Class warfare

[Joanne98]

It's not class warfare. Don't you dare call it class warfare. The Republicans may relentlessly pursue policies that favor the wealthy and hurt everyone else, but it most emphatically is not class warfare. The arbiters of appropriate political discourse will be most put out if you call it class warfare. You will not be welcome in the Village. You will not be invited to appear on the Sunday talk shows.

Class warfare is such an ugly term. To begin with, it suggests that we are a socially stratified nation, and that such stratification is at least to some degree based on money. Money is dirty. One shouldn't discuss money in polite conversation. And it's important that we be polite. And everyone knows that we are a melting pot. Everyone is capable of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, and don't even consider questioning the physics when there is neither a fulcrum nor a point of leverage. This is America. The land of opportunity.

Republican policies that hurt the less affluent and favor those that need no favors is not class warfare, but to discuss Republican policies that hurt the less affluent and favor those that need no favors is class warfare. The pundits will say so. The policies themselves are not class warfare, but raising awareness about them is. Wealth disparity is the fault of the disparaged. Unlike West Virginia Republican Senate nominee John Raese, the less affluent just didn't have the wisdom and foresight to inherit wealth. This isn't about class warfare, it's about knowing how to pick your parents. To those that plan ahead even of their being born go the spoils.

So, we have the widest income gap ever recorded. Clearly, this is because those on the wrong side of the gap not only made poor decisions before they were born, it's also because they are lazy. And the Republicans should be proud and honored that those who planned well ahead of their being born and who are not lazy are being protected. It's not class warfare. It's Social Darwinism. Which is why groups funded by or tied to those nice Koch brothers are financing the "grassroots" teabag "movement", protecting Wisconsin from the dangers of democracy, and who knows what else. It's why Karl Rove's American Crossroads, which is waging its own private ad war against Democrats everywhere, is funded almost entirely by billionaires. They're only doing their part for society. The right kind of society. The only society that matters. After all, that increasingly teeny tiny minority of the super wealthy needs protection against the perils of populism now being promulgated by Socialists and Communists and anyone else petty enough to be concerned with anyone else. It's not easy being a billionaire. It has to be one of the smallest minority demographics ever!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/10/10/908794/-Class-warfare

[OHdem10]

1. We are a socially stratified nation.. Go to every state which has

been under Republican Rule for any period of time and you will
see it in spades. They are working like the dickens to make
it just as obvious over the entire country.

[Xipe Totec]

2. My liege, forgive me!

I did not mean to say class warfare.

Allow me to return to my hovel and work that I may earn my daily pittance and feed my children.

Well, feed those that haven't starved, anyway.

[txlibdem]

3. They've disproved Einstein

The Republicons and their puppet pundits disprove Einstein on every talk show where the subject of class warfare comes up. They quell any talk of class warfare so quickly it exceeds the speed of light for cripes sake!

Thank you for posting this very important topic.

We all need to be constantly reminded that the rich have been waging class warfare against us for decades! Of course they don't want any mention of the word, nor their deeds, lest the rabble be roused.

Well, this is one rabble who is pretty damn roused already! Let's take our country back from the enslavers!

[Spyderama]

4. Class Warfare is What We Need

Soapbox Ferrari

<http://palinbabygate.blogspot.com/2010/10/soapbox-ferrari.html>

[HawkerHurricane]

5. I've said it before.

"Class Warfare" is what happens when the lower classes attempt to defend themselves. What the Reich Wing wants is "Class Slaughter" or "Class Genocide" or perhaps "Class Cleansing". Their target is the middle class. In 1984, George Orwell described how revolutions happen: the middle class convinces the lower class to overthrow the upper class. This is the reverse; the upper class is convincing the lower and middle classes to destroy the middle class while also targeting the 'outsiders': homosexuals and (brown) immigrants.

[Overseas]

6. In this case I agree with Warren Buffet

It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”

Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html