The newest iteration of the GOP Grand Hypocrisy is declaring that taxes are too high on the one percent, and to declare war and insist that more taxes are needed on the 47% of Americans who didn’t need to pay income tax in 2009 while of course yelling TEA MEANS TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY. The resolution of reality means Republicans want to raise taxes on the middle class. TPM’s Benjy Sarlin explains:
Now the 47% number only tells part of the story: most of those “non-payers” pay payroll taxes, gas taxes, state and local taxes, etc. And in an ironic twist, the phenomenon is almost entirely a result of Republicans’ own enthusiasm for tax cuts. In the 1990s, the GOP majority demanded that any programs aimed at helping poor and middle-income households be structured as refundable tax credits, like the Earned Income Tax Credit, rather than as direct payments like welfare. President Bush added to the trend by lowering marginal rates across the board. Then Obama structured large chunks of the stimulus as tax breaks in order to garner bipartisan support. The non-payer rate, which had hovered around 20% – 25% since the 1950s, shot over 30% in 2002 and never looked back. And because the tax credits are refundable, many taxpayers aren’t just paying nothing, they’re actually gaining a net positive on their income tax.
But now that Obama is playing hardball on raising revenue, Republicans are rethinking the idea.
“It’s Republican class warfare,” former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett told TPM. “The Democrats say ‘Oh, the millionaires, we need to tax them’ and so they respond in kind.”
Bartlett’s not opposed to the idea of a broader tax code. But the problem is there’s no obvious way to get there without violating other Republican sacred cows on taxes or running into political territory that few politicians dare to tread.
The first issue is that any Republican proposal can’t raise revenue overall — a principle that’s only become more ironclad in the Tea Party era. The obvious solution then is to raise taxes on the middle class but give the money back to the rich and that’s exactly what two of the Republican presidential candidates have proposed. Jon Huntsman would eliminate all tax breaks without exception and use the money to lower income marginal rates — the net effect of which would be a middle class tax hike.
Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan would do the same, reducing overall revenues by hundreds of billions while raising taxes on a vast majority of Americans, and lowering them substantially on the rich…and then of course cutting social spending. The reality is that Republicans view the middle class as immoral parasites on society, and want the middle class to share that view in the vain hope that by supporting the GOP’s rise to total power, they in turn will spare their supporters.
Nothing of course could be further from the truth. But as long as Republicans are able to convince Americans to vote for them because they believe “Well, the Republicans won’t target me as a parasite, it’s all those other guys who are the problem” then they’ll discover too late what the GOP truly intends to do.
And if this is the best the GOP can do against the 99% movement, they’re in deep trouble.
cleek
GOP = bootlickers
Certified Mutant Enemy
The GOP is OK with the government redistributing wealth upwards…
JPL
80 percent of the 47 percent earn less that 36000. In order to not pay taxes on that amount you must be supporting a family of four. Lucky Duckies.
Included in that number are those living on tax free income. Those living on tax free income will only have to pay sales tax.
Since Cain’s plan doesn’t tax capital gains at all how many lucky duckies earning over 100,000 will no longer have to pay federal taxes?
Downpuppy
Tax cuts are a part of the reason fewer people pay federal income tax. Falling median income (& booming high end income)is bigger.
Because, you know, the whole idea of an income tax is to collect taxes on income.
danimal
The 47% number will almost certainly go down; it’s a cherry-picked number from the worst tax year in recent times combined with soon-to-expire stimulus tax cuts. As others have noted, big chunks of the “47%ers” are elderly, students and minimum wage earners. Good luck to the GOP if taxing these folks so the Mitt Romneys of the world retain lower tax rates is their plan.
Also, the “tax creators” have had low rates for a decade now. Has lowering their taxes worked? You tell me.
beltane
Bootlickers is right. Slave mentality at its finest. Conservatism has revealed its true nature and this nature is incompatible with either freedom or self-respect.
chopper
i love how the GOP, having been part and parcel of a 30-year-long orgy of tax cuts, is now waking up and realizing that one of the side effects is that a shit ton of poor people don’t pay any taxes at all.
let’s hear it for unintended consequences!
