2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumBernie Sanders can give America what it needs: Some good old-fashioned class warfare
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/29/bernie_sanders_can_give_america_what_it_needs_some_good_old_fashioned_class_warfare/Well, thats not entirely true. Class politics never really went away, there was simply a shift in aggression. Since the 70s, the ruling class has gone on the offensive, while the middle and lower classes have been brought to their knees. Of course, when the lower classes go on the attack, its class warfare; but when the ruling class does it, its reform. (At least this is what has been hammered into the minds of so many Americans over the past 40 or so years.)
Just think of Bill Clintons welfare reform and his promise to end welfare as we know it. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was signed into law in 1996, and was a culmination of over 20 years of ruling-class propaganda. Politicians, pundits, and the media managed to create a nasty picture of the poor leaching off of everyone else in America, while popular terms like welfare queen were added to the lexicon. But what was particularly clever about this attack on the underclass was how it became as much about race as it was about class. This was not an accident. Since the Civil Rights era, racial prejudices have been used to divide the lower classes, dismantling of the New Deal coalition which had been racially and culturally diverse in the late 60s....
The welfare reform of the 90s, which basically gave states the power to implement their own welfare programs, created an undeniable racial bias within the system. In a study done by Soss, it was found that five years after the bills passage, 63 percent of families in the least stringent programs were white and 11 percent were black, and in the most restrictive programs 63 percent were black and just 29 percent were white.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)stillwaiting
(3,795 posts)But, with Bernie we will at least have the Executive Branch fighting back against the rampaging financial elites.
Without Bernie, I don't have the same faith that the Executive Branch would fight back. There would be compromises, and they would come at the expense of the poor, working class, and middle class.
Response to stillwaiting (Reply #2)
Trajan This message was self-deleted by its author.
GreatGazoo
(3,937 posts)appalachiablue
(41,146 posts)Similarly it's how affluent people are 'eccentric'; regular folks are 'crazy'.
Elites have 'a drinking problem', or 'some family matters'; regular people are 'drunks', and 'lowlifes, poorly raised and in 'broken homes'. Status, money and power at play obviously.
Trajan
(19,089 posts)Class warfare has been pursued with great effect by the corporate class for decades ...
Just because the media failed to properly represent this fact doesn't change the fact ...
snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)It's really an insightful observation.