“The comparatively affluent can withstand the moral effect of being subsidized and supported by government; not so the poor.” ~John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment
It is among the greatest bait-and-switch tactics played on the American public: While the Reagan republicans and the generations that followed crowed that Welfare Queens were robbing the public, 50 trillion dollars moved from the lower 90% into the personal pockets of the 1%. The misuse and abuse of the system was not – and is not – the woman using food stamps to feed her child.
Do you remember the cry, “Waste, fraud, and abuse!” It is the same strawman/woman tactic used to sell The BIG UGLY BILL that is now stripping medicaid, healthcare and food assistance from millions of citizens – all to provide a tax cut for the morbidly wealthy. Consider this: Elon Musk’s personal wealth is built on billions and billions of dollars of government funding, subsidies and tax breaks. His DOGE bros successfully killed any and all government oversight over his business practices and use of tax dollars. His morbid wealth is accelerated by tax breaks and a tax code that shifts the tax burden of the nation onto the poorest citizens.
It is a corrupt band that only has one note in its repertoire: the same gross stereotype, variation on the Welfare Queen, is fueling the rampant misinformation that now leads to mass deportation of immigrants or, to be more specific, the deportation of black and brown immigrants, people who fled violence and came to this nation seeking a better life. The Welfare Queen tactic worked so well to shift wealth into the hands of the few that it is now being used to vilify immigrants. We hear that they are “soaking up tax dollars, afforded benefits that we are not, depleting resources meant for us…”
The facts have never backed up these claims.
White nationalist elites are slobbering at the success of their modified Welfare Queen smear campaign, the rapid erection of concentration camps, the shameful support of their false-narrative by the court Supremes. All the while, the president and his men grift and rob us blind; his personal wealth has increased 4 billion dollars since inauguration day.
When fox news poisons the brains of their audience with a cry of “Socialism” or “Communism”, they are utilizing the same stereotype to fuel the same intention: create a fact-free-diversion by fueling fear, all the while moving the wealth of the nation – and the constitutional protections of the nation – into fewer and fewer hands.
When the current occupant of the White House and his Project 2025 co-conspirators cry that illegals are stealing our elections or that women are ruining our nation and should not have to right to vote or that people from Haiti are all rapists and riddled with AIDS…it is the same game, the same gross stereotype used to distract and deflect the public from the real rapists of our society.
It’s an age-old magician’s trick with a pickpocket intention: distract and steal.
Imagine the public good 50 trillion dollars could provide – could have provided – if it was actually dedicated to serving the public? The best healthcare for all. The best education in the world. Safe and secure bridges and roads. Stimulus for small business. World class research. A solvent social security and secure Medicare system. A stable and educated populace that would recognize when they were being fleeced.
Here’s the greater point. Terms like Welfare Queen are lobbed like bombs at us because they dehumanize people. They explode a victim fantasy in the minds of the easily distracted and render the target of their slander as less-than-somebody (“The welfare queen is taking your money!”). Sadly, in the process, we dehumanize ourselves, too. In “doing unto others,” we do the same onto ourselves. We become less than somebody, a disposable people who cannot afford housing or food or the gas in our cars. An easily controlled throw-away mass perpetually fighting each other, blind to the orange man and his tech-bro-party of urchins actively, gleefully, picking our pockets.
There is only one line remaining between our future as a class of nobodies or as a nation of somebodies, a government of, by and for the people, is to vote. Our vote in November will affirm that we are somebody – or it will deliver us into the hands of those who daily reduce us, strip us of our rights and believe we do not matter. Welfare Queen. Illegal. Antifa. Dumocrat. Loser.
Vote as if your life and our democracy depended on it – because it does.
read Kerri’s blogpost about SOMEBODY
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