It’s time to stop pussyfooting around and call it for what it is: Class Warfare. The super rich ruling elites have been waging a propaganda war on the middle class for decades now—beginning with Ronald Reagan and his “supply-side,” “trickle-down,” big lie economics. And until we recognize it and call it for what it is, we will continue to lose the war. Understand: The plutocrats and oligarchs and Wall Street elites are winning the war with propaganda. They have half of us convinced (and seemingly all of us at times) that the poor are lazy, ignorant leaches, sponging off the system. They also have many of us convinced that any one of the members of the middle class can easily be rich too—if we would only work harder and longer and smarter (for them, of course). These are lies. This is Fox New propaganda. The reality is that the middle class and working poor are not being adequately paid for their labor, and that the barriers to becoming wealthy in America are greater today than any other advanced nation in the world (except one: the UK). The reason the rich don’t want anyone talking about class warfare is because they don’t want anyone else to wake up to the reality of what’s really going on. As long as we feel bound to talk and think about class warfare as something other than what it is, we will continue to be diverted away from the real problem we’re facing in this country today: extreme economic inequality.
When Theodore Roosevelt founded the Progressive Bull Moose Party in 1912 he well understood the disastrous consequences that excessive economic inequality was having on the political and economic system in the country. And he did not hesitate to confront the situation head on, including the swollen fortunes of the Wall Street elites. “No man, he said, “should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered—not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune,” Roosevelt continued, “by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective—a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”
We do not have the luxury of time. The war on the middle class has already been declared. We must demand reforms now. As Roosevelt said, “…we must be ready to face temporary disaster, whether or not brought on by those who will war against us to the knife. Those who oppose all reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.” Join the Progressive Bull Moose Revolution and help us end the era of big money, big corporate-controlled government—rule by the super rich—and return power to the people.