Certified Mutant Enemy
@danimal:
Also, the “tax creators” have had low rates for a decade now. Has lowering their taxes worked? You tell me.
The standard reply is nobody wants to hire when there’s a threat of Kenyan soc1al1sm. But that raises the question: What was their excuse during the Bush years?
Jose Padilla
Of that 47%, 14% are drawing social security, approximately 16% have IQs below 85 (one standard devation below the norm), some are going to have physical disabilities, 10% aren’t going to have even a high school diploma. These are the people the Republicans want to raise taxes on while cutting for those with incomes over $350,000.
Elizabelle
I hope this is going to blow back bad on the GOP.
Their economic policies are overt now, and out there in their full ugliness.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@danimal:
The 47% number will almost certainly go down;
“You see – Obama raised taxes on the middle class!”
— The GOP, Fox “News”, talk radio, etc.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
The definition of a Republican voter.
chopper
well shit, when i said cut taxes, i meant cut taxes on people i identify with.
General Stuck
Shucks. Just commented on this in thread below, yours is better though.
SenyorDave
It’s just another version of “Find the N***er”. The Republicans since Nixon have run on that premise. The N***er is constantly changing: it could be gays, Hispanics, secularists or Muslims. Mow it’s the parasites at the bottom. The irony is that in the South, that is basically their base.
I keep thinking that at a certain point the Democrats should start flooding the airwaves with short ads giving exmples of what these tax plans would do to the middle class. But most of their base hates the idea of a black man in the White House that I believe they would gladly vote against their self-interests to get rid of him.
MBunge
And let’s remember, if you get taxes withheld from your paycheck and get that money back as a refund, you may not technically be paying taxes but you are supporting the government by giving it an interest free loan.
Mike
Bill E Pilgrim
That’s one of the beliefs that drives the propensity to be duped by oligarchs and their mouthpieces, the other big one is every American’s belief that their current crappy economic state is temporary because being one of the rich guys is just around the corner. The evil underbelly of the psychology of the “American Dream”. If anyone can become rich then anyone who hasn’t is a total loser. Except me of course because this is just a rough patch I’m going through while I get things together, any day now…
The Republicans have gotten very good at manipulating what’s worst about people.
TheF79
You’d think the fact that the party of “tax cuts today, tomorrow and forever” is complaining that lots of people don’t pay taxes would awaken some gnawing sense of journalistic pride somewhwere. And perhaps this journalistic pride would incite the press to perhaps probe the GOP on this amazing piece of cognitive dissonance. But who am I kidding.
MeDrewNotYou
One of the most frustrating things in politics is that so many poor and middle class people do this. They seem completely ignorant of the fact that the Republicans hate them! The Right does everything in its power to suck the 99% dry and further enrich the already rich. But a significant fraction either think that some other guy is the target, or even more maddeningly, that they’re just on the verge of being rich so they can’t dare to do anything to inconvenience their soon-to-be-peers. I really just don’t get it.
JGabriel
How much of that 47% are kids? Does the GOP want to tax their allowance and lunch money?
.
MeDrewNotYou
@JPL:
Fuck the WSJ. With something long, rusty, and pointy.
chopper
@JGabriel:
they would if they could.
Davis X. Machina
Straight Pigovian theory — if you want less of a negative externality, tax it, and it becomes less common.
