Questions I’d Like To Ask of the Democrats
When are you going to stand up and act to stop the rape of the working class? When are you going to yell and scream for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act? When are you going to start demanding that we raise taxes on the rich in order to feed and house and provide for the poor, the aged, the weak? When are you going to insist on single payer health care? When are you going to demand that public housing be built that middle-class folks will WANT to live in? When will you speak to the true causes of the violence in our ghettos, and realize that it is not “their” problem but “our” problem? When will you call Our Reptilian Wall Street Masters what they truly are – venal, corrupt criminals – and tell them they don’t get bonuses this year or for the foreseeable future, and if they they get crazy ideas like destroying the banking system in retaliation, you’ll get crazy ideas involving the phrases, “lengthy prison terms in unpleasant Federal supermax prisons” and
“making big rocks into little rocks.”
The venal greed of the overclass very nearly destroyed the world economy. It is well past time to break the backbone of their power.
But, no. Keep on trying for electoral victory by catering to the sensibilities of upper-middle-class white women and the Creative Class. Just don’t be surprised when the bottom 80% of the income scale eventually gets fed up with your malign neglect and heartless exploitation. When that day comes, they will come for both you and the Republicans – and they will come for you both, because you and the Republicans basically have made it your agenda to serve the interests of different factions of the same top 20% of the income scale – all while repeatedly shoving knives into the backs of the poor and working classes.
Comments are closed.
Again, I think you have things quite wrong. The 80% will NOT come after both parties. . . they will ONLY ever go after democrats.
The Tea Partiers hate the wealthy. . . when they are democrats. They have no problem with republican plutocrats. Just look at how they talk about George Soros compared to how they talk about Rupert Murdoch.
They hate the media, when the media is liberal, but love it when it’s conservative.
They hate “Hollywood”. . . except for Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston and Arnold Schwarzeneggar and Mel Gibson and . . .
In short, the 80% that you are talking about hate liberalism, period. In any shape or form. And they love conservatism.
The revolution will only come when democrats are in power, and end as soon as republicans are in charge.
To quote a Republican of note: “You can’t fool all the people all of the time.”
Or, to quote Dr King: “How long? Not long! For no lie can live forever.”
Or, heck, let me go all Steinbeck on you:
If I were to ask questions of democrats… hum…
I would ask them why they have chosen to become the party of abortion?
I would ask them why they think sexual “freedom” and sexual “awareness” are the bedrocks of a good country?
I would ask how setting one part of the people against another part ever made anyone except the jingoists, the corrupt politicians, and the special interests any better off?
I would ask how they think the union can endure without any common moral and ethical framework for the nation?
I would ask what limits they see on federal authority?
I would ask what part of the constitution do they think means the same thing today as it did when written?
I would ask if they believe the law or the people is the higher authority?
I would ask what authority the believe is greater than their own?
I would ask if they could comapare and contrast a republic and democracy and tell me which one the United States is now, which it was founded as, and which they want it to be.
I would ask when the common man and the poor will be given priority over public employees?
I would ask when children will be considered more important that the education lobby?
I would ask why they talk and talk about the poor but never do anything for them other than burry them under a mass of inhuman beuracracy and indecipherable paperwork?
I would ask why when the insist on regulating “big business” those regulations always tend to protect the big business from the small and the old established order from the new innovations?
I would ask on what basis do they ask of our armed services the things they do? and on what basis they send them where they do?
I would ask what is marriage?
Above all, I should like them to answer:
What is truth?
I could go on, but I will stop here.
I could also ask these and many other questions of republicans, but the topic for this was the democrats.
Smf – you also ask good questions.
I agree SMF
Excellent questions. I hate to be a cynic, but it seems to me that both parties have their masters whom they serve with touching devotion. It isn’t a matter of right or wrong or virtue or vice but whose team of oxen gets gored. It strikes me as pretty funny that the “throw the bums out” turns into giving power to the bums we threw out two years ago for what seemed to be excellent reasons at the time.
Are there no bounds to the calls for open communism? Is there no regard at ALL for the denouncement of socialism and communism by the Church for it’s reduction of man to material goods and needs?
Not a thing you listed would have any positive effect, because they are motivated by a materialist and anti-Christian point of view.
An evil rich man is not evil because he is rich, and being on Wall St does not make you evil either. It is the worship of material goods, which can occur whether you possess them or not, which is the defilement which steals souls.
Socialism and communism are the same coin and wealthy materialism, yet nearly nobody on Vox Nova seems to get that…
Craig
Your apparent Gnosticism and rejection of material goods is the problem. God became man, matter is not evil. But I guess Lazarus worshiped material goods and Jesus was a horrible communist for pointing out his plight, being motivated by material goods (for those goods are needs). An evil rich man who does not use the goods as a steward for the universal destination of goods, is indeed doing evil by his act of possession. This you will find in St Ambrose, St John Chrysostom, St Basil, and many others.
