09.18.12
The Moochers
I’m sorry to harp on it (well, no, not really) but Romney’s “47 percent pay no income tax” puts him in the role of the protagonist I satirized in “Rich Man’s Burden.”
It is a song for the Republican Party. And it trots out a line of thought very common, the world belief of a special kind of fucked-up white paranoid, one with a resentment for “others” who pay no taxes. And are on food stamps, to boot. And that would be everyone who votes for Democrats or Obama. Which apparently leaves a middle ground of unfocused pure white voters, salt of the earth working people, who can still be persuaded to vote Republican.
I’ve some collected quotes from the account of one of my local Pasadena friends on Facebook, a fellow who keeps in touch with old acquaintances from prep school in one of the tonier places of Connecticut.
And they chat on his wall, going on extended whines about taxes,
the unfairness of alleged cheaters who pay none, and the corruption and shame of a government that enables the lazy and untalented.
To them, this is one of the big things dragging the country down:
[The] 60 million who don’t actually file taxes (and should) is a huge problem.
There is an estate tax for estates valued at over $5 million dollars, but that pretty much excludes the middle class and the poor.
With an income tax, millions … get off not paying.
[Who] should get [the tax money]? The government? To waste or to feather the Pols nests or the people who were less successful, not as smart or maybe just lazy?
Call them part of the White Toffs Preservation Society. And this aggravated cant dominates their political discussions, dogged beliefs that shirkers are stabbing the ideals of old America in the back, taking the honest sweat of the white noble people and giving nothing back.
And so it has come about that the singularly libertarian Ayn Rand usage — moochers — dominated the news on Romney’s secret speech today.
Even though he did not use it, when he picked up Paul Ryan as VP and all the Atlas Shrugged baggage, the pump was primed, “moochers” and the regular denunciation of those not believed to pay taxes coming along for the ride.
And Romney’s chances are destroyed by this toxic meme rubbed in everyone’s face, one the party embraces, a thing that has rotted the extremist GOP from the inside out.
At the Centre Daily Times, the newspaper of State College, PA, an editorial writer named Steve Lachman exhorts “mainstream Republicans” to vote for Obama:
We may disagree about fiscal and tax policy, abortion and gun control.
And as important as those issues are, we do agree about something a lot more fundamental. We agree that democracy is the cornerstone of our nation.
Your party has been hijacked by reactionaries who have subverted democracy for the sake of power.
He’s a gentleman, too gentle. Civility was destroyed a long time ago. Fuck the GOP, left, right and center. As I’m from among the alleged moochers, I’m not for agreement on anything unless it means more mooching.
At Rolling Stone, Randy Newman unfurls a new song, “I’m Dreaming (of a White President.)”
It’s about the Republican Party and is very good. I like mine more. But I’m not someone anybody gets peer points for recommending.