#30 -- DIVIDING THE NINETY-NINE

DIVIDING THE NINETY-NINERS, CONQUERING THE FIFTIERS


“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”

Whether or not Gandhi actually said that, it is true. Aristocrats, autocrats and authoritarians of all political leanings know it. This is why the one-percenters are, at the height of police brutality against Occupiers everywhere, seeking, through ridicule, to send the protesters back to ignominy. Useful idiots in right-wing media and think tanks are yelling with one voice about how “we” don’t like those lazy parasites in the occupy camps with their twisted sense of entitlement. Our ruling elites need to get the Occupy Movement out of the limelight, and fast. Police misconduct, in public, has not set well with most citizens, and the situation cannot be sustained. As the vast majority of Americans have begun to sympathize with the protesters and with their cause, the protesters are on the brink of victory. A new battle plan is in order.
The elites have a very powerful weapon: a heavy barrage of propaganda, aimed at working Americans’ solidarity. “Citizens United” assures us the fusillade will be deafening. Repeating the Big Lie often enough, loudly enough, and ubiquitously enough, should convince some workers that economic disaster is caused not by the elite, but by people just like them. Smaller groups will then fight each other to exhaustion, leaving those in power, in power. The push is on to turn “the fiftiers”—those Americans who still eat regularly, live indoors, and drive cars, against the Occupy Movement and back into the loving bosom of their natural “friends” in the one percent. Right-wing politicians and talking heads regularly gripe about the 47% who pay no income taxes (because they are too poor) while defending the right of rich people who pay no taxes to go on paying nothing. Of course, the poor, like everyone else, pay sales, gasoline, and payroll taxes, but the propaganda routinely ignores this fact, it being designed to get working people to resent each other. Some will find it easier to pick on the poor than to take on the rich. The Big Lie will not convince everybody, but it might swing a few close elections in key states.
The Big Lie says that all Americans are born with an equal chance to get ahead, that this opportunity is somehow firmly entrenched in the U. S. Constitution, that we all have it, always. Where this clause is written into the Constitution no one is able to actually point out, but the right-wing cheering section steadily reaffirms its existence. If we all really have the same opportunity, then poor people have only themselves to blame for their privations. That means we need not trouble about them. Reason and everyday events expose this falsehood, but some people still believe it. More will believe it the more they hear it, because it sounds so preposterous it must be true. The Big Lie depends on it. It often works. If it works this time, the half of us who are still solvent can write off those who have been hit hard by the recession, and get back to shopping.
At the same time the still comfortable are being exhorted to contemptuously dismiss those in need, the right wing is blasting hate messages to turn the deprived against those who are yet getting by. The premise here is that the young and poor face hardships because of “entitlements” such as Social Security, Medicare, and Unions. If all that entitlement money can just get into the hands of the big banks and the stock market, then free enterprise can stimulate the economy so everyone will have plenty of opportunity. On it goes. People who work for a living, the ninety-nine percent, will turn against each other: young vs. old, comfortable vs. needy, majorities against minorities. People who could co-operate to win freedom from want for everyone, will instead fight. The protests in the Occupy movement, all across the country, will come to naught, and the wealthy and powerful will win the class war they started.
Of course not everybody will believe the Big Lie. But most Americans like to believe that people can do well if they try. Through most of our history this belief has been proven true, for most people. But these are extreme times, and individual initiative is not enough to help most of us. What we see happening: lost jobs, lost homes, lost retirements, lost chances—really could happen to all of us. The Occupy protests are demonstrating that reality to a majority of Americans, who are starting to believe we must co-operate. But “Citizens’ United,” a gift to the elite from five of nine members of the Supreme Court, allows the upper class to overwhelm the truth with tidal waves of propaganda. The elite can buy all the signs, news shows, commercials, lobbyists, and politicians they want, and if they need more, they can buy more. The Big Lie barrage has started. It will grow.