02.13.12

Hellbent on destroying themselves

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, Extremism, Fiat money fear and loathers at 11:05 am by George Smith

I regularly run into people who rant against the government, vote Republican, who’s lives are utterly dependent upon various aspect of the social safety net.

The working class’ earning power has been so squeezed by corporate America it has fallen to the government to keep many from abject poverty.

Yet large numbers of the people dependent on government programs watch nothing but Fox News, detest the current President and argue vehemently to destroy all the things that make their lives survivable.

The New York Times has done a long story on them. It is a must read.

Excerpted:

Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.

“I don’t demand that the government does this for me. I don’t feel like I need the government,??? said KI GULBRANSON, who counts on an earned-income tax credit and has signed up his children for free meals at school.

He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.

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[Dean P. Lacy], a professor of political science at Dartmouth College, has identified a twist on that theme in American politics over the last generation. Support for Republican candidates, who generally promise to cut government spending, has increased since 1980 in states where the federal government spends more than it collects. The greater the dependence, the greater the support for Republican candidates.

And, here, the man who resent others who spend “his” money, doled out by entitlement check, in the same boat:

Brian Qualley, 49, has a sister who survived a brain tumor but was disabled by its removal. The government pays for her care at an assisted-living facility. Their mother scrapes by on Social Security.

Mr. Qualley said that the government should provide for those who need help, but that too much money was being wasted. Mr. Qualley, who owns a tattoo parlor in Harris, north of North Branch, said some of his customers paid with money from government disability checks.

“They’re getting $300 or $400 tattoos, and they’re wearing nice new Nike shoes that I can’t afford,???

Having played in a biker rock band for many years I’m intimately familiar with the tattoo parlor crowd. The logical mind is not one of its defining characteristics. You find no gentleness, expansive spirit or progressive value in tattoo parlors and this can hardly be news. Momentarily, I wondered why the Times even saw fit to interview someone who ran one. (The paper also uncovered a bigot — the resentment over “nice Nike shoes” being the giveaway. The reporter and editors certainly know it.)

However, scapegoating is a common characteristic of societies enduring hard times. And Paul Fussell noted in Class that the afflicted kick down at those of their own circumstance.

There’s a very thin line between disdain or contempt and outright hate between the divisions which make up our various middle-class tribes. And often there are no lines at all. Needle someone hard enough in a tribe different from yours and see it erupt.

It is easy to understand the great anger in the Tea Party, or anywhere in the hinterlands. The urge to give a presumed tormentor a good punch in the face when you get the opportunity to swing is strong and human. The presumed tormentor is usually someone within arms reach.

Here I often marvel at the many folk music videos the opposition puts on YouTube, all with more enthusiastic fans than anything from my side.

The music may be bad, the lyrics awful, the sentiment horribly misguided. It’s easy to laugh at material by people who couldn’t pass an introductory college economics course singing about Ron Paul’s love of “sound money” and returning to the gold standard.

However, one thing it doesn’t lack is gutsiness; the willingness to be taken for a fool in letting the raw shout of hurt out.

A predatory economy has set into stone conditions in which Americans now always find themselves moving down. So they’re always going to be bitter. How many people on food stamps vote for pols who want to destroy the food stamp program?

A lot more than you think, I imagine.

“There used to be room at the top,??? Paul Fussell wrote in Class.

Now there is only room at the bottom.

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