{"id":220848,"date":"2022-11-07T12:51:33","date_gmt":"2022-11-07T17:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/?p=220848"},"modified":"2022-11-08T13:00:51","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T18:00:51","slug":"threatening-us-with-isms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/blog\/threatening-us-with-isms\/","title":{"rendered":"Threatening Us With \u201cIsms\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If every American had a dollar for every time the Republicans labeled their opponents Marxists, socialists, or communists we would all be in the top 1%.  Whenever someone on the left mentions \u201cinequality,\u201d the Republicans\u2019 default response is to accuse them of one of the dreaded \u201cisms.\u201d (Trump, of course, took it a step further, ominously implying the country was at risk of becoming \u201cVenezuela.\u201d) But the primary cause of our inequality, along with shifting to a globalized, information-based economy, is the \u201csupply side\u201d (trickle down, if we\u2019re lucky) economics initiated by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.  As a result, the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, and the divide between the two gets bigger.  For all Trump\u2019s bragging about \u201chis economy\u201d being the greatest economy in world history, his tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy only made inequality worse.  I\u2019m not the only one who\u2019s convinced that forty years dominated by Republican economic policies are at the core of our ills, and that, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, a society with inequality as great as ours cannot stand.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Rich<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

It was long assumed that economic growth was invariably good, that a rising tide lifted all boats, but the \u201cTrump economy\u201d demonstrated that we cannot always grow our way out of inequality.  Growth is never bad, but it\u2019s increasingly apparent that a healthy middle class, what made American society so strong in the decades following World War II, doesn\u2019t come automatically with economic growth; growth allows for it, but it doesn\u2019t guarantee it if the tax structure overwhelmingly favors corporations and the top 1%\u2014and government is starved of its capacity to nurture a strong middle class (a fair minimum wage, access to education and quality health care, etc.).  When growth benefits only the top 10%, and especially the top 1%, it only adds to the stress already tearing apart our society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is, Republicans manage to bamboozle a good portion of the American electorate (many of whom are now MAGAs) into voting against their own economic interests,<\/a> using every desperate, dishonest strategy but the kitchen sink: the perennial race card; endless fake culture wars; fear of crime (works well with race card); fear of \u201cinvasion\u201d at the southern border (also works well with race card); and last but not least, fear of the dreaded \u201cisms,\u201d even though most people, especially MAGAs, don\u2019t really know what they are.  As a result, much of the American \u201cmiddle class\u201d can\u2019t get much smaller or poorer and still claim middle class status, and if a new Republican Congress, let alone a Republican president in 2024, champion economic policies that constitute more \u201csocialism for the rich,\u201d things will only get worse.  If there\u2019s anything people fear more than the Republicans\u2019 usual suspects, it\u2019s falling out of the middle class, but if they aren\u2019t careful, that\u2019s where they\u2019re headed.<\/p>\n\n\n

Republicans Claim They Lower Taxes to Spur Growth, but All They Want to Do is Starve the Government.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n
\n
\"Top<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The Republicans can scream the isms and all the rest of it at the top of their lungs, but a big chunk of the American public is totally tapped out.  Forcing the wealthy to pay their fair share and stopping them from taking every dollar in circulation (all the \u201cMonopoly\u201d money), hardly constitutes socialism; it\u2019s necessary to maintain a sufficient degree of economic equality to allow our society to function. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why should people value the rule of law in a country where everything feels so \u201crigged\u201d (one of Trump\u2019s favorite words) that there is no way for people to prosper and pursue happiness?  And why should people value democracy if it feels like nothing will ever change for the better?  Democracy may indeed be on the ballot, but people have no reason to vote for it if they don\u2019t believe it represents hope for a better life.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If every American had a dollar for every time the Republicans labeled their opponents Marxists, socialists, or communists we would all be in the top 1%.  Whenever someone on the left mentions \u201cinequality,\u201d the Republicans\u2019 default response is to accuse them of one of the dreaded \u201cisms.\u201d (Trump, of course, took it a step further, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":220852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220848"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220858,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220848\/revisions\/220858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}