Conservatism is an ideology of victimization.
In his 47% comments, Mitt Romney tried to blow the dog whistle claiming that he and other rich white people are the victims of minorities who don't pay income taxes.
Never mind that the history of the 16th Amendment shows that income tax has always been intended for upper income brackets, and NOT for lower income brackets, dating all the way back to the founding fathers who made income taxation apply ONLY to the upper 10% of the wealthiest first Americans. Never mind that Lincoln and the civil war era Republicans did the same thing.
Anyone who posits that people who don't pay income taxes doesn't pay taxes at all is profoundly ignorant. Mitts on R-money was just annoyed that he couldn't bribe the lower 47% with tax cuts the way he was bribing the upper income brackets; so he played on their innate sense of being victimized by poorer people and the middle class.
Only very stupid conservatives in that lower 99% will believe that people who don't pay income tax are free loading. Only very ignorant conservatives will buy into the idea that not paying income tax, or the government safety net, exists because less affluent people have been bribed by Democrats with government assistance or services.
The reality is that 40 to 60% of the people in those income brackets are comprised by conservatives -- even more in the reddest states in the deep south. The reality is that those benefits do NOT buy votes (that is a predominantly conservative behavior, notably special interest groups like ALEC buying Conservatives elected to office) and do not have the monolithic political will or unity to affect safety net spending or legislation. It would be better if they did, but they don't.
Then we have Senator Scott Brown banging on and on that Elizabeth Warren has only succeeded through affirmative action in her academic career -- and then only falsely by claiming to be part Native American. In point of fact, it appears that Professor Warren IS part Native American, but it is not at all evident that any affirmative action has ever been applied to her academic career, from admittance as a student to being hired as a professor. It was not even noted on many of her applications. While sometimes affirmative action has benefited a wider range of more diverse students getting admittance to academic institutions, including the most rigorous ones, it is NOT true that any of those students are given special preference in performance in those colleges and universities.
It has long been one of the great right wing myths that President Obama got into Harvard Law through affirmative action. It is equally a myth, promoted by the likes of the idiot Rush Limbaugh, who couldn't hack the education requirements of even a mediocre college, that our President somehow did not do the academic work.
The reality is that he had to have performed at an honors level to qualify for the Harvard Law Review, and if he had not been up to standard on those requirements, you can bet that his competition for Law Review Editor would have made something of it so as to prevent his election to that position.
Further there is no question that Michele Obama also made it into Harvard Law on her own merits.
The law degrees and law licenses of the Obamas have been the subject of rigorous fact checking which shows the notion that they somehow pushed a deserving rich white person out of admittance to Harvard Law is a total and complete lie. They deserved their place as students, they performed well in competition with other students academically, and they went on to be hired and work as lawyers at top law firms. Further, top law schools like the University of Chicago Law, where President Obama has been a professor, do NOT hire their teaching staff unless they are at the top of their profession. The University of Chicago Law School is consistently ranked in the top 10 law schools in the country. This appears to gall conservatives, that an uppity black man and woman could do well academically in a prestigious law school and in legal practice, so they routinely circulate lies about those uppity inferior poor black folks succeeding at their expense. It makes them feel victimized, challenging what they see as the right to dominance and preference of rich white people, especially rich white males.
Literally, the Obamas have been called 'uppity', a claim that they have stepped out of their proper inferior and subservient proper place, like this audio clip from the pompous jumbo jackass Rush Limbaugh:
In his 47% comments, Mitt Romney tried to blow the dog whistle claiming that he and other rich white people are the victims of minorities who don't pay income taxes.
Never mind that the history of the 16th Amendment shows that income tax has always been intended for upper income brackets, and NOT for lower income brackets, dating all the way back to the founding fathers who made income taxation apply ONLY to the upper 10% of the wealthiest first Americans. Never mind that Lincoln and the civil war era Republicans did the same thing.
Anyone who posits that people who don't pay income taxes doesn't pay taxes at all is profoundly ignorant. Mitts on R-money was just annoyed that he couldn't bribe the lower 47% with tax cuts the way he was bribing the upper income brackets; so he played on their innate sense of being victimized by poorer people and the middle class.
Only very stupid conservatives in that lower 99% will believe that people who don't pay income tax are free loading. Only very ignorant conservatives will buy into the idea that not paying income tax, or the government safety net, exists because less affluent people have been bribed by Democrats with government assistance or services.
The reality is that 40 to 60% of the people in those income brackets are comprised by conservatives -- even more in the reddest states in the deep south. The reality is that those benefits do NOT buy votes (that is a predominantly conservative behavior, notably special interest groups like ALEC buying Conservatives elected to office) and do not have the monolithic political will or unity to affect safety net spending or legislation. It would be better if they did, but they don't.
Then we have Senator Scott Brown banging on and on that Elizabeth Warren has only succeeded through affirmative action in her academic career -- and then only falsely by claiming to be part Native American. In point of fact, it appears that Professor Warren IS part Native American, but it is not at all evident that any affirmative action has ever been applied to her academic career, from admittance as a student to being hired as a professor. It was not even noted on many of her applications. While sometimes affirmative action has benefited a wider range of more diverse students getting admittance to academic institutions, including the most rigorous ones, it is NOT true that any of those students are given special preference in performance in those colleges and universities.
It has long been one of the great right wing myths that President Obama got into Harvard Law through affirmative action. It is equally a myth, promoted by the likes of the idiot Rush Limbaugh, who couldn't hack the education requirements of even a mediocre college, that our President somehow did not do the academic work.
The reality is that he had to have performed at an honors level to qualify for the Harvard Law Review, and if he had not been up to standard on those requirements, you can bet that his competition for Law Review Editor would have made something of it so as to prevent his election to that position.
