Diligently destroying democracy

In the February 2018 edition of the Hightower Lowdown Jim Hightower puts it bluntly (and I’m pleased he did so). The Koch brothers (with assistance of several other rich families, such as Mercers, DeVoses, and Adelsons) are working diligently to destroy democracy in America.

We progressives need to understand the magnitude of the attack, then unite and counter it.

The primary method of attack is to hijack our national narrative of who we are. The traditional story:

It’s a remarkable history of rebellious commoners coming together again and again to battle such repressive forces as royalty, Wall Street, robber barons, Jim Crow, multiple waves of bigotry, and arrogant corporate abuse. Each chapter reveals a people determined to defend and extend the right to be self-governing, united in a group spirit of can-do ambition and a collective belief in equality, fairness, and justice for all.

The Koch version is pushed in two endlessly repeating scenes.

Scene 1 A lionization of laissez-faire, “self-made,” financially triumphant individuals as America’s heroic defenders of “liberty.” These studly giants of industry and finance are hailed as our country’s amazing wealth creators and prosperity producers, so supernaturally superior to the rest of us that they should naturally control our nation’s political, economic, and social policies (including sweeping, self-serving, schemes such as shriveling the public sector and making capital accumulation the overriding objective of the economy).

Scene 2 A depiction of the masses – particularly common workers and poor people – as irresponsible, selfish moochers, either unable or unwilling to be producers. Disdainfully portrayed as always looking for handouts from government and corporate chieftains, America’s commoners are cast as nuisances who must be restrained by law from using their numerical majority to interfere in any way with the “liberty” of the nation’s wealth creators. Beware the tyrannical grabbiness of the mooching majority!

We’ve heard these scenes many times. I’ve written about them many times. Everyone in the GOP at all levels of government, though especially the nasty guy and the leadership – Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Paul Ryan in the House – are very good at parroting the scripts of these scenes. They appear to have no other text.

Hey, corporate chieftains, a living wage is not a “handout.”

Earlier this week I wrote about Keri Leigh Merritt’s book Masterless Men about poor whites in the south before the Civil War. A large part of that story is that the Southern aristocrats were very much against democracy (well, they like democracy for themselves, but the poor, no matter their color, need not apply).

As I started reading Hightower’s words I got to wondering if the Koch brothers were from the South. I think Koch Industries are in Houston (it is primarily an oil company), but I don’t know their ancestry.

Though the Koch family may not be from the South their ideas certainly are. The phrase “makers versus takers” (Mitt Romney spread it around) is actually quite old. Nancy MacLean, a historian at Duke University who wrote the book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Rights’ Stealth Plan for America, traces it back to John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, the slave owning heir to a plantation fortune, who held various political offices from 1810 to 1850 up to Vice President and US Senator. He was a champion of Nullification, the idea that a state can nullify any federal law it doesn’t like.

Hightower wrote:

Calhoun theorized that since the wealthy few were the owners of nearly all productive properties (including slaves), they were the “tax producers.” Therefore, they have a moral claim to be the overlords of the democratic majority: the “tax consumers.”

Indeed, Calhoun proclaimed that the owner class was entitled to veto laws passed by majority vote in order to prevent the masses from taking collective action to tax, regulate, or otherwise tamper with owners and their property.

So, “governments have no right to put limits on what individuals and businesses are free to do.”

This is first class ranking – I’m so special you can’t pass laws that affect me.

MacLean wrote:

For Calhoun, freedom above all concerned the free use and enjoyment of one’s productive property without any impingement by others.

A reminder that “productive property” means slaves. So when the nasty guy campaigns on “Make America Great Again” the “again” refers back to the 1830s.

What to do? Even if the nasty guy is ousted the extensive Koch organization will still be pushing its two scenes and a lot of GOP politicians, heavily funded by the Koch brothers, will continue to parrot those scripts.

Hightower calls all progressive groups to stop with piecemeal defense of individual programs, but to unite in one broad message of showing the extent of the Koch network, confronting its distorted message of America, and rally around The Common Good. Hightower suggests we can all counter the false narrative. He offers three ways to do that.

* We are “self-made.” Nope. Everyone was helped by teachers, coworkers, previous generations, and public infrastructure.

* Corporations are “people,” money equals “free speech.” Also nope. These ideas are from judicial activists installed by corporate interests.

* Half of Americans are “moochers” who pay no taxes. They may not pay *income* tax, but they pay lots of other taxes in a higher percentage than rich people pay.

Calhoun proposed these policies. The Koch network is working to implement them. As I’ve said many times in this blog, yes, it is this serious.