The Parasite Class and other memes

[electropop]

It's time we control the language, the way Republicans have done for years. We need to use simple, descriptive, colorful terms repeatedly until they stick. I have a couple to suggest.

The Parasite Class
Let's just call these people what they are. You know who I mean: the corporatist cannibals, the media morlocks, the political predators, the finance fucksters, the top 1% in income / bottom 1% in morality. They suck the blood of our economy and of our families. They collude to create more and more ways to rob us, and then act all indignant if anybody has the temerity to point out that "their" wealth was actually created by the other 99% of us. Collectively, they are the Parasite Class.

The War on the Middle Class / Upward Redistribution of Wealth
In other words, legalized theft. We see it all the time: freeloader tax rates for the most fortunate, fossil fuel subsidies, subsidies to insurance companies disguised as reform, collusion between the insurance thieves and the credit card thieves to wipe out peoples' fortunes and then deny them even the final indignity of bankrupty.

Entitlements for the Super-Rich
A counter to the right wing "entitlement" meme which is part of their "welfare queen" fairy tale.

Trickle-Down Ronnie
The bastard who started this crime wave.

[AllentownJake]

1. I call bankers

Financial terrorist and suicide bombers

:shrug:

[cliffordu]

2. You got it - Bookmarking forever!!

[sui generis]

3. screw memes. They are for children.

Let the other side be children by themselves.

[anonymous171]

4. YEAH FUCK WINNING I HAVE PRINCIPLES!

I don't care who will die if the GOP has their way. All I care about is that we stay pure and uncontaminated by silly things like "tactics."

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

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

[conscious evolution]

6. He would not know a principle unless

his paycheck depended on it.

[sui generis]

11. me?

Examples please, or else please feel free to take a running jump ass first at a spinning chainsaw. I venture to say that you would have given an example already if you had one.

[electropop]

7. Our children will not forgive us if we let the parasites eat our society.

Somehow I can't feel the least bit of guilt for calling bad people an insulting name, especially when the name is true.

[sui generis]

10. so belonging to a class of income makes somebody a "bad people"?

No. Bad deeds make people bad people.

Now about the phrase chosen: "parasites"??? This is a term used in Nazi germany, referring to the moneylender jews.

It always creeps me out to hear a democrat use that term.

On on the idea of high earners being parasites: we're back to the jewish thing. Moneylenders make money based on the cost of money to loan, regardless of how fair or unfair their lending practices are. Investors do the same thing.

Without money to invest in seed funds, startups, and growth, a company simply could never get off the ground and the opportunity to have any form of success would be even more strictly limited to global monopolies ruthlessly murdering competition and competitive products. And history has shown in EVERY country that the little bit of vacuum left is occupied by organized crime.

You cannot hate the rich without hating everything about your own life; and I assume you use toothpaste, have a tee vee, and the ability to travel from one end of the city to the other, if not across the continent. Every place you have choice happens because somebody had the resources to invest in an idea, while not every one who has had an idea has had the resources to develop it.

Parasites - not a good meme. Symbionts perhaps, but it doesn't roll off the tongue as well.

[DJ13]

14. Are you in the DLC?

You seem to have the propaganda down pat.

[sui generis]

16. I am my own person

I don't associate with that group at all. Sorry, all grown up, don't need no high school clique to belong to, even in the democratic party. I am an in your face progressive but name calling has nothing to do with progressive behavior.

anyway thanks for the totally subtle underhanded ad hominem. :eyes:

Do you insult everybody who doesn't agree with you on DU of all places?

[DJ13]

18. To Rein In Pay, Rein In Wall St.

Why are financial industry paychecks so big?

The answer is simple, and it is the one Willie Sutton is supposed to have offered when asked why he robbed banks: "Because that's where the money is."

-----

The government estimates total financial industry profits each year, and it is easy to compare them to the size of the economy. In the six decades from 1929 through 1988, those profits averaged 1.2 percent of gross domestic product -- and never went above 1.7 percent.

Then they shot up in the 1990s and went up further in the current decade, peaking at 3.3 percent in 2005. Even now, the figure is higher than it ever was before 1990.

Why were those profits so high? And did society get its money's worth out of them? If those surging profits reflected the financial industry's success in helping the real economy, we might be jealous but not contemptuous. You don't hear a lot of carping about how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs became so wealthy.

