Except of course…they are. The idea that the government doesn’t any good for people is also right wing propaganda.
First of all, you are right; you did not initiate negative speculations about my intentions in starting this thread.
Second, negative speculations derail what deserves to be a serious discussion. It does not really matter how I feel, or who I like. What matters is whether or not my arguments are valid.
Now, as my nickname indicates, I think the Democrats did most things right during the New Deal. I also think they made serious mistakes during the 1960s and 1970s. That should be obvious. The Democrats dominated the country from 1932 to 1968. Since 1980 the GOP has dominated the country. This has made it difficult for the Democrats to exploit what ought to be their strongest issue: the growing income gap. Currently the Republican Party is interfering with Obama’s efforts to fix the economy.
The United States is like a sinking ship. Captain Obama is trying to save the ship. The Republicans are staging a mutiny. I do not like this. I think the discussion should be on why they are able to get away with it.
Since the election of Barack Obama the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as conservatives has grown.
Blaming this on right wing propaganda is liberal self indulgence. Propaganda only works when it resonates emotionally.
Naivete.
The reason people believe this “right wing propaganda” is because much of it conforms to what they know to be true.
The election of 1964 can be seen as the high water mark of the Democratic Party. Lyndon Johnson won 61 percent of the vote. The Democrats won two to one majorities in both houses of Congress.
Back then if you had asked a middle aged lower income white man what the Democrats had done for him he would have been told you how his father got a job after Roosevelt had been elected. He would tell you how Social Security takes care of his parents. He would have told you how he has benefited from increases in the minimum wage, and how unemployment compensation has helped when he was unemployed.
In 1980 if you asked a middle aged lower income white man what the Democrats had done to help him, you would probably have had to listen to an angry explanation of how affirmative action kept him from getting a job with the fire department, how his children had been bused to a predominately black school where they were sometimes beaten up by blacks. He would have told you about how he had to move out of the neighborhood where his family had lived for several generations. Blacks moved in because of the Open Housing Act of 1968. He, friends, and relatives began to become the victims of black crime.
Man, that middle aged 1980’s white dude sure is a racist fuck.
Glad we’re past the 80’s.
Wow, those middle aged lower income white guys sure are fickle.
Personally, I would have guessed it had a lot to due with the practices of the Johnson and Nixon administrations. But given the OP, I guess not.
It’s like asked David Icke who’s at fault for something. No matter what it is, he’s always going to blame the lizard people.
Coming from Newdeal? Gosh, I was expecting him to blame it on all the lying going on about the war in Vietnam, the publishing of the Pentagon Papers, Nixon’s secret plan to win the war, Watergate, CREEP and the plumbers and all of that. The last thing I would have expected was for him to blame those genetically inferior darkies.
Okay, I can’t keep a straight face that long; it’s exactly what I expected him to say.
What about his complaints would have been inaccurate?
You Samoans are all the same. You have no faith in the essential decency of the white man’s culture.
Most of the posts in this thread are simultaneously hilarious, horrifying, and ignorant. The two I’ve quoted are some of the most egregious.
Liberals, even atheists, have a form of religion even though they apparently don’t realize it–they worship government. How else to explain the blind faith that government can make virtually anything and everything better? How else to explain the belief that children belong to the state, not to their families? (A belief that shows itself in the passage of helmet laws, booster seat laws, etc.)
And–how else to explain the fact that not one poster in the thread–the vast majority of whom are clearly liberal–has seen fit to bring up the well-known, well-documented fact that the government has at times deliberately harmed people and lied about it.
For starters, there’s all the nuclear testing–some of which was admittedly done in ignorance, but far from all of it.
Then there’s the infamous Golf of Tonkin incident, which coincidentally(?) took place about the time that the level of trust in government started dropping.
Then there’s the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, in which the all-wise, all-benevolent government that you people praise knowingly stood by and watched people die.
In short, the decline of trust in government happened because the government showed in a clearer way than ever before its great power and desire to harm and deceive people.
If only there has been post after post pointing out just that.
Luckily we needed some to come in and rant about liberals and atheists. Good job!
During the New Deal and for several decades afterward the government advanced policies that improved the lives of most Americans.
Even indirectly, Democratic policies benefited most Americans. From the administrations of Lyndon Johnson to that of George W. Bush there was more job creation per year under Democratic presidents than under Republican presidents. There was also more job creation under Harry Truman than under Dwight Eisenhower.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/
Not to mention the numerous coups and COINTELPRO. It’s not that the federal government ever wasn’t expansionist (Manifest Destiny), it’s just harder to ignore people’s reactions to it.
If I were to equivocate (which I won’t), I’d point out that blind adherence to property rights (as evinced even in metaphor) is as much a religion as unwavering support for the government. That’d be a tu quoque fallacy though, so I’ll avoid it.
The best way to change perception is to change reality. The US government had won the Second World War and succesfully imported Democracy to Japan and Germany. The Marshall Plan had rebuilt Europe. The Great Depression had been overcome and the United States’s economy was the envy of the entire world. Thus perception of the government was that it could accomplish important things.
Then we had the Vietnam War which was an expensive and embarrassing failure. The War on Poverty which was an expensive failure. Watergate and the tapes revealed how craven people in power were. Inflation and stagflation revealed that the government did not know how to run the economy. Iranians took our embassy staff hostage and we did nothing about it. The USSR invaded Afghanistan and we refused to go to an Olympics. Communists were winning civil wars all around the world.
At the end of the 1970s government had proved itself inept, incompetent and out of touch. So therefore people held in low esteem.
Or the right wingers invented a mind control device that caused people to ignore reality and start distrusting government.
Vietnam - we can’t win wars anymore
Watergate - the government is corrupt
Stagflation - the government can’t do shit to fix the economy
Iran - little nations can take our people with impunity
These then give rise to Ronald “The government is the problem” Reagan
That’s my point, and a contributing factor to the anti-government movement. News is entertainment packaged to sell advertizing dollars.
I dislike FOX News and Rush Limbaugh. Nevertheless, they would not have the vast followings they do unless they spoke to the reality perceptions of millions of white Americans.
If the government had continued to be as receptive to the needs and desires of the white majority as it had been during the 1930s Ronald Reagan would have died in obscurity as a forgotten grade B movie actor, and Rush Limbaugh and FOX News would never have received their followings.
For too long liberal Democrats dismissed legitimate white concerns about crime, busing, and affirmative action as white racism. This dismissal helped to create the Republican ascend ency.
If the government had continued to be as receptive to the needs and desires of the white majority as it had been during the 1930s then the US would be a backwards, racist, intolerable cesspool of crime and violence. I mean, even more so.
Well, just look at the things that our, ahem, hypothetical 1980’s racist wanted: segregated schools, legally discriminating against blacks for housing and no program to redress systemic employment discrimination. I guess we could’ve instituted apartheid to make such, er, hypothetical-1980’s-racists happy.