In this case, it’s poor people.
cleek
@JGabriel:
the 47% are people who work but end up with no federal income tax liability, for whatever reason. so, you have to have a real tax-paying job to be part of either the 53% or the 47%.
deep cap
In case you haven’t seen it yet:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/12/1025555/-Open-Letter-to-that-53-Guy
cathyx
From Digby:
The zero-tax filers will be largely low-income. Indeed, 75 percent of them will earn less than $20,000 per year and 97 percent will earn less than $40,000. Fewer than 1 percent will earn more than $75,000 per year – a group comprised largely of business owners whose tax liabilities will be erased due to business losses, carry-overs from prior year AMT payments, or foreign tax credits.
atlliberal
Here’s a novel idea to solve this problem:
How about we create some jobs that pay a living wage for these people so that they will make enough money to pay income taxes?
Henry Ford had one thing right. He made his cars cheap enough, and paid his employees enough that they could afford to buy them. A rising tide lifts all boats. We have been doing things exactly backwards for years. Start improving things for those at the bottom, and it will “trickle up” to the top.
cathyx
And this:
In general, then, those who don’t pay federal income taxes tend to be young families with children, often headed by a single mother, where the head of household has a job and is trying to make ends meet on a modest income.
Those are the lazy pieces of garbage who refuse to make pay more in taxes so that Paris Hilton doesn’t have to. Single mothers. Young people. Families making less than $20, 000 a year. That’s who the burden should fall upon. They are losers who must pay.
Zifnab
One might suggest that a method for raising tax income would be to increase employment. Since increasing employment would raise the number of individual with a functional income and therefore grow the tax base, you’d see the percentage of un-income-taxed individuals shrink.
Of course, such a plan would be utter madness because it would require the government spending money. Better that we cut Social Security and Medicare benefits instead. And maybe stiff some military servicemen on their health care and wages. Only by cutting our spending can we properly finance our government, donchaknow.
Chris
Martin Niemoller’s poem would seem appropriate here…
Crashman
I don’t know; I worry that this 47% nonsense is getting some traction, at least based on my facebook feed.
On second though, maybe all this proves is that I went to school with a bunch of spoiled, rich private-school kids.
cleek
@Crashman:
let it get traction.
how many votes do you think “Republicans think you’re parasites and demand we raise your taxes, Mr & Mrs MedianIncome,” will bring the GOP ?
Jay C
And the most depressing part of the whole sorry mess is that it will probably be only bloggers like Zandar here at Balloon Juice who will be pointing this shit out: Points which ought to be quite apparent to basically anyone with even rudimentary math skills: but points which will no doubt be vigorously and repeatedly obfuscated by our sickly dysfunctional media, who are more interested in ginning up simpleminded “he said, she said” “debates” – facts and numbers be damned…
Of course, in a more ideal world, we would have a credible political Opposition to point out the glaring and obvious flaws in the GOP’s inane soak-the-poor “reforms” – and hopefully, opposition from the White House as well – and, even more hopefully, able to put forth an alternative plan of their own.
Like I said… “an ideal world…”
burnspbesq
@Zandar:
“And if this is the best the GOP can do against the 99% movement, they’re in deep trouble.”
No, they aren’t in deep trouble. At least not because of this. Tens of millions of Americans appear to be incapable of determining which party’s tax policies serve their economic self-interest, or are willing to vote against their own self-interest due to other factors. And there is no reason to believe that the situation will change any time soon
PurpleGirl
@deep cap: I couldn’t help but think that if the guy worked so many hours while in college, his grades couldn’t have been very good. He couldn’t have had the the time needed to devote to studying and if he wasn’t sleeping then he was hurting his health in some pretty significant ways.
Deep cap — thanks for the link.
MeDrewNotYou
@atlliberal: There are a lot of ways Henry Ford was an asshole, but on this he was brilliant. Pay your employees enough to buy your product, you increase your sales and profits, everybody wins. Sure, that’s a long term plan, but it works and it makes for a stable, healthy company. The short term MBA-style thinking that focuses on this quarter’s profits has been devastating to business, much less society when the mindset has been widely adopted.
beltane
@Crashman:
Funny how the people who whine the loudest are the same ones whose ride on the gravy train began from the moment they emerged from their rich momma’s hoo-ha.
