or if he is just a true believer.
I know the answer. It’s who he is.
Unlike gay marriage, where he was willling to play the game, publicly taking positions based on what helped him with voters or donors, when it comes to class warfare as political strategy, it’s principle before polling.
Surely AxelPlouffe didn’t need a Gallup poll to know that class wafare doesn’t sell very well here, even if it does almost everywhere else in the world.
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Right, Prof.
It is who he is.
Steeped down deep in the bone Frankfurt School/Black Liberation Theology/find-make-conjure a divide Collectivist “fundamental reform”.
Nixon was an ACLU model of deportment in office compared to Pres. Dog Breath.
40% of the population would choose not to be rich? Yeah right! Dump a truckload on $100 bills on their front lawn and I guarantee you they don’t end up in the compost pile.
I don’t know… ‘rich’ is pretty relative. You could have someone that is making 120-150k a year that thinks they are doing fine and are happy where they are at… but to a large percentage of the U.S. that is pretty rich.
Americans have an inherent knowledge of the kind of hard work it takes to become rich, for the most part becoming wealthy doesn’t just fall in ones lap and even if it does there’s an deep awareness of right and wrong and that the US Gov’t has no right or place to intervene in leveling the playing field.
Probably it is the 35% who are on the dole and think that if they were rich, they would have to work for it.
Polls? The dude is toast. Even the sharks are heading for deep water as Bozo circles again and again to the ski jump.
Yes, he can’t stop himself. He was baptized in the holy water of class warfare. It was the sacrament of his upbringing and tutelage — the theory for every social ill and the Marxist method for tearing society apart and achieving power. It’s also the root of Clinton’s critique of Obama as an amateur (not that Clinton totally understands this).
Most of us..Im willing to bet, dont think in terms of “classes” when we think about the american people.
So why might Obama point out what he perceives as class differences and seem to pit one against the other?
In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx argued that a class is formed when its members achieve class consciousness and solidarity.[6] This largely happens when the members of a class become aware of their exploitation and the conflict with another class. A class will then realize their shared interests and a common identity. According to Marx, a class will then take action against those that are exploiting the lower classes. (wiki/class conflict)
The two most important points I think are the concept of “awareness” and “exploiting”
Certainly Obama has elevated if not created the awareness needed with his continual harping on “greedy rich” “fat cats” and the always fashionable “greedy speculators”.
In other words maximize the concept with handy labels and plant the subliminal that folks are exploited rather than some mutually beneficial arrangement.
He seems to imagine a basic unfairness in almost any symbiotic relationship. A winner and a looser.
So Obama maximizes the use of class born labels and attempts to position himself as pushing for “fairness”…or some “middle ground”. Also he sticks pretty close to the Fabian Socialist method. No guns or violence required…we will simply evolve toward a socialist state.
Sad that we find ourselves in an economic position that makes so many americans “ripe” for increased government involvement but here we are.
I for one refuse to let a santa clause government get down my fireplace even if I like his presents.
The trouble is…he never leaves.
I hate the term “class” as it’s applied to people in US. Class suggests a rigidity and structure that is anathema to our national ethos of freedom. I don’t think we have a “class” of rich people, because every single one of them can fall, and every single member of the so-called “poor class” can be wealthy. The only think stopping them is their own personal abilities and drive.
That theme of meritocracy can be seen reflected in the reality of those “wealth gap” charts the left loves to flash – never pointing out (or many times, even thinking about) that the “rich” of today were largely the same people who were “poor” a generation or two ago.
My great-great-grandfather was the wealthiest man in his county back in WV – lots of land, lots of stock, the finest (then modern) conveniences, and all of his daughters went to college, which was quite a rarity at the time. Then the depression cleaned almost all of that out. My father was born a poor kid in the hills, moving to Ohio when my grandfather, in order to better his family’s lot, took a steady position at a power plant (previously working building oil rigs out west). My father eventually went to college on a scholarship, where he hustled pool for money and slept in a friend’s closet… before getting kicked out. Then he went to Vietnam, college again studying what would now be called Computer Science, and worked his ass off to become a highly successful project manager for a huge telecommunications firm.
Poor-rich-poor-wealthy; in four generations, each born to the previous.
My current job comes for a company over 100 years old, started by a couple with only a few bucks, a dream and boundless drive. Yeah, the company is doing fine and the original family (still owners) are quite well off.
Because of them, I was able to go to night school, have a steady, well-paying job, a nice work environment, and opportunities to advance. This wouldn’t had come if they were poor and sure has heck wouldn’t had come from Uncle Sugar.
Americans love a success story
But they hate the Solyndra types that bilk the system
They hate that the well heeled leveraged players/gamblers in Long Term Capital Management were allowed to leverage 300:1, then get bailed out as too big to fail. Privatize reward, but socialize the risk if you are connected. That was all the Democrats running Fannie/Freddie into the ground too, while Barney Frankly told us “all is well”. Plenty saw it coming, the buyers of DC got their way … just buy off ALL the lobbyists.
Success by government fraud is what America hates, not the guy that succeeds on his own merit, risking his own money and life. The bait and switch routines in congress, with the country’s future on the line, America hates. TARP, Obamacare, stimulus … none what they were sold as.
How many of our officials, from city level to DC, should be serving time for using office to reward family and friends? To succeed, these “players” have to be given their “toll” or vig, or whatever the greasy bribe is called. As our now imprisoned governor said …. it’s fuckin’ golden.