When I was in my teens and early twenties, I spent a lot of time sitting on the hoods of cars parked by the side of Highway 74 in Wadesboro, listening to all kinds of redneck wisdom. Ronald Wilson Reagan was president back then and most folks thought he was on the right track. Government was too big and welfare queens were rampant. The Shi’ites in Iran and the commies in Russia called for a strong man like Reagan instead of a wimp like Carter. And nobody was going to get any of that social security they were paying and the government was squandering.
Thirty plus years later and a lot of those folks aren’t too far from collecting that social security and most of their parents are dependent on it. You wouldn’t know that to hear conservatives talking about it. They routinely refer to social security and Medicare as failed programs and warn that they will leave us like Greece in the not too distant future.
At the state level in North Carolina, those conservatives are claiming they got the budget down to the right size by cutting the fat out of education. They’re showing tough love by cutting unemployment benefits and making it harder for people to keep them. Our unemployment rate has risen continually for months because of a bunch of layabouts who want to get paid for doing nothing.
And all the while, the wealthiest among us are making more and more money. Since the Great Recession ended almost all of the wealth created ended up their pockets. Conservatives would say its money they deserve. That’s why they’ve continued to cut their taxes and reduced government revenues. If they keep on going, they’re going to straighten our country out and undo all the nonsense we’ve passed since the New Deal.
And they’re driving that same narrative they did 30 years ago. They’re telling workers that they are paying money into social security that they’ll never see. All these entitlements for shiftless folks are bankrupting the country. These unemployment benefits are going to people who don’t want to work.
To hear conservatives tell it, there’s a nasty alliance between people who want something for nothing and a bunch of soft-hearted, soft-headed government liberals who will give it to them. Together, they’re taking hard-earned money out of pockets of hardworking Americans and giving it to lazy people who won’t work. And they’re bankrupting the country along the way.
The GOP and Donald Trump and Phil Berger and Art Pope are going to fix all this mess. They’re going to take us back to the good old days before FDR and LBJ ruined the country. You remember, those days when you didn’t need to pay social security or Medicare because you literally worked yourself to death. Retirement was something for people who could afford it, not something you earned after 45 years of working. You didn’t need to worry about losing your house because you couldn’t afford one.
We’ll get back to those days when you don’t need to see what’s happening on the weekend because most people won’t have one. Vacations will be for people who’ve earned them and can afford them, not people who work for wages. Don’t worry about high doctor bills because, really, most people won’t be able to afford a doctor anyway.
And let’s get all those moochers out of public housing. Let’s get back to the good old days of slums and ghettos where landlords aren’t burdened by pesky government regulations requiring health and safety standards. We can stuff all of those lazy folks into squalid conditions that might make them more industrious in their desire to escape poverty.
Let’s get back to the days when chicken plant fires and shirt factory fires are just hazards of working, not something for employers to worry about. If people don’t like the conditions, they can find work elsewhere–or not. They can also go back to those slums.
There’s more we can do to get back to the good old days when the government let us keep all our money and everybody was hardworking and industrious. Life was simple then. You worked till you died. You didn’t worry about mortgages or home repairs because you weren’t burdened by home ownership. The rich got richer while the rest of the country knew their place–and it wasn’t on the rich side of town or in their schools or in their churches. And nobody would have to worry about paying for social security that they’ll never get.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
To be, rather than seem to be. I long for the days of Ronaldus Magnus, one of the greatest presidents this country ever had. He defeated the Soviet Union, built up our military, and the American economy was the giant of the earth. Ronald Reagan was the “to be”.
Positive progressive positions are none other than window dressing for Karl Marx: “from each according to his ability; to each, according to his needs”. Barack Hussein Obama was the “seem to be”.
That concept has failed, every time it’s been tried, throughout the history of man.
In 2008, that translated into the “fundamental transformation of America”, from some little known Senator from Illinois, who drove a stake into the heart of The Anointed One (Hillary Clinton’s) coronation.
