Double think

In 2006, during a period in which the United States found itself in two major wars and its housing bubble began to burst, Democrats won major victories across the nation in Congressional races.

In 2008, the U.S. elected its first black president, a man considered a liberal at that time, in addition to the gains made by the Democrats once again in the Congressional election.

Despite this, the Democrats began their campaign for reform from the Republican perspective. They have let the Republicans dictate much of the conversation regarding all current government projects, despite a clear consensus that a majority of the nation disagreed with the way Republicans had been leading the nation the previous eight years.

There’s a simple explanation for this discrepancy between the democratic process and the results. The explanation is that for over 30 years, the Republicans have been allowed not just to control legislation, but to control the perception of government and society in the U.S.

Democrats have allowed Republicans to claim that trickle-down economics and tax cuts build the economy, despite the proof otherwise, particularly in the last eight years. When Sean Hannity claims that 50 percent of Americans somehow “don’t pay anything in taxes,” he gets cheered on by crowds of hundreds of people who don’t realize that they constitute that 50 percent of the population he considers to be “freeloaders.”

When Republicans try to tear apart the New Deal, no one is there defending the fact that without the New Deal, Medicare, the middle class and minimum wages wouldn’t exist. 

Until the Democrats realize we need not a change in legislation, but a rejection of this revisionist version of history, economics and science, there will be no effective reform. And as long as this continues, we will be stuck with hacks like Hannity, Limbaugh, and the Goldberg “twins” being treated as factually accurate.

The lives of Americans can’t improve until Democrats are willing to defend the legislation that kept them in office for nearly 40 consecutive years in the 20th century and are again willing to defend the working class.

The Democrats have let this Republican plutocracy feign the defense of the common man while in reality shepherding in an era in which we see the greatest income disparity this nation has seen since before the Great Depression.

The cost of living has outpaced the rise in real income for the middle class and poor, and the super-rich have gotten so rich that even the “merely” rich now feel left behind.
When John McCain claimed it takes $5 million to be considered rich and that many billionaires are poor, no one so much as blinked.

It’s going to take an entire cultural shift to fix this situation – a shift away from our current position that essentially states employees should simply be thankful they get paid at all to a position where everyone works for mutual, gainful benefits.