How far will they push the working poor? Just how far?

[RBHam]

History proves there is often a backlash...

[jody]

1. As far as the working poor allow them selves to be pushed! n/t

[roguevalley]

2. the end will come when enough people are on the street. its

getting there where I live.

[Paul Hood]

3. They didn't have talk radio and fox news

to tell them who the enemy is. In the long run I think people will wise up. But in the short run they (this administration) can do so much damage.

[markus]

4. Push them? A lot of those just out of poverty vote Republican

So they can keep their guns and the queers away from their children.

I have an office in an environment mostly staffed by women paper pushers (actually, they do it on computers using imaged documents, which is why I work there). They make less than $10 an hour. Most of them work a second part time job to get buy.

They decided to have a mock election four years ago. Bush won 65%.

When I write a letter to the editor, the few people there who agree with me feel like they have to sneak into my office to tell me "great letter". They would never dare do it at the water cooler or as I walk through the lunch room.

The machinery of neo-con brainwashing is terribly powerful, and is the real enemy we have to defeat if things are going to change.

And, within out own party, we have to throw off the DLC chains and make politics about economics and class again. People have to know that they're being played so that their bosses can take them and their customers for more money.

Until we expose the con game (pun intended) and get people pissed off about it, they work poor and near poor will not rise up again a system that is pushing them down.

[Disturbed]

5. Has the Dem Party failed to ..

stand up for the majority of Amerikans?

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. I guess you've never met any real poor people, then, if

you think that they all have A/C and cable TV or if you think they all use street drugs or if you don't know that grocers in poor neighborhoods charge more for food, if, indeed, there's even a supermarket within walking distance.

[shrike]

15. Amen to that

I remember reading an article in the Chicago Tribune about poverty in Illinois -- people living without plumbing, on dirt floors, etc.

[tlcandie]

7. Until the US can out perform China....

IMO, this is what they are wanting...CHEAP labor with government in total control with tons of people to use as canon fodder and tons of money to spend as they see fit!! Nothing else is acceptable!

[Tony_Illinois]

8. The problem is that these are the people who are responsible for both

putting GWB in office AND the Republican domination of both houses of Congress. There are millions who are either not able or willing to educate themselves on the issues of the day and the details of public policy. They are often looking for simple answers to life's complex problems and--guess what--they get them from people like Rush, O'Lielly, Ann Coulter, Fox "News", Sean Hannity, Oliver North, Fucker Carlson, et al.

The unfortunate reality is that the right-wing propaganda machine is very efficient and powerful, and there is nothing on the left that compares with it. The fact that Fox "News" promotes the right's policies unabashedly is having a creeping and very detrimental effect on the politics in America. Slowly and with demonstrable effect, Republicans are being created by this process and there are no alternatives offered from the opposing point of view.

The main stream media are continually branded as "liberal" by the right wing and study after study has demonstrated that there is not any empirical evidence whatsoever to back up that accusation. But the continual use of the "liberal media" tag by the right has cowed the media to the point of bending over backward to avoid the label, often becoming more partisan toward the right than neutral.

At the very best, the MSM would not be biased in any direction and just report what is. Fox does not do that and does not even pretend to. They advocate and have from their first day on the air. Again, the under-educated in America are being indoctrinated to the right's view of the world, and the left does not have anything to counter this with.

The demonization of Democrats and liberals by the right has gone on for so long now, and become so hateful and vile, that our very patriotism is now questioned by many. The repeated and effective use of labels like "anti-American", "flag burners", "traitors", "draft-dodgers", "baby killers", "anti-family", "socialists", "radical homosexuals", "anti-Christian", etc. have alienated many who should by their very being support Democrats and liberal causes. There is confusion and fear out there and we must find an effective way to get an alternative message to these people.

The most insidious and evil component of this is that most of those on the right who have perpetuated these lies are intelligent people who are very aware that they are being dishonest. But these labels and lies are just so easy to sell to the masses--and it doesn't hurt that they can get rich off of them too.

[Stevepol]

9. There's no accountability when voting machines assure you will win.

So the answer is they will push the working poor as far as they damn well please and it will make no difference whatever. If the voting machines had not determined the past election, Bushco wdn't be there now. But in 06 it won't matter who runs, the Repubs will win and in 08 it won't matter who runs for prez or for the Congress, the Repubs will win most of the Cong races and they will win the big enchilada. It will be just like it was this time. The polls going in will give the Dem the edge, and the exit polls will show a landslide against the Repubs but amazingly the numbers won't say that in the morning.

THE ONLY ISSUE FOR DEMS NOW IS: DEMAND A VOTER VERIFIED PAPER BALLOT AND AUDITS FOR EVERY ELECTION.

[Vidar]

10. Our first revolution sadly lacked the guillotine. Thanks for posting.

[amazona]

11. the middle classes may backlash if pushed enough but...

My understanding is that it was the bourgeosie that was responsible for the excesses of the French Revolution. People get more P.O.ed about what they once had, and saw taken away, than they do about stuff they never had.

The poor hardly ever does anything except fight amongst themselves, I'm sorry to say. They don't have enough access to be able to even create any sort of "backlash" that the upper classes would much notice in their walled castles and gated communities.

If we are waiting for the working poor to rise up, we will wait forever.

Just my humble opinion but I'm a skeptic on this aspect of marxist dogma.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. History shows that the working poor are much more

amenable to being organized by fascists than by leftists, because the fascists are better at exploiting whatever gut issues resound in their particular culture.

All the leftist revolutions I can think of were organized by people who may have started out poor but who were solidly middle class or higher by the time they became active.

[amazona]

14. thanks -- that is what I thought I remembered NT

.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[tinonedown]

16. At this point they have many working poor on their side

In many cases (I didn't say the south). Did I say the south?!

[Tinoire]

17. "Only weeping, worshipping, and sacrificing ennobles the masses"

As far as Leo Strauss told them to:

Only weeping, worshipping, and sacrificing could ennoble the masses. Religion and war - perpetual war - would lift the masses from the animality of bourgeois consumption and the pre-occupation with "creature comforts." Instead of personal happiness, they would live their lives in perpetual sacrifice to God and the nation.

Shadia Drury

[catmandu57]

18. You can mess with the poor working or otherwise

all you want, they don't have a voice to be heard. the middle class is a different story, they're the ones who have something to lose, and something to gain.

The poor don't have that much of an interest in politics, the destitute have even less, there is noone to speak for them, they can't fill the campaign coffers with dollars, and so resign their fate to whomever the other people want.

A large part of the working poor spend too much time working just to survive, working two or three minimum wage shit jobs does'nt leave a whole hell of a lot of time to be worried about the politics of the day.

Don't blame the poor for the evil we suffer, blame electronically rigged voting machines, blame the mushy scared middle, blame those infernal mega churches, but don't blame the poor, and don't look for them to rise up and solve the problems of this country, the deck is stacked against them.

[Octafish]

19. All the way to Iraq.

There won't be much in the way of hiring stateside for a long while, it appears.
Uncle Sam will have openings in the Army, however.



Lot to be said for killing fascists.
Our troops shouldn't have to worry about being led by them.