Why is it that Republican politics paint the idea of investing in people as something stupid, evil or communist?
If you casually examine your recollection of all the people you know and have known, you will easily find that the vast majority are good folk, who do and strive to do the right thing. A few, those not so good, might be a bit more attention-grabbing due to the strife, confusion or upset they have caused in your life, but these are a tiny minority.
Unless you live in a community of criminals and rogues, you can pretty much take for granted that this personal sampling will apply across the boards to all of mankind. Thus you can pretty easily take for granted that the majority of people everywhere are good, trustworthy and want nothing but good for those around them.
These are the good people. They are the majority of people we all know, the people of good will on whom the world depends. When you examine this and its ramifications, it is a truly refreshing thought.
But this runs afoul of the messaging from conservative political voices which profess completely false ideas that “others” are dangerous, evil, want what you have and are coming to take it. These are crazy concepts. If you thoroughly believed them, you might be tempted to go everywhere armed with assault weapons and wearing body armor. (Sound like anyone we know?)
Conservative political messaging has easily visible red flags that show a distrust of the majority. Even pseudo-Democrat Joe Manchin used this concept in his sabotage of the Child Tax Credit, when he privately raised concerns that parents would use their child tax credit payments—a key part of the Build Back Better legislation—to buy drugs. Basically, Republican politics always seems to center on the idea that the economy has to be protected for corporations and from the criminals in society. But that ignores the fact that the vast majority of people are not criminals.
Sure, there will always be a tiny minority in any group that will abuse help. It goes with the territory. It is the make-up of Mankind. But that’s then used as an excuse to paint the majority with the brush of untrustworthiness. This then becomes a great excuse for Republicans to evolve fake economic models like “trickle down” to justify the active creation of poverty. The idea is to make helping people who need help sound bad, stupid or evil all because a few of those might be taking unfair advantage of that help. This is the underpinning of the racist concept Reagan pushed of the “welfare queen.”
Let’s look at a few of those who are opposed helping the majority on the basis of a few bad apples:
- Mitch McConnell, who has become a multimillionaire during his time in office and who steadfastly opposes any government subsidy or benefit that is not paid to a large corporate entity.
- Joe Manchin, who directly benefits from a fossil fuel company run by his son and opposes any shift to renewable energy. He also opposes restraint on pharma price gouging—his daughter was the pharma CEO directly responsible for inflating the price of EpiPens to hindenburg proportions.
- Kyrsten Sinema has been in office for a short time at her $174,000 annual salary and now somehow has a million dollar net worth. She also takes major donations from pharma companies.
There are tons of other examples, but these three are stars. And their common denominator is their own corruption and criminality. This makes it unsurprising that they are also the key players in tanking legislation to restore voting rights gutted by Republican legislatures in 19 states. This same legislation would have also restrained the kind of political finance corruption that is making them wealthy.
These three are part of the tiny minority of people in government with unclean hands and who think therefore that the majority can’t be trusted and thus should not be invested in.
We, the majority, are stuck with these three for the time being because they are not up for re-election this November. But we can make them irrelevant. More on that is future articles.
The tiny minority, the criminally minded, the dirty politicians are not just distrustful of the majority. They are terrified of us. And they should be. We’re their bosses and can fire them. And for this reason we should expect nothing but misdirection, excuses and lies from them to divert attention from their actions.
But their actions are always what betrays them—along with their visible distrust and disdain for the majority of people in this country.
If you are looking at humanity from the viewpoint of an investor and you buy the idea that the majority is a problem, you’re going to lose every time. The percentages are always with the majority. Inclusion is a good thing. Exclusion leads down a very dark path.
The smart play is to support and vote in people who demonstrably view the majority as it is—composed of people of good will. That sounds silly and utopian, but is factual and an easy path to a better society. This is how we do what the Preamble to the Constitution calls for, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Marty Kassowitz is co-founder of Factkeepers. As founder of Interest Factory and View360, he brings more than 30 years experience in effective online communications, social media management, and platform development to the site. He is a writer, designer, editor and long time observer of the ill-logic demonstrated by too many members of the species known as Mankind. After a long history of somewhat private commentary on a subject he totally hates: politics, Marty was encouraged to build this site and put up his own analyses as well as curate relevant content from other sources.
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