Craig – Nothing in my post, nor in my follow-up comments, nor any of my other posts and comments here on Vox Nova, have ever, either explicitly or implicitly, come anywhere within a 5-hour plane ride of “calls for open communism.”
You can’t just claim that anything to the left of Ronald Reagan is “communism” or “socialism” and thus condemned by the Church.
Why was a top marginal tax rate of 91.5% ( almost three times the current rate) acceptable to former General, noted Cold Warrior and Guy Who Was Definitely Not A Communist, Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower?
What everybody commenting here so far seems to be forgetting is that there IS such a thing as a “revolution from the Right.” It has been long predicted by historians and cultural critics of the American scene, such as Richard Hofstadter.
I fully expect such a thing to happen in America once the economy fails–as it’s bound to, because of the improvidence of EVERYBODY–banks, governments, corporate leaders, etc.
Sarah Palin may not become President in 2012, but then somebody like her will win in 2016. The rise of China is going to have direct military, political and–most of all–economic consequences for the much-coddled American Yahoos, and their response WILL be militarist, authoritarian and Nativist. I am happy that I got out when the getting was good.
Digby: I am too. ; )
I agree Matt, there is a rage within groups that are powerless to change the well established machine of political power within the framework established by that machine. There is a point within every human being which evolves into a learned helplessness through a life of being denied the truth of her or his value. There is a lot of shame and rage associated with this dynamic and it is acted out in many different ways. Those who have the wealth will fight to keep it because if they lose it then they will be nothing. They may ease their conscience through charity work, which is their anti-anxiety medication, but underneath it all there is still the threat that someone will take what they have accumulated.
Then there is the rage of those who are being used as objects to help the rich gain wealth. If they do not meet the goals and expectations set by the power in charge they get no 3% raise and a get a bad yearly review. Success for them is getting enough toys to keep them “comfortably numb”. If that doesn’t work pharmaceutical companies have made billions each year to numb us.
Then there are those who cannot even get to the stage of comfortably numb and attack one another as an attempt to gain some sort of worth in an environment that appears to have no exit except for the exceptional performer.
This rage is everywhere and at every social level because we do not live in solidarity, but rather, follow the violent path of reptilian competition. That is the culture of death.
I’m conservative up here in Canada but this can apply to the States too. You want to know when it ends?
- When individual voters stop being self-centered about their own lives and crying “woe is me” and pick up their asses and actually go to the voting booths and stop looking for government handouts.
- When Conservatives start harassing their liberal counterparts’ ideas the way they do with their stuipd arguments and biased media and stop taking it. They say your theism is garbage, call them out on their atheism. They don’t like cutbacks, tell them their taxation to the hilt liberalism is garbage and they don’t even get a cent of it and was the cause of those cutbacks!
- When lukewarm catholics (the majority) start getting their lazy CINO asses back into the pews at Catholic churches every Sunday besides Christmas and Easter.
- When the WHOLE authority (not just B16, select priests and bishops who care) of the Church stops being liberal puppets who love liberalism, socialism, marxism and feminism and realize that the reason the Church population is dying is because they aren’t practicing what they preach and keep giving in to the secular world. You haven’t properly catechized 3 prior generations (post baby boomer, Gen X, Gen Y)going on four with the Millenials, and teaching watered down “Sunshine-Jesus” bull and “tolerance” and not the hard hitting Truth of the faith as well as moral theology and you wonder why those pews are remaining empty.
Young Canadian RC Male:
There was much to criticize in the prior Church culture you long for; however, none of what you say has much to do with the content of my post.
It reminds me, though; I’ve been meaning to do a post called “The Wondrous Mass of Pope Paul VI: Why the 1970s Were a High Point of Liturgy, Ecclesiology and Catechesis.”
Do that post! That would be freakin’ hysterical. And I mean that in a good way.
Wow, great Steinbeck quote, and moving post, Matt. But I disagree about revolution. People cannot revolt against unseen powers that they don’t recognize. Once they do see those powers, it will be too late.
One day the lights will simply go off, the water will not come on, and humanity will have to muddle its way through a new era of history. Billions will die. My hope is that we, the Body of Christ, will be there as a light in that darkness.
One day the lights will simply go off, the water will not come on, and humanity will have to muddle its way through a new era of history. Billions will die.
I fervently hope you are wrong, Nate, but fear you are right.
My hope is that we, the Body of Christ, will be there as a light in that darkness.
Mine too. We must pray for the Grace of Perseverance for each other. We also must reject the idea of sitting out the crisis in a cabin in the woods, surrounded by freeze-dried foods and guns. Such fantasies are utterly foreign to the Mind of Christ, I think.
