One of the more annoying things that we hear from liberals is whining about the GOP's ability to get the working class to vote "against its own economic interests."
It's annoying not so much because it smacks of a base-superstructure hangover, but because of the obvious lack of self-examination on the part of many of those who say this sort of nonsense. How many of the people who spout this claptrap are well-to-do lawyers, doctors, professors, or high tech executives? According to their own logic, shouldn't these people be voting for the candidate who's lining their pocket? Or do see themselves as suffering from "false consciousness" because they put aside their narrow economic interests and cast their ballots for the candidate that supports a woman's right to choose, tolerance for gays, and stem cell research?
Liberal doctors: heal thyselves!
The real point that liberals need to understand is that economic interest -- or, more pointedly, economic justice -- is itself a value that needs to be articulated and defended as a value.
That is a good point. Words like "values" and "morals" seem to work real well on the conservative republican types. It is odd that you can have an idea and slap the name "value" on it and people like it, yet if you just explained the idea it might not get support. Catchy slogans work nice. This is one of the biggest aberrations of the conservative side. Both sides have aberrations though. You can't expect everyone on your side to be as smart as yourself. On the liberal side, I think the big abberation is that the dumb ones will make decisions without thinking about society as a whole, only about themselves.
ReplyDeleteOk so which sides' idiots are worse? To find this out, just look at which side is easier to control. By easily controlled I mean that they can be swayed towards the desired decision whether it is right or wrong. The extreme would be people that agreed with the politician just because they think they are supposed to or because everybody else does instead of thinking on their own. If they can be easily controlled by someone they are more suceptible to tyranny in disguise. For example, we both know that Washington is not void of shady politicians. If these shady types get in the right position they can do the most damage with the most easy to control people behind them.
It should be pretty obvious now that you are thinking about it. On one side we have people that will vote for you if you use words that make it sound like you are a nice guy, such as "loyal", "hardworking", "morals", "liberate", etc. On the other side you have people that only think about themselves. I'll take the selfish jerks over the brain-dead idiots anyday! Don't call it values, call it susceptibility because most conservatives aren't going to think into it enough to know if it is a good value or not. They are just watching for certain words.
A perfect example is the republican trickle-down tax break BS, which stopped working a decade or two ago when companies went global. Now it doesn't just trickle down back to us, it trickles down all over the world. It trickles down to the incredibly cheap factories that companies have set up in not so fortunate countries. So it really does only benefit the rich (in America anyway). Of course the brain-dead conservatives don't know any better. The guy making the tax break is using the right words. Ever heard of neuro-linguistic programming?!?!?