imagine his being defeated. His dotage is sneaking up on him.

Absolutely. I don't know that the media realized that they have become pawns played by politicians.

I just rewatched the 4th season of Torchwood. I won't go into the story much, but one of the issues discussed this season was the government's manipulation of the media simply by infiltrating news sources and shaping how the media covers what it covers. In Torchwood, the CIA infiltrated the media and subtly changed words to influence the perception of a story. For example, calling someone a victim of a tornado vs calling them a survivor of a tornado leaves the viewer with a very different perception of just how dangerous the tornado was. Do I believe that the CIA is controlling the media? No. But I absolutely believe that corporations do so through advertising money. Many Americans rely on only one or two sources for news. We should rely on many sources.

Thanks, LM K, for your very powerful comments. I find it immensely sad that a religion, Christianity, that should teach its adherents the lesson of Matthew 25 could have been distorted into a religion that makes people blame themselves for their misfortunes.

I agree that making academia and academics seem to be ignorant fools, if not villains, has been a fourth element. It's odd that I did not think of that. It is a dastardly thing to do to our children in K-12 and up. I watched a bit of a CNN program last night about the decline in the quality of our public schools. It noted that there was a time when California schools were the envy of the nation and of the world. That may or may not still be true in California's wealthy towns and cities; it is still largely true in Connecticut's wealthy suburbs. Our problem in those schools is drugs, especially parents who use drugs and pay little attention to their offspring.

As I drove home today from Rhode Island, I drove through the grounds of a pair of fine schools in Pomfret, CT: the Rectory School and the Pomfret School. The beautiful schools are set in the midst of small churches on beautiful grounds; the road is marked as a "scenic route." A synagogue is just over in Putnam. I realized that I was passing through a place of privilege, even in comparison to Greenwich, Darien, West Hartford, and so on. These students may become Masters of the Universe, but I hope that their schools are teaching them something more. I frankly would not mind at all if they were teaching the fundamental principles of Christianity and Judaism, teaching their students to do a Mitzvah each day.

That once characterized many of the people of this country. We were (mostly) a kind and gentle people, and we can be so again.


I am worried that I made a mistake somewhere in my essay. It is remarkably without references for one of my long pieces, mainly because working from an iPad in a motel room is not conducive to searching a lot of references. If someone finds one, I would much appreciate a correction. I had been thinking about that essay almost since 99%/OWS first appeared and reading and listening to pertinent facts, but I might have misremembered something. I often do.

Just my humble opinion, but this is one of the best threads ever. Thank you all.

I was behind someone in the grocery line a couple of months ago. They were buying groceries with their food stamps. They carefully put items on the belt and watched as the total went up. It was not t-bone steaks and beer. It was peanut butter and bread, jam, chicken, basic food stuffs. As the cashier scanned things through the total came to $1.50 or so more than the food stamp limit. The person buying the food put back a couple of items, some mac and cheese if I recall to get it back down below the food stamp card. As the person bagged their groceries I told the cashier to put the mac and cheese on my bill and put it into their bags. It was the least I could do. I have a rough time. But no way near the rough time these people have. We do what we can do.

Toll, your essay was brilliant. I didn't notice any factual errors. I really appreciate all you have said; like you, I am stunned that so many Americans buy into the Republican lie.

I have been giving this some more thought. I wish I could say that I am surprised that so many Americans aren't challenging the soundbites they hear from politicians. But have Americans ever been good at critically analyzing evidence? While it does appear that more and more Americans are becoming more and more intellectually lazy, perhaps the Republican lie has become so extreme that Americans who are thoughtful can no longer write off their wacky, RWNJ neighbor as an anomaly. Has the extreme nature of the lie shown us the extreme seriousness of our national problem? Did we need ignorant Tea Partiers to show us how truly bad things have become?






I believe that our democracy is at risk. I hear politicians saying they want to amend the Constitution regularly. Corporations are now "citizens". I am cynically hopeful about the OWS/99% movement. The Tea Party movement depressed me, and the OWS/99% movement is reminding me that reason still exists in America.

I stumbled across an interesting essay by Bob Altemeyer. In April, 2010, he wrote Comment on the Tea Party Movement. Altemeyer taught Psychology at the Univ of Manitoba, and wrote The Authoritarians, which Altemeyer has made available for free through his website.