Odd you should quote Dr. King, since this year the anniversary of his ‘I have a dream” speech was celebrated by Glenn Beck and the Tea Partiers clamoring to “take back their country” from the forces of universal healthcare and taxes on the rich.
In what way is the democratic party the ” party of abortion?”
Phos – they have support for abortion rights as part of their platform – that’s part of the “catering to the sensibilities of upper-middle-class white women and the Creative Class” I mentioned in the post.
Agreed Matt. I will point out though, that our Republican friends decry, point, cry and rant against abortion—end result? Not one more or less abortion is carried out under their periods of political control. My point isn’t relative virtue of the parties, just the fact that talk is cheap. Neither party is truly interested in changing the status quo concerning abortion, they just talk to their bases and create straw men to generate votes.
That makes them the party of abortion rights, not the party of abortion. They don’t force people to have abortions, as much as republicans would like to think.
The GOP is the party of anti-abortion rhetoric, but I have trouble accepting them as the anti abortion party.
The GOP is the party of anti-abortion rhetoric, but I have trouble accepting them as the anti abortion party.
Well, of course. I get tired of pointing this out, but just ask yourself: if the Republican Party really considers abortion to be the equivalent of genocide, why is it that, when they actually gain power, the things they actually make an effort to get done are all about tax cuts, economic deregulation and so forth? The Republicans could have made a lot of progress on abortion by going to the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate and saying: “Look, guys: we’ll brush off the insurance industry pocket lint from our suits and give you single-payer health care, if you’ll throw Emily’s list and NARAL under the bus and work with us on abortion. Deal?”
But no. Politics is not about what you stand for or how you explain it. It is about Who You Stand With, and it is clear who the Republican Party stands with: the Richest One Percent of Americans and their minions.
smf,
I would ask how setting one part of the people against another part ever made anyone except the jingoists, the corrupt politicians, and the special interests any better off?
So when republicans/Tea partiers/whomever, speak of the “real Americans” (as opposed to “fake Americans” I suppose) I have your permission to spit in their eye?
Because I’ve been doing so without your permission. . .
wow! ain’t that the Christian spirit.
I’d like to ask all the Anti-Socialists-for-Jesus how much He charged for the bread and fishes? What was His fee for healing the blind? Did He send Lazarus back to the tomb for missing an installment on his Resurrection Fee? Why was Ananias struck dead?
Rodak, you’re not going to get any answers from them; their “Catholicism” is quite selective and very “Americanist.”
To be fair to them, however, their attitudes toward “socialism” are still hugely affected by the memories of the persecutions, by the “socialist” dictatorships, of the Catholic faithful during the second half of the 20th century–and they took absolutely no notice of Pope Montini’s “Ost-Politik” and its baldly stated presumption that the Church could just as easily live with a “socialist” regime as with a “neo-capitalist” one; their Jesus was a “red-blooded” American who subscribed to the Horatio Alger myth–not some European “pinko” “worker-priest” or “community organizer.”
Dorothy Day? They never heard of her; their crew-cut-sporting ex-Marine Irish priests didn’t take “marching orders” from some half-crazed woman who’d met God on her philandering lover’s landing. As I suggested, their Jesus had always been a law-abiding, thoroughly conformist American he-man who’d not come to set aside “one tittle” of the “Old Law.” Instead, he was a Boy Scout.
When are you going to demand that public housing be built that middle-class folks will WANT to live in?
It might just possibly be that the middle class, having sufficient money to pay for housing of their choosing (otherwise they wouldn’t be the middle class) would rather do just that, rent or buy as they choose, rather than being put into public housing of someone else’s choosing, whatever it’s merits.
Come to that, it might also be that this is the proper mode of things — that those who have the ability to provide for their own housing should do so in order that public services may be expended on those who actually need them, like, say: the poor.
Darwin, the median house and the median income are way out of whack in lots of places in the US – in such places, there is a glaring need for affordable housing for the people that bag groceries, pump gas and work at 7/11. These are the places I’m talking about.
DC,
I would still hope that we build housing the middle class would want to live in. Our problem is public housing for the poor that no middle class person would dare live in.
Much good can be done by mixed use housing, Section 8 vouchers, etc.
If the concern is simply that the housing provided for the destitute be non-scarry, then clearly not having any public housing and using vouchers (or a negative income tax) is the answer. Publically built, owned and administered housing has been pretty uniformly a disaster.
I had, apparently mistakenly, taken the wish to be fore there to be public housing provided to the middle class. And frankly, one of the more corrupt elements of modern progressivism (speaking as an outsider) is the disire to provide more and more programs to the middle class on the theory that such programs will at least be popular, rather than focusing on alleviating real social want. Such an approach really is making government expansion an end unto itself rather than a means to helping the needy.
