{"id":1686,"date":"2011-11-15T15:10:38","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T19:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=1686"},"modified":"2011-11-15T15:10:38","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T19:10:38","slug":"the-masses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=1686","title":{"rendered":"The (M)asses"},"content":{"rendered":"

To the So-Called 53%: Stop Embarrassing Yourselves<\/a>, by Kevin Carson at the Center for a Stateless Society (republished in its entirety below):<\/p>\n

One of the corporate establishment\u2019s favorite tricks for countering dissent is fake populism \u2014 dismissing as \u201cclass warfare\u201d any critique of genuine privilege while misdirecting the working class\u2019s resentment toward the underclass.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sometimes called \u201cproducerism\u201d:\u00a0An attempt to manufacture a sense of class solidarity between wage workers and their alleged fellow \u201cproducers\u201d in the plutocracy, against the parasitic lower orders. See, the banksters, billionaires and cowboy CEOs aren\u2019t to blame for the average person\u2019s economic pain. They\u2019re \u201cproducers,\u201d just like us! The culprits are the 47% who \u201cdon\u2019t pay any taxes,\u201d an unholy alliance of ACORN, SEIU and single moms on food stamps.<\/p>\n

The latest example of this astroturf right-wing populism is the so-called \u201c53%\u201d movement, created by RedState.org founder Erick Erickson, with the help of Josh Trevino of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Their website, the53.tumblr.com<\/a>, features photos of contributors holding up handwritten statements on the general pattern of Mr. Erickson\u2019s own inaugural post: \u201cI work 3 jobs. I have a house I can\u2019t sell. My family insurance costs are outrageous. But I don\u2019t blame Wall Street. Suck it up, you whiners.\u201d<\/p>\n

One contributor, a Marine veteran, writes: \u201cI don\u2019t blame Wall Street because it doesn\u2019t matter what Wall Street or anyone else does. I am responsible for my own destiny. I will succeed or fail because of me and me ALONE.\u201d<\/p>\n

This sort of sycophancy is just painful to read. Here are people with multiple jobs and underwater mortgages, struggling to survive while falling all over themselves trying to outdo each other in absolving the Mr. Moneypennys and Daddy Warbuckses of any responsibility for their plight. It\u2019s like watching a dog that keeps crawling back on its belly to lick the boot of the man who\u2019s kicking it.<\/p>\n

The worst part of this pathetic movement is that, intellectually speaking, it\u2019s completely incoherent. It\u2019s not derived from any consistent principle that bears looking into. Its participants can\u2019t claim, as a matter of principle, that it\u2019s wrong to resent other people or to blame them for their problems. After all, their very name suggests it\u2019s entirely appropriate to condemn parasitism \u2014 namely, that of which the 47% is allegedly guilty.\u00a0 And most of its contributors are the same people who\u2019ve been loudly cheering on the likes of Joe the Plumber who complained the country was going to hell in a handbasket. So it\u2019s OK to blame your problems on THEM \u2014 just so long as THEM is the Kenyan Marxist and not the billionaires.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnow when to bark and when to lick,\u201d as the saying goes. Resentment and moral outrage are entirely righteous when directed downward, but shameful and impious when directed upward against one\u2019s betters. It\u2019s perfectly OK to express resentment against economic injustice \u2014 just so long as you blame the poor instead of the rich. It\u2019s like a slave blaming his troubles, not on the master, but on another slave picking cotton too slowly. Utterly contemptible.<\/p>\n

You folks in the 53% movement are being played.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t like parasitism? The billionaire banksters and corporate welfare queens who fund your astroturf movement are the biggest parasites in human history. They loot wealth from the genuine producers with a front end loader, while you worry about people scraping up welfare with a teaspoon.<\/p>\n

You say you don\u2019t like big government? The corporations are the government. Count the number of people from Goldman-Sachs in the Treasury, from Cargill in the USDA, and from Phizer in the FDA. Now count the number of welfare moms. Yeah, that\u2019s some \u201cMarxist\u201d in the White House, all right. Schmuck.<\/p>\n

The statism involved in food stamps and TANF is barely a rounding error on the statism involved in the privilege of the super-rich. The central function of the state is to enforce the artificial property rights, artificial scarcities, entry barriers, regulatory cartels, and other monopolies from which the privileged rich extract rents. Welfare is just a way of giving back a miniscule fraction of this stolen loot to the poorest of the poor, to prevent politically destabilizing levels of starvation and homelessness. Ever hear the phrase \u201cstraining at a gnat and swallowing a camel?\u201d<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s a message for those of you out there who pride yourselves on licking the spittle of the rich and powerful while you kick those who are down. You think you\u2019ll get a gold star or a pat on the head if you suck up to them enough? If you work hard enough building their pyramids, maybe they\u2019ll make you Pharaoh someday? You really think the folks on Wall Street whose apples you\u2019re polishing admire you as fellow \u201cproducers?\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019re laughing at you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To the So-Called 53%: Stop Embarrassing Yourselves, by Kevin Carson at the Center for a Stateless Society (republished in its entirety below): One of the corporate establishment\u2019s favorite tricks for countering dissent is fake populism \u2014 dismissing as \u201cclass warfare\u201d any critique of genuine privilege while misdirecting the working class\u2019s resentment toward the underclass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kevin-carson"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1687,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions\/1687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}