Those Hard-Hearted, Charitable Americans: Keeping the Herd Bewildered (Thumbs Up For The Rich!)

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Did you know that the reason that the Rethugs play the food card so hard is that it's really the race card?

Let's cut those food stamp benefits for those shiftless ungratefuls!

They just don't want to get a job and work hard like the rest of us!

Crowds are forming with pitchforks and blazing torches.

And these are the well-fed enemies of the poor.

You'd never know that the vast majority of food stamp recipients possess a white skin.

Tough to know the participants without a scorecard, isn't it?

In reference to the recently passed farm bill, Paul Krugman wrote in his July 14, 2013, post entitled, “Hunger Games, U.S.A”:

Long ago, when subsidies helped many poor farmers, you could defend the whole package as a form of support for those in need. Over the years, however, the two pieces diverged. Farm subsidies became a fraud-ridden program that mainly benefits corporations and wealthy individuals. Meanwhile food stamps became a crucial part of the social safety net.

In an aside, Krugman speculates, “So what’s going on here? Is it just racism?” His speculation is valid. Why are we not collectively incensed that programs to aid those in need are continually cut? Our collective silence is emblematic of a systemic malady. We have been trained to look the other way—to dismiss those who struggle in lower economic brackets.

The poor are poor, after all, and if you ignore them and their problems, then we can disavow an entire economic underclass. The problem is that the numbers of poor and the “working poor” continue to escalate. The census bureau reports that nearly 48 million Americans live below the poverty level. Paul Buchheit of Alternet puts it in perspective:

“While food support was being targeted for cuts, just 20 rich Americans made as much from their 2012 investments as the entire 2013 SNAP (food assistance) budget, which serves 47 million.”

This, in the world’s richest nation. The media never reported on Ryan’s budget in 2011 —  certainly not to the extent that they cover murder trials or Hollywood deaths.

Yes, there are excellent online journals such as The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that succinctly lay out Ryan’s cruel budgets, but generally, the legislature of our government remains clandestine.

“Is it racism?” That is probably as close to an explanation as we’ll get. But the more frightening issue is that no one is actively protesting the draconian cuts. We have been programmed not to.

It is the acquiescence of a “bewildered herd” that governments depend on, and this acquiescence is a consummate threat as the gap widens between the very rich and the very poor. Like all good racist tenets, the mechanisms of “classism” remain covert. The semblance of an equal and “transparent” system is easily maintained by a finely crafted state/corporate iron triangle. Indoctrination of the masses is key, and for this, the government depends on the media, whose role in the information process is to act as a conduit for the propaganda that serves state and corporate agendas.

Yes, this in nothing new. But in light of the continuing downward economic spiral — beginning with the housing crisis and stock market crash in 2008, endemic job loss, stalled salaries, sequestration, and finally, cutting food stamps from the farm bill entirely—why are we not revolting in the streets?

The late Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, pointed out that as the class divide between rich and poor exploded in colonial America, the most effective method of control was the creation of an ideology that appeared to include everyone equally: “This was to become a critically important rhetorical device for the rule of the few, who would speak to the many of ’our’ property, ‘our’ country.”

The rhetoric that swept the poor and middle classes into a mythical patriotic fervor during “our” country’s origin continues to be employed by those with the most to lose. Controlling the Bewildered Herd is no small feat and demands constant surveillance and strategy. We must not be allowed to feel allegiance to our poor and less entitled brethren.

Polarizing the classes is an effective tool for maintaining control, and apathy serves just as well as disdain when considering the fate of those less fortunate. How many of us have been plunged to the brink of economic disaster where we have nowhere to turn and no options? It could happen quicker and easier than you think. Don’t think food riots could happen? Think again. Say and do nothing at your own peril.

But no one's worried in the USA! USA! USA!

As we're all rich now.