Though perhaps part of the issue here is the American tendency to define virtually everyone as middle class. After all, according to the current administration this is apparently an income bracket that goes up to 250k/yr — yet if we’re talking about heads of household who bag groceries or pump gas for a living, we’re talking about people in the bottom 20-30% of the income distribution. That’s a very, very wide range.
Darwin – may I say that, though it is safe to say we definitely disagree on lots of things in the political sphere, I really, deeply appreciate the shining example you set in my comboxes in terms of both charity and also in confining your remarks to substantive critiques? Please go and make disciples of all conservatives :)
To the points you raise:
If the concern is simply that the housing provided for the destitute be non-scarry, then clearly not having any public housing and using vouchers (or a negative income tax) is the answer. Publically built, owned and administered housing has been pretty uniformly a disaster.
Yes and no. Places like Cabrini Green and the projects near my childhood neighborhood were deeply scary places. There can be other uses for public housing than “warehouses for the poor.” The White House, after all, is in this broader sense, “Public Housing.”
I had, apparently mistakenly, taken the wish to be fore there to be public housing provided to the middle class. And frankly, one of the more corrupt elements of modern progressivism (speaking as an outsider) is the desire to provide more and more programs to the middle class on the theory that such programs will at least be popular, rather than focusing on alleviating real social want. Such an approach really is making government expansion an end unto itself rather than a means to helping the needy.
I’m not sure where you live, but in the San Francisco Bay Area, the median home price and the median income are nowhere near matching up – this is in part due to developers building housing mostly aimed at the richest buyers (and thus pocketing higher margins per house sold.) This creates a situation in which the top, oh, 20% of the income scale lives a reasonably comfortable life, and the rest of us live lives of constant, impending economic crisis.
Well, thanks, on the tone comment. :-)
Actually, as it happens, I recently found myself in a situation of deciding between two jobs: One in the Bay Area (down in the South Bay) and one in Columbus OH. I opted for the Columbus job after coming out and seeing how little even a $2k per month rent payment would get a family of seven. (And that’s even though I would have been making a lot more than the median income.) So yeah, I hear you.
Personally, I’d tend to think that if that’s going to be solved the approach would be to apply a very heavy local income tax and use that to provide a housing credit or negative income tax payment to people making less than a certain level — but even then that might only serve to drive drive high incomes even higher in the area and not solve the problem.
Sadly, the real solution (at least speaking as a native Californian — though Angelino, not northerner — who got the hell out) is that California needs to depopulate a lot and/or allow a lot more sprawl and decentralization before it has reasonable housing prices. Trying to build decent publically owned housing simply won’t work in an environment in which the market will happily keep the price of small houses above half a million even in “down” times.
If the concern is simply that the housing provided for the destitute be non-scarry, then clearly not having any public housing and using vouchers (or a negative income tax) is the answer.
Which is what we have had since the 1980s, along with the very successful Section 202 program (heavily promoted by the Catholic Church).
Publically built, owned and administered housing has been pretty uniformly a disaster.
For about a five year period.
It worked fine for its tenant from the 1930s-mid1960s. No such housing has been built since the early 1970s. (though it doesn’t stop conservatives from using it as a boogie-man).
During its successful period, potential tenants were heavily screened. Screening resulted in safe and healthy projects but was also used racially.
frankly, one of the more corrupt elements of modern progressivism (speaking as an outsider) is the disire to provide more and more programs to the middle class
Modern liberalism is much less attached to social insurance programs as the Catholic Church is.
After all, according to the current administration this is apparently an income bracket that goes up to 250k/yr
And the GOP is outraged at such a restrictive upper definintion of “middle class”!
As a registered Republican, I would strongly disagree with the claim that those making above 250k are not rich. (Personally, I’d put the “rich” line at about 100k, making the top 20% of the country rich.) What we object to is the insistance that the rich be taxed more than they currently are when everyone else is getting to keep a tax reduction. The rich already pay most income taxes. I personally do not think it is good for our country to have them (or perhaps I should say, us) bankrolling ever larger percentages of it.
Or tax system is already steeply progressive, which I think is fine. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to constantly make it more so.
When are you going to stand up and act to stop the rape of the working class?
Matt,
As much as I appreciate prophetic voices asking tough questions, I believe the answer is when Matts and like minded people along with more members of the working class themselves stop sitting on the sidelines asking questions and better involve themselves in the Democratic Party.
Either the Democratic Party or its successor. I’m losing hope that the Democrats can be expected to do anything actually progressive. Where are the voices calling for repeal of Taft-Hartley, for example?
Matt,
Where are those voices? How about it be your voice in ther Democratic Party?
I hear ya, Kurt – but, how about the party shows some signs of hearing folks like me?
Matt,
If you find someone is hard of hearing, move closer to them!