In his 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said:
“America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”
Apparently “dreadful fear and hate” have won. A new Lloyd’s Register (the institution dates back to the 1760s) Global Risk Poll of citizens of 140 countries around the world found that one-in-ten (10%) Americans say that politics represents the biggest risk in their lives (above disease and accidents, even).
The average across the other 139 countries was around 1 percent of people who worried politics could harm them (there were a few exceptions; 5 percent of Russians said the same).
And, indeed, our politics can harm us.
There’s the fear of physical violence if you go out in public with a “F*ck Trump” tee shirt or cap or similar bumper sticker, the fear of losing your healthcare this November when the Republican Big Beautiful Bill cuts to Medicaid kick in, the fear of losing your Medicare as the GOP works to strangle and privatize the system with their “Medicare Advantage” scam, the fear of Republicans killing or “reforming” Social Security so they can hand it off to the big banks that own them.
Not to mention the GOP-led campaign to turn our environment over to the fossil fuel industry, our forests over the lumber industry, our streams and water over to the chemical industry, our farms over to the pesticide industry, our children over to the radical Christian school industry, and our economy over to the crypto industry.
Our Republican politicians and the billionaire-owned media that supports them are also constantly telling us who to hate and fear.
If it’s not Willie Horton it’s migrant caravans, Muslim bombers, murderer/rapist “illegals,” or, in 2024, trans people. For this election cycle, Trump, Rubio, Vance, and Miller are telling us we should hate and fear the guy mowing your lawn as well as democratic socialists and “communists.”
Politics is supposed to help and support us, not rip us off, terrify us, or exploit us, but ever since the Reagan Revolution that’s pretty much all that’s happened.
Republican opposition to real reforms has kept student debt sky-high, housing in the hands of Wall Street hedge funds, health insurance rates out of reach for many, child-care unaffordable, and even caused the national system of gleaming new hospitals and public schools that Eisenhower and Kennedy established across America with their 90% top income tax rate to deteriorate or even shut down.
But why? And what can we do about it?
The era from the 1930s to the 1980s was the most prosperous either America or the world had ever seen. Our top 90% income tax rate on the morbidly rich and 50% income tax rate on corporations paid down our national debt from WWII to a mere $800 billion (less than $1 trillion!) when Reagan came into office, all while funding massive programs across America.
They included power systems like the TVA and Hoover Dam, public schools, the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, Public Broadcasting, Head Start, food stamps, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing projects and VA home loans, hundreds of new airports and train stations, and thousands of smaller efforts. ‘
The American middle class was the first in world history to reach half the population of any nation; because of FDR’s New Deal, when Reagan came into office fully two-thirds of us were in it, most with a high school diploma and a single paycheck. (Today it’s around 45 percent of us, and it takes two full-time paychecks and a college degree to get there.)
But the morbidly rich self-described “Makers” chafed at having to pay all those taxes to support programs for the working class “Takers” of society, so when Lewis Powell gave them a plan in 1971 to rise up and crush the New Deal and Great Society and turn America into an oligarchy with them in charge, they leaped at it.
They created networks of influential think tanks like Heritage and American Enterprise, media monsters with rightwing TV networks and over 1500 rightwing radio stations, funded universities and seminars, brought corporations and legislators together with ALEC and others, founded and/or funded the Libertarian Party and the Federalist Society, and set out to seize control of the GOP.
It took a few decades, but their bet paid off; several of America’s billionaires are today richer than any human being who’s ever walked on planet Earth, from the days of the Pharaohs to the kings of the 17th century.
The problem the billionaires and the Republicans they own faced, though, was that most Americans loved what those oligarchs called “socialism.” We embraced Social Security, unionization, and the minimum wage with a gusto. We sent our kids to free colleges across the country. We cheered when LBJ got Medicaid and Medicare passed into law over the majority opposition of the GOP in the Senate.
And when oligarchs like David Koch ran for Vice President in 1980 on a platform of ending all of those programs and even shutting down our public school system, all to pay for tax breaks for his billionaires and corporations, they failed. Koch only got about a million votes that year.
So, when Reagan took office they decided that since Americans wouldn’t vote for oligarchy but instead really only wanted “socialism,” the best solution was to so terrify Americans of our neighbors that hate and fear would overwhelm self-interest.
It worked 45 years ago when Reagan railed against “hippie brats“ and “that young buck ahead of you in the grocery line buying steak with his food stamps,” and they’re still doing it!
As Axios reported last week, “Republicans admit the GOP’s midterm forecast is bleak.” But they’re clinging to two goals; suppress the vote with the SAVE Act, all while whipping up voters’ fear and loathing of Democrats:
“‘It’s going to be a hate election,’ a Republican tied to President Trump’s political operation told Axios. ‘Voters have to hate the Dems more than they hate us. And we have material to work with.’”
The simple fact is that since 1981, when the Reagan Revolution kicked off, there hasn’t been even one single piece of major legislation passed through the US Congress that was written by Republicans and passed by a majority of Republicans and signed by a Republican president whose major beneficiary was the average American.
Seriously, not one in 45 years. I know, because for the past 23 years I’ve run a contest on my radio show for anybody who can identify any such Republican legislative unicorn, and none have won.
The problem is, though, that with so much of our media and intellectual atmosphere controlled by billionaires and their money, most Americans don’t know this. They think that Republicans — because they’re so tight with billionaires and big business — must know how to run an economy, even though ten of the last 11 recessions happened on Republican presidencies, most following giant tax cuts for billionaires, and those high-end tax cuts by Reagan, Bush, and Trump have collectively added over $34 trillion to our national debt.
So how do we dial back the hate and fear, particularly when the GOP is openly bragging to reporters that it’s worked so well for them in the past that they’re going to double down on it this year?
Expose them.
When they try to use hate, label it: “That’s hate-mongering. It’s beneath you.” Tell them you’re disgusted by their efforts to divide us by gender identity, race, religion, region, and nationality. Point out that they’re promoting bigotry, and history tells us that never ends well.
Inform people.
Show them how, since 1933, Democrats have written into law every major federal protection or benefit for working Americans, from Social Security, the minimum wage, and the right to unionize to Medicare, Medicaid, workplace safety, environmental and consumer protections, civil and voting rights, food assistance, Pell Grants, the Affordable Care Act, and beyond.
Without Democratic (and Eisenhower’s) legislative efforts over the past century, there literally would not be an American middle class of any consequence.
And quote Republican President Eisenhower — the last honest Republican president since the Reagan Revolution handed the party to the billionaires — when he wrapped up the last sentence of his farewell address with a prayer:
“We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”
Louise’s Daily Song; “Fear Factory”
Comments on Wednesday’s Daily Take:
First They Came for Immigrants. Then They Came for Dissent. Next Are They Coming for Us?
To the extent that there is an international conspiracy to subjugate the human race, it is not being directed by a small island nation of a little over 11 million people, with a GDP comparable to Jeff Bezos, that can’t even keep the lights on. It is being directed from the offices of autocrats and oligarchs for their personal enrichment. Rubio is a servant to this conspiracy, and a traitor to democracy.
~ Jeffrey Hobbs
CAN the administration EXCLUDE PEOPLE FROM THE MONETARY SYSTEM simply by ACCUSING them of supporting terrorism? Or do they have to be formally indicted? I’m worried that the answer will cause widespread panic.
~ Juliette Craig
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