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/108053/to-rein-in-pay-rein-in-wall-st?mod=career-salary_negotiation&sec=topStories&pos=3&asset=&ccode=
to-rein-in-pay-rein-in-wall-st: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

[electropop]

17. Is using wealth and power to legalize theft a bad deed?

I don't believe that all of the super-rich are bad people, but I believe it's pretty difficult to become super-rich without crossing a lot of ethical and moral lines that most of us would balk at. And those I specifically refer to in the OP are the ones who abuse their power to and wealth to grab more power and wealth by immoral means. For example, the insurance companies buying off scores of politicians to enforce their will over that of most Americans. Bankers levying extra fees and penalties against those least able to pay them.

I am certainly not referring to any religious or ethnic category of people. I am referring to people who behave in immoral ways.

Your "fascist" references are an amazing meme - a perfect Rovian flip. I have to admit his ability to turn right-wing character defects and behaviors around and claim they are part of the left still amazes me.

[sui generis]

20. I wasn't accusing anyone of being a fascist

just pointing out the similarity. Believe me you would know if I intended to offend - I am VERY direct. Apologies for not wording it more carefully.

You are right though, many people who seek (and subsequently have) wealth do so at the expense of ethical behavior, or do it with strange false justifications.

It's made more difficult by the fact that things are black and white at the exact same time.

A company has to exist to provide jobs, although that is not a company's purpose, generally speaking. But without qualified workers the company loses against competition. The easy choice for a foundering company is to let people go - most of any company's bottom line is driven by cost of payroll. It's like you have a bus full of old folks rattling down a mountain pass. You see a baby in the road that will surely die if you run over it, yet if you try to avoid it you will surely kill everyone on the bus.

You also have people who justify their choices in investments or in management the same way. Remember that a company that is WILDLY successful in a huge market scales wildly. If I started a company and owned 20 % of the stock when it was a million dollar company versus a billion dollar company, you have to assume two things:

1. I participated in making hard choices to grow the company which might now employ 60,000 people,
2. and my company net worth is now 200 million (at least on paper) (edited to add: this is a real world example, but not me!)

It's really hard to judge who really benefits from those "hard choices" too. For instance if you were one of the well salaried well benefited people in that 60,000 person workforce, you got there at the expense of somebody's job early on when tough choices had to be made.

And yes there are people who would only think of growing their pile, instead of growing the company and having that pile has an afterthought. If you want to be a really good and progressive populist you have to see what's "good" about business, before attacking the bad. That helps identify real problems and build good, adoptable and fair solutions.

So yeah, I get it, name calling is fun and cathartic, but it can also sometimes hide the real issues. That's why my initial cranky reply.

[electropop]

21. Thank you for not telling me to sit on a chainsaw.

Your politeness is appreciated.

[sui generis]

23. **grin**

moi, unprincipled? I guess that was a demonstration of having principles, of sorts. :P

[electropop]

24. And to actually respond to your comment...

The kinds of choices we have seen lately are not so subtle and nuanced as your bus-and-baby example.

When the oil companies hired the Bush regime to slaughter tens of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans, so they could boost their profits, that was not a subtle choice, and it should have been an easy choice (easy to choose "no" that is).

When insurance companies make contracts with people and then break those contracts and condemn their premium-payers to death, that is not a subtle choice.

When "news" media choose to report fluff (or just plain lies) to divert public attention away from important stories, that's not subtle.

When you have to lay off people because your company's economic sector is shrinking, that is a hard choice. When you lay off people who are actually contributing value to the company, just so you can golden parachute out before anybody notices the damage to both employees and stockholders, that's not a hard choice; it's just wrong.

[sui generis]

27. we are in lockstep on this one

agree right down the line.

[anonymous171]

29. "Parasite" is the only word that fits.

Also because of our individualist culture, Americans hate parasites with a passion. The rich have made it their lifes' work to portray the poor as "parasites/lazy" when in fact it is the other way around.

[electropop]

30. Bingo - it's a Rovian flip

Whatever is wrong with me, I will lay on you.

[sui generis]

32. no it's not

you generalize too much. Every time I hear someone say "the rich" I think wow imagine how replacing that with "the poor" would go over. Sorry anonymous, in what reality world does everyone sit around every waking hour making their "life's work" to do anything to "the poor".

The truly wealthy don't even know you exist, and the rest are just wannabes. Also, you're confusing republicans with people who have wealth.