Since then, this parishioner of Jeremiah Wright’s “God Damn America” sermons, avid student of Saul Alinsky, and buddy to unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers has tried to do just that. In his apologizing for America, and his bowing to foreign leaders, he promulgated the decline of the America.
While claiming to be The Champion of the People, he then went on one luxury vacation after another. When questioned on this bourgeois behavior, his sour-puss wife shouted: “Let them eat cake!”
Then, while proclaiming American school children would have to eat “roots, dried fish & berries” in their school cafeterias (most of which ends up in the shit cans) , Moochelle flew off to Botswana to dine on fat cakes and French fries with the First Daughters.
No, getting rich” does not come from some perceived “Obama entitlement”. It comes from hard work (sorry) rugged individualism (not collectivism), and one can enjoy the fruits of their labors (not government supplied welfare).
America desperately needs to get back to the “good old days”. God Speed 2016!
Though it’s a classic rhetorical device to repeat with positive irony an opponent’s positions, every time a “regressionist” argument is repeated, even in a progressive context, it gets established in part as at least worthy of consideration, if only as a reference point for an opposing argument being made. This counter assertion-assertion dynamic undercuts positive progressive positions because they always need to be assessed by readers as statements in opposition to an a priori statement which the reader may be left thinking, actually, kind of makes sense.
To beat the “Pudgy Spawn” of Ronald Reagan – from Gingrich and Rove to Berger, Moore, McHenry, and Pope – at their own game of politics by assertion, positive progressive positions and statements must have muscle and memory built into them. To begin articulating the assertion that progressives can help people get rich ( however one wishes to define the word) by using taxes fairly levied to provide services that make getting rich available to most everyone and poverty a condition anyone should think to fear is one example. It’s true (muscle) and it gets attention (memory).
Very accurate statement — the attached article reflects the “ol’ time” attitudes you mention. Of course, it’s from The Onion. http://www.theonion.com/article/single-unemployed-mother-leeching-government-51176
Carolina Comeback?
It’s more like a Carolina Go-back!
Thomas you’ve outdone your self! You know the sky is falling, so you took out your umbrella, cause it’s raining. Thanks. By the way it’s good to know who scratched my hood. Surely the truth, which the GOP makes up, will set everything right.
Very well said. Just had a good friend tell me five minutes ago that it’s a problem that everyone want to be middle class, and not everyone can be, and not everyone can own their own home. The feudal mentality lives on.
Thank you. Makes me think of the saying that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. I don’t want to .
Sometimes I have wondered if my memory and knowledge of history was failing me. Good to know that others see a past as I do. I was working for a national insurance company in Jacksonville, Fl when Medicare was up for consideration. Every employee in that branch office was asked to contact their Congressman and Senators to oppose the legislation on the grounds that it would destroy insurance companies health insurance business and people would lose their jobs. Even at the age of 24, I was sure that was not likely. That company – five decades later is doing very, very well. Along with a lot of others still in the health insurance business. (No, I did not contact my elected representatives, and instead told the manager of that statewide office that I objected to the pressure. He was too stunned to do anything except be polite.)
Exactly! The consistent conservative modus operandi. The very same way ObamaCare has been attacked since 2009 by neo-cons as a program that is wrecking the US economy.
That hasn’t happened and won’t happen. Last I looked, unemployment has declined from over 10% to under 6% since ACA was passed, the stock market is in much better shape (even after this past week!), and corporate profits over the span have never been more robust. All the while 16 million more Americans now have health coverage.
And yet, partisan fools like GOP Sen. Rucho will tweet such wrongheaded and insensitive claptrap as “Justice Robert’s pen & Obamacare has done more damage to the USA then the swords of the Nazis,Soviets & terrorists combined.”
One of your best, spot-on blogs and commentaries, Thomas!
Regressives may shortly jump in with posts on this thread, pummeling you for your words and viewpoint. But let the gullible and greedy “haves” say what they will. You and most of your blog readers and posters know what’s happening and why on the conservative side, i.e., a full scale assault on the middle class and on government programs that seek to support the common good of all.