PurpleGirl
@Zifnab: I made no money last year, I’ll make no money this year. So I owe no taxes. If the Republicans want me to pay income taxes they better get me a job. Oh, I still pay sales taxes and through my maintenance payments I pay real estate taxes. And my phone use also carries tax payments. So I’m still paying some taxes, just not income taxes. No income, no income taxes.
Maude
@JGabriel:
#20
Allowance? Those lazy kids should be working for that money.
Lunch money? They need to earn their daily bread.
Courtesy of the GOP.
catclub
“And if this is the best the GOP can do against the 99% movement, they’re in deep trouble.”
Assumes facts not in evidence.
How about: And if this is the best the GOP can do against the 99% movement, and the electorate pays serious attention to something other than dancing with the stars, they’re in deep trouble.
MeDrewNotYou
@PurpleGirl: Parasite! Get in your welfare-provided Cadillac and find a job, welfare queen!
/snark
Anoniminous
Read this article: Tax Rate versus Unemployment
Summary:
John Weiss
Remember Schrooge McDuck? Walt painted a perfect picture of modern Conservatives. Or maybe Conservatives in the last fifty years. Except Ike.
http://www.holytaco.com/8-cartoon-characters-probably-have-syphilis/
catclub
@PurpleGirl: It also reminded me of a radio story about a school in Chicago that had given a great deal of power to its teachers. As long as _every_ teacher was excellent AND gave 110% for 11 hours a day, they could make it work! Any system that requires supermen for it to function reasonably is not reasonable.
The whole point of Deming’s 6 six sigma system was to make the _system_ one in which the only errors that made a failure were six standard deviations away from normal.
General Stuck
While it is still early to take head to head polling results seriously, here is generic poll result that I think is important, mainly because it has been locked in for some time now, with consistent similar findings amongst polls.
Today’s Time Mag poll
DEMOCRATS 42%
REPUBLICANS 31%
This is what happens when it’s all negative campaigning all the time, like with the wingnuts.
And It puts a big asterisk next to snap shot polling of Obama’s disapproval numbers
Another curious poll figure
BASE: FAMILIAR WITH PROTESTS (787)
AGREE 79%
DISAGREE 17%
NO ANSWER/DON’T KNOW 3%
catclub
@Anoniminous: This is actually really obvious. If tax rates are high, new employees are _cheaper_ (after tax and non-taxed business expense) for the small business owner.
Likewise, lower taxes and charitable donations fall. See
the Philadelphia Orchestra and its follies on Eschaton.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@catclub:
This. And as Cenk points out in taking a clue-by-four to AP, we’re still operating under an environment where monolithic, unwavering opposition and obstructionism by the GOP means that Obama and the Democrats are the real super-hyper-partisan evil demonic no-good American-hating job-killing ideologues. And somehow that fucking message has purchase, and we get stupid stupid stupid fucking Blue Dogs who go out of their way to reinforce that idea.
Judas Escargot
@cleek:
At least 40% of the vote, as always.
It’s that last 11% we need to worry about.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@beltane: Consider it a flavor of a peasant’s love for the Lord of the Manor.
The House of Lords of Wingnuttia can be found on Wall Street.
Duane
i would say the $2000/ child tax credit kicks a whole lot of folks into the category of not having to pay federal income tax….I had read for the 2009 in tax that a married couple filing jointly with 2 children under 18 could earn $50,000 and owe 0 in income tax…using nothing more than standard deductions and exemptions…and the putting america to work credit and the child credit…no mortgage deduction or any other deductions…. that is going to knock out a bunch of folks….
Paul in KY
@Bill E Pilgrim: Adam Smith said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that amongst any man who is in reasonable health and especially among the young, there is no foible quite so prevelent as overestimating one’s chances to succeed in whatever endevour and completely underestimating the bad things that can/will happen.
VDE can probably find the actual quote.