Further there is no question that Michele Obama also made it into Harvard Law on her own merits.
The law degrees and law licenses of the Obamas have been the subject of rigorous fact checking which shows the notion that they somehow pushed a deserving rich white person out of admittance to Harvard Law is a total and complete lie. They deserved their place as students, they performed well in competition with other students academically, and they went on to be hired and work as lawyers at top law firms. Further, top law schools like the University of Chicago Law, where President Obama has been a professor, do NOT hire their teaching staff unless they are at the top of their profession. The University of Chicago Law School is consistently ranked in the top 10 law schools in the country. This appears to gall conservatives, that an uppity black man and woman could do well academically in a prestigious law school and in legal practice, so they routinely circulate lies about those uppity inferior poor black folks succeeding at their expense. It makes them feel victimized, challenging what they see as the right to dominance and preference of rich white people, especially rich white males.
Literally, the Obamas have been called 'uppity', a claim that they have stepped out of their proper inferior and subservient proper place, like this audio clip from the pompous jumbo jackass Rush Limbaugh:
Other examples of right wingers applying a double standard of factually inaccurate criticism that promotes the notion that white people are victimized by black people - unless they're both Republican and a minority (and sometimes, even in those people, but more discretely) were these examples noted by the Atlantic Wire almost a year ago:
A lot of people have no idea that the word "uppity," when applied to black people, has racist connotations, but it's getting harder and harder to understand how public figures, in particular, are able to maintain their ignorance of the term's history. President Obama has been a well-known public figure for several years and his conservative critics, in particular, keep making the "uppity" mistake. This week it's Rush Limbaugh, who said Michelle Obama was booed at a weekend Nascar race because she showed "uppity-ism," as well as the conservative site Newsbusters, which is just shocked that anyone might call that comment racially problematic. Glenn Beck, too, is defending Limbaugh's analysis, saying it's just a synonym for snobby. It's hard to explain how they've managed to avoid finding out about "uppity" secret past.
Limbaugh said Monday "Nascar people... are mature, tolerant people who fully understand when they’re being insulted and condescended to," Limbaugh said, then listed Obama's transgressions such as taking expensive vacations and saying exercise is good. He continued, "They understand it is a little bit of uppity-ism." Glenn Beck defended the comment, saying on Imus' radio show, "Uppity? You don't think she's a little snotty? Really? Really? Miss Arugula? Come on!" (Arugula is a type of lettuce that is offensive to some conservatives.) "I'm not going to apologize for saying the woman who says 'I'd like a good steak and arugula once in a while'... Please. We're living in a country where you can't say that's a little uppity?"
Beck seemed unaware "uppity" was a term racist southerners used for black people who didn't know their place. In fairness, a lot of people don't know for sure whether "uppity" is racist. Various forms of the question "Is uppity racist?" is a very popular on Yahoo Answers. But a little more digging could help these guys out. The most liked and most disliked definition at Urban Dictionary notes that "uppity" is often followed by the n-word. Maybe these media guys don't know how to Google. Even so, they've had a lot of practice with uppity in recent years.
In 2008, Rep. Lynn Westmorland claimed he didn't know "uppity" had racial connotations when he used the term to describe then-Sen. Barack Obama. This is especially curious because Westmorland is from Georgia. In 2010, Harvard professor Charles Ogletree said Sarah Palin's habit of deriding Obama as a "professor" was code for "uppity." Limbaugh responded by saying the term was racist when applied to Clarence Thomas, but true when applied to Obama: "Obama is uppity, but not as a black. He is an elitist. He does think he’s smarter and better than everybody else. That’s what he was taught. He’s a Harvard man." (Thomas received his law degree, by contrast, from plebian institution Yale.)
Yes, how dare a black man or woman attend Harvard? How dare poor people, who already pay a disproportionate amount of taxes at all levels NOT pay income tax so the rich can have even larger tax cuts - or be susceptible to the bribes of Mitt Romney with tax policy?
How dare an extremely accomplished woman like Elizabeth Warren become a Harvard Law School professor or be recognized by the National Law Journal as one of their top 100 most influential and intelligent legal minds, unless it was through victimizing rich white people through that terrible affirmative action that equalizes the playing field. She's a triple threat; she comes from modest means if not poverty, she is a woman, AND part Native American. Professor Warren shouldn't be uppity, running successfully against incumbent Scott Brown; she should know her proper subservient, submissive female place, instead of trying to take away the position of Senator from rich, white, conservative male Scott Brown!
Oh WOE, that poor conservative privileged VICTIM!
Conservatives like to whine on and on and on and on about the importance of merit, but what they really want is preferential treatment for white people, especially rich white male people. They have immersed themselves in an ideology where they see themselves as victimized by nearly everyone except those they narrowly define as 'us', in the "them versus us" dichotomy.
I am sick of the whiny and ignorant conservatives who fail to know fact from fiction, and who want hand outs for being privileged. They don't want a meritocracy, and they don't want a nation where people are equal -- they fear equality, they fear honest competition. Mostly they just fear everything, but especially that. To hell with their paranoia, their delusions that reject facts and objective reality, and most of all to hell with their unwarranted claims of being victimized.
They could use a (metaphorical) good swift kick in the pants and to have their nose rubbed in objective reality and facts about who is benefiting from what in our country. It isn't who conservatives think it is, and it is high time those who are in the 47% that don't pay income taxes woke up, smelled the coffee, and stopped voting against their own interests. I'm beyond any patience with right wing stupidity and intellectual dishonesty. Hey! Conservatives - yeah, YOU. You have freedom of speech and the freedom to vote - USE BOTH BETTER.
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