The Fear Card for Dummies
October 26, 2008
By Steve Klinger.
Ah, how quickly Americans adjust to adversity. On the Huffington Post today is this blog headline: Could You Survive In Poverty? Take the Quiz.
Undoubtedly, before the ink is dry on the severance checks from General Motors, the publishing houses will find money for the new round of self-help books, such as the following:
• Living at Home on $10 a Day
• Frommer’s Guide to Habitable Highway Overpasses
• Rent Out Your Parked RV to a Homeless Family (In Exchange for Yard Work)
• Dumpster Diving for Dummies
• Idiot’s Guide to Stealing Copper
• Prosper Today With Manhole Covers
• The Alternative Cook Book Volume One: Roots and Lizards
And the new TV programs:
• Garage Sale Roadshow
• Flip That Travel Trailer
• Survivor: The Staten Island Landfill
• Extreme Makeover: Winterize Your Coleman Tent
Does anyone else see the disconnect between what’s happened to the distribution of wealth in this country (the wealthiest fifth of U.S. households now account for 50 percent of all income) in a free-market economy and the traction John McCain’s Joe the Plumber tour seems to be finding in recent days with working-class Americans? Joe himself earns $40,000, not $250,000, he’s not a licensed plumber and he owes back taxes. He himself would benefit from Obama’s tax plan. But if he had the thriving small business he dreams of, his hypothetical $250,000-plus income would be taxed at a higher rate. Now that’s socialism! How dare a lazy black man with a Muslim middle name and terrorist pals suggest that the wealthy bear more of the tax burden than the poor and the middle class? Redistribute that wealth and pretty soon we’ll be living under totalitarianism!
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the economic-political gospel from someone no less authoritative than Sarah Palin (at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa on Saturday):
“See, under a big government, more tax agenda, what you thought was yours would really start belonging to somebody else, to everybody else. If you thought your income, your property, your inventory, your investments were, were yours, they would really collectively belong to everybody. Obama, Barack Obama has an ideological commitment to higher taxes, and I say this based on his record… Higher taxes, more government, misusing the power to tax leads to government moving into the role of some believing that government then has to take care of us. And government kind of moving into the role as the other half of our family, making decisions for us. Now, they do this in other countries where the people are not free.”
So will all those rank-and-file capitalists promptly return their Social Security checks and reimburse Medicare for their hip and knee replacements now? Will Palin give back the higher taxes she bragged about collecting from oil companies to help out ordinary folks who live in Alaska? Will McCain please take his meds now so he can remember supporting higher taxes on higher-income Americans (and can keep track of the former secretaries of state who endorsed him)?
That Fear Card is one helluva joker, isn’t he? One day he’s Jeremiah Wright, then he’s Barack the Celebrity (The One), then he’s William Ayers, then he’s Tony Rezko, and now he’s whatever hardworking Average Joe you please, with Obama’s hand in his pocket. Because, never mind the Republican-led deregulation mania that turned your 401K into chump change and let the company that shipped your job to China offshore its own headquarters to the Cayman Islands so it wouldn’t have to pay corporate taxes. No, that’s not relevant, like the imminent danger of the elite, frappuccino-sipping, freedom-robbing socialist Muslims who would turn your dream riches into handouts for lazy, thieving minorities.
Got that? Now be a good foot soldier go vote accordingly.
Me? I voted early, just in case the latest incarnation of the Fear Card might change my mind.
Guess I’ll curl up with a good new book, like The Alternative Cookbook, Volume Two: Delectable Grasshoppers the Sterno Way.
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