MarkJ
So unemployment is at 9% and seniors drawing social security are 12% or so of the population. Presumably those seniors have some retirement savings, but most of that was probably taxed going into the account and shouldn’t be subject to income tax coming out. That 9% unemployment is low because there are a lot of discouraged workers who aren’t counted as “unemployed” anymore but who also don’t have a job so they have no taxable income. So people who are not yet retirement age and don’t have a job are probably closer to 13% of the population. That’s roughly half the 47% right there.
With those reductions, we’re really talking about 22%, most of whom don’t make that much money. Even if we did raise taxes on them it wouldn’t bring in much revenue. Are the Republicans really going to start telling seniors that they have to pay taxes on their social security benefits or the IRA and 401K accounts they’ve already paid taxes on? And those without jobs, exactly what income could they pay taxes on? Good luck winning with that message.
Paul in KY
@JGabriel: I’m pretty sure they included kids (< 18) in their statistics. To me, that really skews the numbers for them. Typical cheaters.
Edit: Cleek is saying we are mistaken. I’m surprised they didn’t try it.
Paul in KY
@beltane: Some of them think that sucking up to their asshole parents for 18 – 20 years was was much of a chore as rummaging thru garbage cans for food.
Anoniminous
@catclub:
Yup.
I wish I could put that chart into every OWS-ers hands. It demonstrates the invalidity of Neo-Classical Economics – the current basis for political-economic policy in an easily understood way.
catclub
@MarkJ: The guys who ‘thought up’ the 53% ruse really do not want a retired veteran on SS and small pension to realize he is in the 47% moocher class.
So far, there has been little blowback form that crowd. Many people here have mentioned that that crowd also says to keep government out of their medicare, so maybe they know their audience.
burnspbesq
@MarkJ:
You’ve got that backwards. Employee contributions to a 401(k) come out of pre-tax dollars, and employer contributions to any kind of qualified retirement plan are deductibe. Distributions are taxed as ordinary income, and in some instances distributions before age 59 1/2 are subject to a 10 percent excise tax on top of the income tax.
PurpleGirl
@MarkJ: Social Security is taxable (thank St. Ronnie) but most peopled don’t get enough to pay income taxes on it. Unemployment Benefits are also taxable (also St. Ronnie). You still have to file a tax return. I owed taxes for the year I received UI money.
ETA: And when I took out the 403B money when UI ran out — I paid income tax on that.
ETA: It’s a Roth IRA that is not taxable after retirement because it comes from post-tax income.
PeakVT
FTFY.
DFH no.6
No. These lower and middle class Republican voters (who constitute the vast, vast majority of Republican voters, of course) will not “discover too late what the GOP truly intends to do”. They won’t discover any such thing at all.
Their cockeyed view of political reality tells them that liberals/Democrats take stuff from them (guns, tax money, religious freedom, free speech, etc.) while conservatives/Republicans give that stuff back, or at least fight the good fight in trying.
They know what they know, and empirical reality is trumped by their ideology and faith (very much including faith in their authority figures, whether Limbaugh, Cheney, or the televangelist flavor of the day).
I am surrounded on all sides by legions of these people, at home and at work, and have been for years (dead center, Sheriff Joe Arpaio country). I know them well.
suzanne
This quote from Bachmann was my favorite: “I think we definitely need to change the tax code. We need to get more in line. Everybody benefits from this magnificent country. Everybody pay something.”
STATIST!
Seriously, is it cognitive dissonance, or are these people truly as evil as they look?
suzanne
@DFH no.6:
I’m in Tempe, and, oh God, how I feel your pain.
Thinking about moving somewhere where the weather is cold, gray, and shitty, and there’s lots of liberals.
Dave
I got three of the 47% just in my household. My goldbricking 85 year old mother who should get off her duff and get a job at Walmart, my lazy 17 year old daughter who earned $1500 at her summer job (but she got the HPV vaccine here in Texas so she’s a slut anyway), and another never do well college student trying to pay his way.
