Sad Appeal to "Little Guy"

This morning's paper carried an Associated Press article titled "Palin Says 'little guy' Key in Vote." "Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said Friday that the country needs to elect business-minded candidates who will not sell out their principles for the sake of bipartisanship." Oh. And the "regular" Republicans these past two years have been models of the infection of bipartisanship?

She went on, "This election is about the little guy, the common man, independence, and the middle class--those forgotten and ignored for too long, and now they're fighting back." The Tea Party of late and Big Conservatism in general for the past 40 years have done one of the best jobs of ironically effective misdirection of angst in modern times. Notice how she knits together a list of identifiers that describe the majority of society and links it to disaffection and defensive umbrage--yes, she's talking about me, and look how abused we are--and then continues with, "We want those business-oriented folks in Washington not to be there singing 'Kumbaya' with the people who caused the problems in the first place."

And what problems are those, that affect the little guy of the middle class so strongly? First would be the Wall Street meltdown and foreclosure crisis, caused by the reckless unregulated practices of big business. Next would be the jobs crisis, caused by big business outsourcing all those middle class jobs overseas. Third might be an opportunity crisis, characterized by such things as the college cost crunch, public school deterioration and infrastructure decline, fueled by the success of big business and the wealthy at getting their tax burdens reduced so that more and more has to be borne by "little guys" who cannot afford it. Now in the wake of the Citizens United court ruling, $50 million in secret contributions from big business is pouring into the election campaign on behalf of the Republican cause. No doubt we are expected to believe their largess is donated not to further GOP support for corporate interests but due to the multinationals' concern for the 'little guy.'

Disaffection in the white working and lower middle class is real and understandable. Their standard of living has been getting inexorably squeezed for the past thirty years. The Koch brothers, Coors family, Rupert Murdoch and a handful of like-minded rightist billionaires have been working assiduously for at least that long to misdirect the chain of causation for that away from themselves for even longer. All the poor, aggrieved little guy has to do is turn ever more authority over to the tycoons who have rigged the system against him and require less and less of a societal contribution from those who have been driving him to desperation and all will be well. It would be laughable if it weren't so tragically sad.