By Dan
Hagen
Ever notice
that the 21st century American conservative movement does psychological
projection almost exclusively?
THEY are
the ones who whine about their victimhood constantly with their nonexistent
"wars on Christmas" and other such bullshit. THEY are the ones who
are the economic parasites, with their crony-capitalist, no-bid, no-performance
military-industrial complex contracts running into the hundreds of billions.
THEY are the ones who make constant false accusations of voter fraud, the
felony THEY are quietly committing.
"Now
would be a good time to think about the term ‘Class Warfare,’” Helen Kromm
wrote. “This neat little slogan was chosen as the battle cry of the one percent
for more reasons than you might think. Forget that it is a catchy little phrase
and certainly a lie. Forget the huge cojones it takes to even utter it. Perhaps
the only thing more galling than pillaging an entire people is proclaiming yourself
a victim of those same people. The operative word here is 'warfare.' It was
important to get this word out there front and center and early in this
game."
“The
Republican mindset is inherently extreme — extremely aggressive, extremely
defensive, extremely emotional,” wrote Jane Smiley. “If you don't exhibit much
aggression, they think you are wimping out, and if you do unto them what they
have done unto you, they start screaming that they are being unfairly
victimized. They are highly reactive and sitting down and reasoning together is
not on the program.”
“Their politics never loses, but is always made to lose; it cannot fail, but is always failed,” observed Leonard Pierce. “Reconciling history and current events in
this way, where oppression, dictatorship, and the impeding of human rights are
exclusively products of liberalism and the political right is both naturally,
inevitably victorious and forever persecuted and silenced, is the great project
of today’s movement conservative.”
Doug Muder wrote, “Once you grasp the concept of privileged distress, you’ll see it everywhere: the rich feel 'punished' by taxes; whites believe they are the real
victims of racism; employers’ religious freedom is threatened when they can’t
deny contraception to their employees; English-speakers resent bilingualism —
it goes on and on.
"And
what is the Tea Party movement other than a counter-revolution? It comes
cloaked in religion and fiscal responsibility, but scratch the surface and
you’ll find privileged distress: Change has taken something from us and we want
it back.”
So pity the
poor, dim-bulb Walmart Republican. He believes the people he supports are
“good” and “nice” because they wear American Legion hats and carry Bibles. He
thinks he's a victim of those awful “liberals” he hears so much about on Fox
News — the people who fought slavery and child labor and poorhouses for the
elderly and then somehow became, oddly enough, servants of evil.
Ignorant of
the history he claims to be an expert on, he doesn’t know that in England,
liberals — being proponents of freedom and equality — were the people who
fought for free enterprise. Conservatives fought against it, naturally, in
favor of class and privilege.
He doesn’t know that the wealthy Americans even opposed
the installation of the Statue of Liberty. The owners of sweatshops and deadly
mines didn’t think “liberty” was an idea that poor people should ever be
encouraged to consider.
“As the
people of a fading empire, our self-absorbed victim-swoon is only exceeded by
our paranoia,” wrote Phil Rockstroh. “We cower from phantoms and rage at realms
of invisibles: Within this empire of Paxil, Palin and paranoia, collective fear
of all the wrong things has made the US and her people analogous to a car alarm
that issues a shrill, electronic warning to an empty parking lot.”
For
example, one of right’s foremost professional victims is Sarah Palin. She
collected the income for a bestselling book with her name on it that she did
not write and may not have even read. She asked to be elected to a state
governorship that she threw away when it bored her. She was handed a vice
presidential nomination that she refused to prepare for, thereby embarrassing
herself and this nation in a spectacular fashion.
Palin has
never earned any of the many rewards that have been showered upon her. She is
NOT a victim and has NEVER been a victim. Whatever the opposite of a victim is,
she's that.
“For
decades, middle and laboring class conservatives have been hoarding their
resentments against phantom enemies, foreign and domestic, as the
time-yellowed, eroded social contract, once, offering a better life for
themselves and for their children, has crumbled to dust in their hands,”
Rockstroh wrote. “By the financial
machinations of elitist kleptocrats and the Pentagon's multi-billion dollar
money pit, they have been endowed with little else but this stash of toxic
baubles they store against reality.”
Oddly and
ironically enough, in fact, that Walmart Republican finally IS a victim, as his
“good” heroes drain his Social Security account with national debt and tax cuts
for the rich, plot to erode his wages down to subsistence-level and carefully
prepare his grandchildren to invade the next resource-rich country that happens
to catch the plutocrat's reptilian eye.
He’s just
not smart enough to understand that the plutocratic pals who give him his
marching orders are really just a walrus and a carpenter who have always
planned to dine not WITH, but ON them.
"It
seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To
play them such a trick,
After we've
brought them out so far,
And made
them trot so quick!"
The
Carpenter said nothing but
"The
butter's spread too thick!"
"I
weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I
deeply sympathize."
With sobs
and tears he sorted out
Those of
the largest size,
Holding his
pocket-handkerchief
Before his
streaming eyes.
— Lewis
Carroll
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