What are the Marks of Class Warfare? Is it the fact that Occupy Wall Street is fundamentally right about Class Warfare perpetrated by an Elite 1% of the population who can afford to spend $5billion to purchase access to politicians and policy making venues and thereby get their way. Is it the fact that popular public opinion in poll after poll gets ignored? Is it the common sense that Wall Street and Big Business has gotten bailed out to the tune of $14trillion over the past 3 years and yet are demanding through their political GOP agents for ordinary workers to concede jobs, wages, and benefits to help cut the deficits that a)they created and b) have just added to with their continuing bailout money? Is it the fact that USA has had a history of Elites soaking the Commons and Middle Class in times of national economic disaster? Is the fact that shared sacrifice simply does not apply to most of the Elite and wealthiest in the US whose share of annual income and accumulated wealth grows ever upward while all other classes decline both in income and aggregate wealth. Or is it class warfare marked by the simple fact that a growing majority of Americans believe their children will not be able to do as well as they did?
Here are 10 links that are well worth reading and will let you decide whether these notions of systemic inequality have substance:
Takethe5th – John Q. Public is regularly getting ignored according to countless recent polls.
Guardian – The British are saying the Class War is over and the elite have already won.
NewYork Magazine – Frank Rich provides a history of class warfare in the US and its current incarnation.
The Economist – Admits there will have to be shared sacrifice by the wealthy and prescribes how to do it.
Marketwatch – Paul Farrell says class warfare has been going on since Reagan Presidency.
Aljazeera – Supports a distinctly Liberal point of view
RollingStone – Describe the Wall Street Lobbyist War against Financial Reforms
NYTimes – Paul Krugman outlines the nature of the attack by the Wealthy Elites.
wikipedia – the causes of the 2007-2011 Financial Crises
Takethe5th – outlines the major arguments for a warfare against the Commons/Middle Class by the Wealthy Elites.
I looked at top conservative magazines and websites for their commentary on the notion of class warfare. There was not much. Instead, I encountered some pretty shrill attacks on President Obama for being in the words of Republican Paul Ryan – “Divider in Chief”. The conservative press took a very strident approach [or were utterly silent] not caring[or daring] to refute the key points on the huge transfers of wealth, income and influence to the elite 1% while they studiously avoided in most cases shared sacrifice in taxes as raised above.
National Review – Victor Hanson sees President Obama as hypocritic leader of class warfare.
Taki’s Magazine – Kevin Jackson proved to be even more vitriolic than the National Review
Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Nicholas wrote of Obama’s last tour stop: …Obama stood at a lectern against a backdrop of firefighters and offered his prescription for solving the persistent jobs crisis: “A fair shot for everybody; a fair share from everybody. That’s the principle that built America.”
How naïve for Obama to say something so silly. Nothing is fair. Conservatives understand this by age five. If life were fair, there would be no ugly people. If life were fair, we could all accomplish nothing, get elected president, and be awarded Nobel Peace Prizes. [editors emphasis]
Christian Science Monitor – see the Forbes 400 as adding flame to the fires of Class Warfare
What is so telling from the conservative right media and institutes is the fact that they do not bother to dispute any of the above assertions but rather engage in virulent ad hominem attacks on any party daring to suggest that the Elites have largely succeeded in engaging in effective class warfare by transferring taxes and bailout burdens onto the general public.
And President Obama is the chief target of those shrill attacks by the GOP . And Obama is not blameless as he takes millions from Wall Street and Business Lobbyists – perhaps explaining why the too big to fail banks were not broken up or how their and other key players do not suffer any meaningful prosecution for what they did before and during the Financial meltdown. ButRepublicans, even larger beneficiaries of Wall Street/Business donations, are determined to prove that Obama and government don’t work . This is to be able to pin the Economic downturn on Obama so they can more likely replace him with one of their own in the Presidency.
Like their concerted denial of Global Warming and Climate change, the conservative Elitists and their Republican subservients reserve the right to engage in class warfare and indulge in brazen denials of either global warming or their blatant influence peddling against overwhelming evidence [economic, scientific or political] to the contrary. It is by definition the elitist attitude – “We are the chosen ones to rule. We are superior because we have contrived and fought to amass the largest wealth and fortunes in the US. Displace us or live with it- the world is not fair and we, naturally selected by the competition of markets, are superior and are therefore destined to rule.”