All during
this past election season, and before, the rhetoric coming from the
Republicans, radical right or more centrist, was the same. Marvelous populist rhetoric that extolled the
virtue of job creation and working for good wages along with the need to get
government out of the way of businesses in order for the economy to grow so
people could have jobs. It all sounded
very populist and wonderful.
My
suggestion to the electorate is to imagine that the speaker is not talking to
you, but to a wealthy white man, preferably one with a White Anglo-Saxon
Protestant (WASP) last name, and preferably one whose income is in the millions
of dollars. The whole rhetorical
direction takes on new meaning. That is
because it is not directed at those of us who live in the middle or lower
economic classes.
As an
example, I heard many Republicans say that the minimum wage is irrelevant (Paul
Ryan), or that $7.25 is fine for a starting wage for a high school
student. They didn’t discuss if the high
school student is in school trying to get an education to get a job that pays
more than minimum wage, who then was working at the mythical student’s
job. Many commented that it was up to
the business to set the wage they are willing to pay. What hog wash!! The minimum wage was set in the first place
in 1938 because corporations and businesses were not willing to pay a living
wage. No more so then, than they are
now. When the minimum wage was on state
ballots in this past election, it won overwhelmingly.
One
statistic that has been bandied about is that about 2/3rds of
minimum wage workers are women. Everyone
knows that these women should be home taking care of their children, and their
husbands will provide for them. Another
bunch of hog wash. If their husbands, or
significant others were doing just that, the women would be home. But the men are not stepping up to the plate
and taking responsibility for their own actions. Or, the men might not be able to find jobs
that pay them more than minimum wage, and like the old cliché, two wrongs do
not make a right, or two minimum wage jobs don’t make a living wage.
Our country
has come a long way in opening some doors for minorities. This is obvious when all one has to do is
watch the news on MSNBC, for example.
But for the vast majority of minority men and women, the jobs they can
find are definitely not those that provide a living wage. These are the people who are destined by the
oligarchy to do the scut work required in any society. Someone has to clean the toilets in restaurants
and malls, scrub the kitchens and floors, and collect the garbage, to name just
a few of the jobs to be done by “those people”.
If the
Republicans can get women out of the workplace, at whatever level, that will
open up more jobs for white men, who have a divine right to have them, as they claim
is in Scripture. Men won’t have to
compete with women who may be much better at the job than they would be. It reminds me of the old statement at the
beginning of the feminist movement, “For a woman to get ahead in the workplace,
she has to be twice as smart and work twice as hard as a man. Fortunately, that is not difficult”. Also, by denying women access to birth
control or family health services whether that is abortion or not, women return
to being restricted in their employment capabilities. It is difficult to have a high-powered job
with no birth control assuring the woman that she will not become pregnant at
the most inopportune time possible. Further,
by restricting funding for child care services, women will be obligated to
either attempt to receive some sort of government subsidy in order to care for
the child, or try some other method of providing for herself and her child or
children.
Try
connecting the dots on this false populist rhetoric yourself. You will probably come up with even more
disturbing rhetorical pictures. Force
politicians to actually, in detail, define their terminology and/or
rhetoric. What emerges is truly, at
times, amazing. Not rational, but
amazing.
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