[anonymous171]

34. Like it or not, that is the reality that we live in.

The Rich believe that they are entitled to everything while telling the poor that they are entitled to nothing (Bootstraps doctrine is only espoused by the rich to the poor. They don't actually practice it.)

Also, since the GOP fights for the rich and their interests, I see no problem with equating the two.

[GoCubsGo]

12. You have to fight fire with fire...

The other side only understands childish things like memes. You have to go with what they understand. Otherwise, it's all over their heads, and therefore, pointless.

[sui generis]

13. I'll buy that but

the "other side" is not high earners. It is conservative, selfish people, and those incomes are all over the spectrum.

[FiveGoodMen]

8. Off to greatest...

[fascisthunter]

9. KICK! (nt)

[kenny blankenship]

15. Here's a good one. CRONY CAPITALISM. It already has circulation & global name recognition

We just refuse to recognize it when it's right in front of our faces.

[conscious evolution]

19. That is a good one

Tells it like it is.

[inna]

22. KR. here's another one - class WARFARE.

guess which class is winning.

[sui generis]

25. but it can't be class warfare if there are poor progressive democrats

AND poor conservative republicans, voting for the opposite things. It just doesn't make sense to call it that, when we're warring against ourselves. And that vaunted .01 percent - doesn't even know there are any other "classes". It's a war against the sky.

If we address real problems, we'll have a cleaner sky, and we'll prevail, without a war.

[electropop]

28. Who does most of the fighting in any war?

The poor and the children of the poor. In physical wars, they are typically coerced, either physically or economically. In this class war, they have been duped into believing they share some kind of interests with their overlords.

[sui generis]

31. wars are fought between old men by the children of other men

Yes, they're coerced, but they BELIEVE in whatever morality certifies their actions. You can find "converts" to progressive viewpoints who will tell you their anger at the other side is because they were "duped" for so long, but the real people going to the polls to vote against gay marriage and against health care reform of any kind are not being coerced. They are selfish, for the most part.

Negative beliefs aside, there are positive beliefs too. People inherently believe that they or their children won't always be poor, or at the least, will have more opportunity.

Many of the worst "overlords" were recently serfs, by the way - for some reason republicans tend to like to pull the ladder and rope up behind them more often than democrats though.

The world is full of beauty and ugliness; seeing either to the exclusion of the other is a choice, and not the whole picture.

[electropop]

33. You give excellent examples of how the class warriors are duped

(1) Mis-educate the serfs in their schools and on their TVs.
(2) Get the serfs to vote for corporatists by portraying the corporatists as believing in the same wacky religious crap the serfs have been fed
(3) Get the serfs to believe that they too could become overlords. Portray all the rules and structures set up to prevent upward mobility as doing exactly the opposite.

Or in simple terms:
(1) Instill ignorance
(2) Capitalize on the combination of ignorance and superstition
(3) Capitalize on the combination of ignorance and greed

And I use the word "capitalize" deliberately.

[sui generis]

35. okay but that's the reality

on the ground.

I DO think that critical thinking should be an entire subject area taught in elementary school all on its own.

You've pointed out that education contributes to misinformation, thank you Ronald Reagan for gettin' us back to the three R,s readin' 'ritin' and 'rithmetic.

Religious pap tells stupid people that god is great for sparing them while the tornado tore up their neighbors house. Do you think those people even WANT the truth? Maybe god shoulda just skipped the tornado.

You do assume that we're all created equal and would end up in the same places given the same opportunities but that is absolutely not reality.

There are sharks in the ocean, they eat people, it's what they do. Some of them are rich, some of them are poor, and none of them are getting holiday cards from me this year. Singling out one species of man eater is just doing half the job. Mostly, I do what I can to avoid both types of sharks, and the rest of the time, I try to swim faster than the person next to me, as do most people. Does that make us selfish and evil? I don't think so. It's not my philosophy, but the world is an ecology, full of predators and prey, and the rest are vegetables. I strive to be human.

[electropop]

36. Some humans are predators, but the ascent of humanity has been possible

because humans by nature have a tendency to protect each other. We eventually get around to overthrowing tyrants, though it may take decades or even centuries.

[juno jones]

26. Tell it like it is.

The uber rich are parasites on the working classes.

This goes no matter their color or creed (so spare me the godwin crap besides I'd wager this group is mainly white and nominally x-tian). They are greedy bastards and working folk are only there to be used to further their agendas. They suck our labor, our health, our time and throw us out when we are broken from our labors. There is no other word.

Parasite. It has a beat and you can dance to it.