Has anybody counted up the various groups the far right hate: People from Chicago, San Francisco, and New York, teachers, unions, the poor, immigrants (legal and illegal), and on and on. They love America but hate everybody in it.
terraformer
Republicans are simply complete dicks without a shred of empathy for anyone who is not already rich.
Now, how to clearly convey that to those voters who think they are “pre-millionaires”?
terraformer
@suzanne:
Come on up to Minnesota! We do have heat, dontcha know. And LOTS of fresh water – don’t tell anyone…
DFH no.6
@suzanne:
AZ (Snobsdale, to be precise) is my home, and has been for over 31 years. This state has always been very conservative (other than that depressing town, Tucson).
I knew that when I moved here from a place (Cleveland) where the weather is, obviously, cold, gray, and shitty, and there’s also lots of liberals. Wouldn’t go back.
Living among so many fascists has one main advantage, for me (much as it would if I lived somewhere in the Confederacy, I suppose): I’ve acquired a sure knowledge of just what we’re up against with modern American fascism. I won’t say a sure “understanding” because I really do not understand why these people think they way they do, whether my boss, my neighbor, or my teabagger brother-in-law, any more than I “understand” why serial killers are such psychopaths. And I mean that last part exactly the way it sounds.
They are convinced that Obama, for instance, has raised their taxes (though of course the opposite is true) and that the recent ATF scandal here in AZ (the failed operation regarding guns procured for Mexican cartels) is part of an Obama plot to force more gun control, somehow.
I showed two of these numbskulls on their paychecks (I’m the boss) that their payroll taxes actually went down under Obama, and nothing went up. I may as well have been speaking Swahili. And the ATF “gun control conspiracy”? Nothing whatsoever would change their view of that.
Here at work they also blame Democrats’ health care reform for our Blue Cross premiums going up, though I showed them that this has been happening for years, long before the ACA.
None of this matters – they believe what they believe.
The bad economy? Minorities getting subprimes that Democrats (led by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank) forced banks to provide, aided and abetted by the corrupt and soshulist Fannie and Freddie.
WMD in Iraq? Yeah, we found some. Don’t give me any of your lieberal bullshit that we didn’t.
And on it goes. Their nonsensical anti-actual reality beliefs are unshakeable.
We here know all this. The intransigent conservative mindset in a majority of our fellow citizens (and it is a majority, don’t kid yourself because many of them often vote Democratic) will be the death of us all.
Simply put, the GOP has a much easier time winning, even with complete bozo candidates, primarily because of the simplistic, faith-based, “Alice in Wonderland” worldview that seems to me nearly impenetrable in scores of millions of our countrymen.
Jay in Oregon
@chopper:
Their position is actually ideologically consistent if you understand that the problem they see is that the wrong people are paying less taxes.
Galtian job creator? Yes!
Lazy, shiftless, moocher (probably dark-skinned to boot)? Hell no!
Li
@DFH no.6: I am all too familiar with the anti-reality strain in the modern conservative movement. My own mom, once a trained ecologist of all things, exemplifies it perfectly. She keeps Fox News on all day as ‘background noise’ (the better to subconsciously manipulate her I guess)and it’s impossible to talk to her about anything anymore without her feigning a heart attack and complaining about how her health can’t take all of this controversy. I am visiting home today, and here is an exact transcript of a recent conversation.
(President talking on TV, mentions lack of Republican ideas re: job creation)
M: “That’s a lie!”
A: “Well, what are the Republican ideas for job creation?”
M: “They want to cut capital gains taxes!”
A: “But taxes have been cut for decades, and many of the super rich hardly pay taxes at all. Why is that going to start working now?”
M: (yelling) “You know, I’m sick, and I can’t take all of this. You are making me feel worse!”
A: “You’re getting yourself sick by getting angry for no reason.”