A tiny portion from his essay:



What are the 12 traits of Authoritarian Followers discussed in Altemeyer's essay?
1. Authoritarian Submission
2. Fear
3. Self-Righteousness
4. Hostility
5. Lack of Critical Thinking
6. Our "Biggest" Problem
7. Compartmentalized Thinking
8. Double-Standards
9. Feeling Empowered When in Groups
10. Dogmatism
11. Ethnocentrism
12. Prejudice


A few days ago, I stumbled across an article that discusses neurological sensitivity and political affiliation:



Research has constantly shown that emotional arousal influences decision making and memory. I wonder if researchers have looked at emotional regulation and political affiliation. Liberals are always labeled as bleeding-hearts who are incapable of thinking about issues. I have been encountering more and more research that indicates that conservatives feel so intensely about issues that they simply stop thinking through issues period.

The Power of Political Misinformation
How Facts Backfire
When Corrections Fail

Some years back, I was out of work after the birth of one of my kids, and my wife received WIC to help with formula and cereal and such. After using the big pink checks tonpay for those items, I had some asshole behind me make a remark along the lines of "You're welcome for the groceries I'm paying for". After silently counting to ten, I tol the old fart he was welcome for the social security and Medicaid he was receiving, and remarked how great it was that we lived in a country where everyone helped each other. That really seemed to flummox the old bastard.

In 2007, Oregon's then Gov, Gov Kulongoski and his wife decided that for 1 week, they would eat on the average foodstamp budget.

Aaaaaaarrggggh! I had a big, long reply that my iPad just ate!

We also have to blame the media for completely abdicating their responsibilities. We get opinion packaged as news, entertainment packaged as news, "news" corporations who have the court's permission to lie by commission and omission and still call themselves news. We have stars dancing, Americans idoling, housewives canoodling and this is how we spend our spare time.

Anti-intellectual? You betcha, Barbie!

We don't even have national conversations about things anymore because one side has been poisoned with bile and bullshit passing as news. The other side has no idea how to counteract the poison and the poisoners are getting away, scot free.

That's how we get people who believe the entire world, except them and a few of their buddies, are in on the nightmare of the Usuperaton' darkie in their white house and everybody except them and their buddies oughta be hanged from the highest tree.

OWS is the beginning of the end for the ascendancy of stupidity and density. I hope. A long as the conversation gets real and isn't controlled by the lords of the airwaves, we should be able to punch our way out of this paper bag. Now that they have turned the conversation away from what the right wants us to be nattering about and onto what O wants us to natter about, you can see the improvement - both in O's numbers and in the Nationable mood.

Trust me, my first post on this subject was BRILLIANT.

Wanna go fishing with me sometime, Kate?

You? Yes.
Ed? Nuh-uh. He creeps me out.

I believe you Kate -- you should have seen the one I lost last week that I was working on for a blog that I frequent... (although that was a stupidity tax rather than a deus ex machina...) I hope you're right about the beginning of the end, too!

This thread expresses many of the things I've been thinking about (only, like, um... well... you see... more eloquent-like). I think that there are still reasonable conservatives out there (in the electorate, anyway), they are just ignorant of who their fellow travelers are. I think the people of whom you speak have worked very hard and pitched their message very carefully to give themselves camouflage -- if only to the reasonable conservatives. It is completely appalling that these Machiavellian asshats have made it nearly impossible to refute their big lie by poisoning the national discourse as Kate pointed out. To paraphrase a car commercial (what do you expect, I'm from Michigan ), this is not your father's GOP -- and we need to figure out how to make people realize that pretty soon...

Part 2 of 6

I'm not sure I agree with that statement. From the very beginning, we have been a violent group -- at least to those who were different from us or the group. Let's look at the early settlers in America. In 1623, during peace conference with Powhatan leaders, the English served poisoned wine that killed around 200. Those that didn't die from the poisoned wine were killed the old fashioned way. The pilgrims landed in Massachusetts in 1620. In less than 20 years, we have the Mystic River massacre where English settlers killed between 400 to 700 Pequots, mostly women, children and old men. The crimes of these folks? Residing on land that the settlers wanted. These and other incidents were the beginning of centuries of warfare between "white man" and the native Americans who refused to sit back and take the theft of their land.

During this time, Americans imported and/or grew their own black slaves to do all the dirty, hard and dangerous work that whites didn't want to do. While slavery ended in 1865, Americans continued to use violence against the blacks until well into the mid to late 20th century.

