I apologize beforehand, but I am up against a hard deadline (I have to get to work) in about 10 minutes. I have not included links to any of the ideas from others I reference; if you are as intrepid a researcher as I know you are, you will be able to find them. But, I was just listening to Katy Tur on MSNBC and the bit about “getting people back to work.” I needed to put this out there otherwise it would drive me nuts just working and not being able to share this:
Just my $0.02, but the entire way we are framing the soliloquy the Democrats are having and the fingers-in-their-ears, “lalalalala” that the Republicans are doing should be more about economics than the pandemic. The only way to get the Republicans to the table is to deal with their basic, underlying greedy natures. They want power, but not to do anything constructive with, they just want it; now, they are seeing 45’s deleterious effect on their power. They want more money for themselves, but the only way they know how to do that is by taking it from poor people.
So, we need to change the conversation. This whole push to get people back to work by holding unemployment benefits hostage? It’s because wages are terribly low in this country. That extra $600/week? We need to add that to the minimum wages to bring everyone up to a living wage. There was a diary I read yesterday drawing a distinct line between chattel slavery and how our current system of wage slavery is all founded in American institutionalized racism. I very much agree with this sentiment. Instead of the Republican Party championing the abolition of slavery, they have evolved into the party of continuing slavery and enforcing white supremacy at any and all cost. It has just become much more naked and craven right now.
This whole thing about Republicans withholding money from small businesses who are the real drive behind our economy? It’s just another craven ploy to allow monopolies, giant businesses and robber barons to dominate the American political and economic realms in which we all live. The Glass-Steagall Act protected us until it was repealed in 1999, which led directly to the economic recession of 2008. The real reason that Republicans do not want individuals to hold their own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in their own hands is that the Republicans see this sort of control as power. The Republican Party of today is, in no uncertain terms, distinctly unAmerican in it’s principles, in it’s inability to effectively govern, in it’s inability to even have an open and constructive discussion with the Democratic Party.
So, we need to make these concepts stick to every Republican out there. They are for racism. They are for slavery. They are for fascism. They are against everything that makes this the United States of America. Their only play is to divide and conquer.
All the Republican Party stands for is to throw tantrums until it gets it’s way, make a huge mess out of anything it touches, not take any responsibility, insist that everyone “under” it stroke it’s chrystalline ego or it will throw another tantrum. It is being led by a man who has the emotional equivalent of a 3 year old, the attention span of a gnat and an ego so chrystalline, it shatters if anyone near it breathes wrong. Is this really the America we want?