AH! WE HAVE ANALYSIS

But let us be very careful, otherwise we might break the American Dream, and if that were to happen what would that make the Australian proponents of a similar cruelty?

Bob Burnett in an article, Hustling Backwards, at Common Dreams notes:

A favorite conservative myth about the poor is that they are shiftless neer-do-wells. But this stereotype doesn’t match the reality of Weisberg’s quartet. They are working as hard as they can, but are falling farther and farther behind. They’re not unusual. One in four American workers – 30 million – are mired in low-wage jobs that do not provide for a life with dignity. When progressives call attention to this situation, Republicans attack them – accuse them of fomenting class warfare. A typical conservative reaction is that the rich are “those who are industrious and willing to work hard (the HAVES),” while the poor are “those who are lazy louts looking for a handout (the HAVENOTS).” The GOP argues that it’s the fault of the individual; if you’re working full time and not getting ahead, you did something wrong, you deserve it. But it’s not the working poor who have failed. It’s the system – the American economic system conceived by Republican conservatives and promoted by the Bush Administration.

In fact, the conclusion that lends itself best to the evidence is that justice and human dignity is not possible without class warfare. The question then becomes as to what form the class warfare should take. The United States has squandered, we are told, up to 2 Trillion dollars on the Iraq misadventure. Somebody has got to wake up. Enough with the fantasies.

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