We had wars, lots of them. Between 1675 and 1898, America was a major combatant in 15 different wars, including the deadliest the Civil War. This doesn't include all the blood shed over the years as American fought to gain more land. We have a tradition of the lawlessness of the Wild West where the rifle was as essential as food and water. Even today, America leads the world in gun deaths. Abuse of wives and children has a long history. Interesting tidbit. When the first case of child abuse was fought in the courts in 1874, they had to rely on laws relating to American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) to fight for the abused child since this was all they had. These few sentences barely touch on the violence that is so much a part of American history/psyche.

ASPCA Laws Used to Protect Abused Children
Here's an interesting 6 part series on the history of violence in America:

All that ugliness and horror is certainly in our past and our present. Maybe I've lived a charmed life, but my experience with "ordinary" Americans has mostly been that we are a kind and gentle people. To be sure, most of my experience has been in universities, research centers, and private foundations, so my perspective may be off. Sometimes our kindness and gentleness has struggled to show through, but I sense it is still there. It gives me hope, even in the face of the reactionary and Fascist forces striving to pull us down to their level. People just have to wake up to what is happening around them. That is why I believe that taunting the 99%/OWS protesters by drinking champagne on the balcony far above them will come back to haunt those people. The big lie will fail. The people will wake up, if not now, eventually.

I hope you're right, Toll (I hope you don't mind the nickname.) I'm like you that most people I met ARE nice and helpful. I've been surprised a couple of times by someone I thought was kind and gentle who suddenly turned violent. Both times, the trigger was a cheating loved one. I happen to live in the same town where the first postman going postal occurred. One can be nice and gentle -- and still turn violent under the right circumstances. What worries me is that folks like Rush, Beck and even Orly have contributed to a growing a "us and them" America. I live in a very red state and it's surprised me how many otherwise kind and gentle people are really, really angry -- especially with liberals. Add in the current economic environment with all that involves, and I think we're sitting on a time bomb. I hope I'm wrong.

June 28, 2012 The American People Are Angry by Bernie Sanders

CNN August 3, 2012

This despite all the Repugs could do to stop it from happening.

Alright, I want to discuss this statement, from Tolland's initial post, that is and has been at the heart of the Conservatives' arguments for(it seems like)ever.



I have a couple of things to say about it.

First of all, the part of the government that has grown the largest and IMHO takes entirely too much of our GDP are the defensive agencies, DoD and Homeland Security, which all by itself sounds so Big Brother. These are the things the conservatives say they want, but oh noes! now the government is too big.m

Also, too, second, if We the Peeps are the ones who say what's what around here, then how did the government get so big? Why, the politicians, for the most part, that THEY elected, because the government has been in R hands far longer than in D hands over the last 40 years.

And finally (well,maybe) who says the government is too big? Not me. It's only too big if you hate it. It's more efficient overall in doing the things governments should do than the private sector is. I'd like to see some astounding privatizing success stories, because the only ones I can recall are the ones that say outsourcing, privatizing government services, is in the long run much more expensive than keeping it in-house.

Boy, they sure are good at meme making, huh? Even some of us buy into their PR.

I am not sure that anybody on TFB buys into that. I offered it as one of several "issues" that are sometimes advanced as reasons for why people vote against their own economic interests. People do give these arguments to pollsters.

Then I offered my own explanations for why the Big Republican Lie is working: it is rooted not in issues but in American culture. I favor the explanation given in the title: the lie works. People believe the lie that the rich and powerful are the creators of our own opportunities in life. It's the opposite of "a rising tide lifts all boats" or Wellstone's "we all do better when we all do better."

No, I don't think anyone here buys into that. I was using "us" in the sense of non-Republicans. And I know that statement wasn't from you. I was just taking that one, tiny sentence from your post to talk about. All that other stuff is secondary to my personal interest.

Do you think the government is too big, Tolland?

Where did you get the idea that Joe Biden is "past his prime"? I listened to him speak for 30 minutes just 2 weeks ago. He was energetic, articulate, and passionate. He loves serving his country, he loves servinghis President, he loves serving the American people. He maintains a schedule that men much younger than him would have a hard time keeping up with. As Vice President, he has been given responsibilities rarely given to a Vice President because he is capable and trustworthy and Joe's boss knows Joe can handle it because qualified to be President.

The idea that Joe Biden is incompetent, ineffective or gaffe-prone is one invented by Republicans to smear Joe. It is true that Joe is chatty and has said more than he needed to on many occasions, but if you look at those instances, it's usually because he is trying to be kind, put someone at ease, or show he cares.

If there's any replacing of Joe, it will be well into Obama's second term and only because Joe wants to step down. I don't imagine he will unless he has a health problem. He and Dr. Jill love every second of being Vice President and Second Lady.