M: “We disagree, and that’s all. Can’t we agree to disagree? (Clutching her chest)”
sigh I don’t know what to do about that. My dad has been the victim of privatization, and is working longer hours for fewer benefits, she should be supporting the 99%. But her whole mind has been fox blocked. She is wholly incapable of thinking. Confronting these delusions has the same sort of visceral, physical effects as telling a North Korean that ‘Great Leader’ isn’t such a nice guy, really.
How can we deal with these people? Sophisticated mind control techniques have been unleashed onto America, and it’s turned scores of people into brainwashed cult members.
catclub
@DFH no.6: “where the weather is, obviously, cold, gray, and shitty, and there’s also lots of liberals. Wouldn’t go back.”
Even Garrison Keillor has told you that warm weather makes you stupid. All the evidence is in the rest of your post.
;)
Mike G
And yet, the Repukes are strangely silent on the many multi-billion-dollar corporations that paid no income tax last year. Hell will freeze over before you hear a GOP demand that their masters pay more.
MarkJ
@Dave: You left out Massachusetts and Vermont – the two citadels of all that is evil.
MarkJ
@Mike G: Yeah, funny that. It’s another instance of Corporations being people, but not. They can spend on political influence, but expecting them to pick up the bill for anything else is just asking too much. Or try sending them to go to jail for financial fraud or tax evasion.
DFH no.6
@Li:
I’m fortunate in that my sweet elderly mom is, and always has been, a perceptive liberal, particularly on economic matters (she didn’t even graduate HS, but she has a solid grasp on our current economic situation, and particularly how the fascists are so completely fucked-up in their approach, at least for the interests of the majority – she understands full well how these fucked-up policies almost exclusively benefit the wealthy).
She’s somewhat less liberal on some cultural items, but most of that is fairly common to her generation, I think.
My dad, who is no longer with us, was a lifelong union-worker Democrat, though very much of the Archie Bunker variety (pretty racist, I have to say it, and not real happy with a lot of the cultural changes seen in his lifetime).
Korean War combat vet, made for some “interesting times” for me back in my youth with the Viet Nam War. He hated Bush, though, over the stupid Iraq War – his favorite comment was, “When are the Bush girls going over there to fight?”.
Similar with my mom and dad in-laws.
But too many siblings (mine and my wife’s) and other family members, and too many co-workers and neighbors, are fully ensconced in fascism, American-style. I know what they’re like, in their many varieties (some, not all, are religious wackos, some are Randian wackos, some believe everything Limbaugh says, some are still pissed the 60s ever happened, all are racists).
I’ll just never understand how they can possibly view the world in such an up-is-down, freedom-is-slavery, anti-reality way. Never.
gogol's wife
@Li:
I’ve been having similar conversations with a beloved colleague, a brilliant scientist, who listens to Fox News. One day I said, “I’m afraid there won’t be any Social Security by the time I retire,” and he replied, “Yeah, thanks to Nancy Pelosi.” I did a spit-take worthy of Danny Thomas.
jron
Here’s my response to the 53’s, and any other libertarians:
http://jron.tumblr.com/post/11355503900/we-are-the-99-i-am-an-immigrant-who-came-to
Ruckus
@suzanne:
Seriously, is it cognitive dissonance, or are these people truly as evil as they look?
I vote evil but will easily accept both. There is a third option though.
Fucking stupid.
I think the line favors D, all of the above.
Li
@Ruckus: I vote for brainwashed. They might be smart, but it causes physical pain to think. They might be good of heart, but it is impossible to think in such a way as to do good rather than to support evil.
We don’t need a conversation, we need deprogramming.
Ruckus
@Li:
A. Cognitive Dissonance
B. Evil
C. Fucking Stupid
D. All of the above.
E. All of the above plus brainwashed.
OK so the over is on E. Overwhelmingly
OzoneR
@atlliberal:
I think everyone agrees with this, they just differ on how to do it.