I’m really not sure what to make of these forelock-tugging serfs. Are they inhabitants of some Potemkin suburb? Do they have such a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome they’re incapable of thinking out of the box the wealthy elites have put them in?
Among the smug-looking posts, there’s one woman who lists a load of crappy low-paid freelance jobs, and insists she feels empowered, not exploited. And her entire income depends on the amount the super-rich have left after taxes. Another claims her poverty is entirely the fault of her own bad decisions, and is all in favour of “free markets not handouts”. Except for handouts to the rich, of course. They don’t count.
I realise of course that the entire site is a probably some sort of Astroturf job, hastily put together by a few frightened right-wingers as a reaction against the increasingly large scale demonstrations in Washington demanding that the rich pay slightly higher taxes and the financial sector needs to be regulated a bit. It actually reads so clumsily as propaganda that it’s entirely possible that it’s actually a left-wing parody of tea-party types.
Assuming it is for real, it evidently hasn’t occurred to these people that a much larger middle class who earn most of their living providing goods and services to each other will deliver far greater prosperity to a far greater number of people than their limited vision of a small middle class who survive by supplying goods and services to the elites. Certainly I know of few entrepreneurial types whose businesses depend on ordinary working people having the money to spend on the goods and services their businesses provide.
One day, the more extreme versions of supply-side economics these people have been conned into buying will be as discredited as Communism. Sure, it works for the wealthy elites, just as Communism worked for the apparatchiks. Perhaps one day, expressing an admiration for Ayn Rand will kill a career in business or politics as surely as admiring Hitler or Stalin does today.
Although it may be either astroturf or satire, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s for real. American politics is mostly driven by resentment and insecurity right now. These bootlickers would be happy to have the boot on their necks pressed down a little harder, just as long as they know someone else is getting it worse.
One thought that struck me is how closely some of these stories resemble the testimonies of victims of domestic abuse. That “I am a homemaker who chose the wrong time to seek a job” is so close to “If I was nicer to him he’d stop beating me”.
As I suspected, it’s Astroturf. It’s the brainchild of a wingnut called Erick Erickson, whose own right-wing blog is funded by the owners of the publishing house that bought you “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth”.
No idea if the contributors are genuine or fake, but the whole tone is so clumsily done that it’s looking like the corporate shills are running scared.
One of the paradoxical situations of American politics is lower & middle class voters actually voting against personal economic interest. For example, many such voters oppose increased taxes for the rich because they believe that some day they may succeed at the American Dream and become wealthy; thus, they don’t want to have to pay more taxes when they are rich. In reality, few, if any, of these folks will ever rise above their current financial status.