...from attacking the people pursuing it [American Dream] to clamping down on socio-economic mobility, the GOP demonstrates their hatred of the American Dream.Good argument, but I might also add that this hatred and discrimination applies to social class. According to The Economist.
Look at the GOP's "hot issues": Gay marriage and immigration. Now I submit to you that no one is pursuing the American Dream with more gusto than homosexuals and immigrants. The latter is obvious and has always been the case. Immigrants from Mexico, India, the Middle-east, and Oceania are getting jobs, buying houses, and raising up "a mess 'o kids" with a zeal that crusty mainline anglos can't touch. And when it comes to socio-economic mobility, nobody is more mobile than your average gay couple. They practically keep Home Depot, Pottery Barn, and a half-a-dozen other retailers in business...single handedly!
But where are the economic clamps on mobility applied? Smack against middle and lower-middle class immigrants. Where is discrimination in marriage, employment, inheritence, etc... applied? Smack against homosexuals.
A growing body of evidence suggests that the meritocratic ideal is in trouble in America. Income inequality is growing to levels not seen since the Gilded Age, around the 1880s. But social mobility is not increasing at anything like the same pace: would-be Horatio Algers are finding it no easier to climb from rags to riches, while the children of the privileged have a greater chance of staying at the top of the social heap. The United States risks calcifying into a European-style class-based society. [...]Jim Hightower calls it "the betrayal of the middle class" by elites (substitute GOP/Bush) who are so smugly dismissive of middle-class wages and benefits as "excessive" that they will not be able to build walls and gates high enough to stem the tide of anger coming at them.
Everywhere you look in modern America - in the Hollywood Hills or the canyons of Wall Street, in the Nashville recording studios or the clapboard houses of Cambridge, Massachusetts -— you see elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves. America is increasingly looking like imperial Britain, with dynastic ties proliferating, social circles interlocking, mechanisms of social exclusion strengthening and a gap widening between the people who make the decisions and shape the culture and the vast majority of ordinary working stiffs.
Finally, this is how Abi @ Update America 604 summarizes it:
The class war is one of America's dirty little secrets. You're not supposed to know it exists because you just might fight back. And if that happens, we might just be able to take America back from those who have hijacked it.Immigrants, gays, poor people and the middle-class - the GOP is an equal opportunity American Dream killer.
4 comments:
No one in the GOP is trying to stop all immigration.
Many in the GOP are trying to reduce illegal immigration.
Bush is a strong supporter of massive immigration, legal or illegal. (Presumably, that puts him on your side.)
Massive illegal immigration is one of the major factors in entrenching the elites.
I'd suggest thinking about this issue in a bit more depth:
http://lonewacko.com/illegal-immigration-introduction.html
Enjoyed your post this morning. While I agree with the premise, the Repugs have a big thing going for them: the poor, the middle-class, and everyone else all want to be rich or richer than they are right now. So, the poor, the middle-class, et cetera, buy into tax cuts, program cuts (so long as it isn't their program), and all the other things that make the rich, well, rich. This article of faith by all makes the lottery very popular and Republicans somewhat popular (last I looked they controlled all three branches of government and a majority of governorships) and leaves the Democrats without a real message other than a few specific issues.
The issues might change, but the determination to become rich or at least richer is a strong motivation to support "conservative" candidates, unfortunately, as the inequality gap widens
eprof2, you make a great point. Wishful thinking makes repubs out of lots of ordinary folks who end up voting against their own best interests. And the repubs have become expert in manipulating these folks.
Kathy, thanks for the reference to my post. I love your ending - the GOP is an equal opportunity American Dream killer. Sounds like the opening sentence of a book I'd very much like to read.
Lonewacko, thanks for the comment. I'm actually opposed to illegal immigration and I'm not happy about amnesty. However, it's not pratical to send all illegals packing, and they only took advantage of the system and the people who took advantage of them - the employers who hired them - so amnesty seems to be the only solution for now.
I don't want this to end with amnesty though. I want the government to nail the people who hired the illegals to the wall. I also want them to step up enforcement of illegals, which has been nil under Bush. Analysts are also saying amnesty will not stop employers from hiring illegals under the table and paying them cash. That needs to be dealt with too, and those employers who deal under the table need to go to jail.
Finally, the employers who hire illegals and pay them meager wages contribute to the decline of wages for the rest of us. It's no different than outsourcing jobs overseas in order to reduce payroll, except it's being done right under our noses.
eprof2, thanks for dropping by. Just like Abi, I agree with your comments. I might add that the Dems should be doing more to point out the fallacies behind the GOP's ideology.
Kvatch and Abi, thanks for the kind words and comments. Too bad more Americans don't see what is happening right before their eyes. When it starts to affect them personally, they'll be the ones to cry loudest, but it might be too late by then.
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