YOU CAN ALWAYS TELL what the right-wing is secretly up to by paying attention to where they attack liberals.
If a Newt Gingrich expresses outrage at Clinton's sexual behavior you can be sure he's having an affair himself.
If a Peter T. King commences McCarthy-like hearings on Islamic terrorism, you can be sure he supported terrorists in Ireland.
If a Larry Craig takes repeated legislative stands against gays...
You get the idea.
So I should have realized, about a month ago, what has become completely clear in the time since.
I posted about the repeated complaints from "conservative" pundits that liberals constantly invoke (and thereby "incite") "class warfare".
I pointed out two things:
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that, in fact, liberals hardly ever use the phrase, and
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that the phrase itself was originally invented by conservatives for the purpose of making just such accusations.
It should have occurred to me at the time that if they were screaming so loudly about it, conservatives (by which I mean the professional "conservative" elites—not the real conservatives on the ground) were probably doing it.
So I should have known what is now obvious.
The leaders of the right wing in this country—the politicians, the pundits, the think tankers, and most of all the super-wealthy who fund them all—have declared war on the middle class.
They've been engaged in class warfare all along—the last month has just stepped up the attack until no one could miss it.
When Scott Walker got himself elected under false pretenses in Wisconsin, he did it the same way that every Republican in Congress did it:
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he promised more jobs to the middle class, and
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he made use of a lot of money from big corporations and the super wealthy in his campaign.
When he got into office, he immediately used the power to give enormous tax breaks to wealthy people, and used the budget crisis which that created as an excuse to:
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strip middle class workers of bargaining rights (except for the unions that endorsed him),
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cut spending for services to the middle class—for things like schools, colleges, Medicaid, and supports for local government—which includes libraries, public safety, and other services, and
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cut hundreds of jobs.
Does this pattern look familiar to you?
Not just from the last election, but over the last thirty years?
If not, I'll spell it out in my next post.
Next: The War on the Middle Class
