Self Interest?

The concept of voting in your best self interest is not a new one.  It reeks of ME first, but it is what most voters do; they vote in what they think and hope will most help them in their lives.

In Northern California, and rural California the exact opposite has been the norm  now for many years.

With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, working class whites, not just in the south, felt betrayed by the Democratic Party.  In the south and rural north, the party of Roosevelt,  moved  in mass over to the Republican Party.  The motivation was at first racism, no question.

A second motivator was the Vietnam War.  Working class young men bore the brunt of that war.  They were sent to the wrong war at the wrong time, became extraordinarily cynical and came home to rejection by their more affluent friends.

Liberal anti-war college students, protected from the war by an unfair draft, were able to sit out the war in great numbers.  The working class, loyal young man who did their duty,  felt betrayed and abandoned  by his country and by the Democratic Party.

Then along came Reagan and his Hollywood populism.  Reagan was able to collect even more working class people into a Republican party,  based on a working class populism, that mixed racism with revulsion against non-"family values".  Reagan had been elected govenor of California by a backlash to anti-war protestors and "hippies".  Once Reagan was elected he turned this anger on "welfare queens" and taxes, shifting the tax burden from the rich to the middle class.  Trickle down economics was sold as being in the best interest of the middle class.  The concentration of wealh in the top 1% of the past forty years is proof that this cutting taxes to stimulate the economy and aid everyone is simply a LIE.

What really was going on, was a carefully orchestrated campaign, led by special interests, to manipulate the market to their permanent advantage.

The United States was the top dog after World War II.  It remained alone in the world with a non-damaged infrastructure.  This advantage began to wane in the 1970s, with the oil embargo and the ending of the Vietnam setting off high inflation that hurt the middle class.  And who did the conservatives blame for this?  The Democrats of course.

In anger, and as a result of unprecedented propaganda led by radio conservatives, the middle class swung right, abandoning the lessons that the New Deal had taught them.   Those lessons by the way, that wealth had to be re-distributed to a limited degree, or a middle class could not exist, have never changed in their veracity.  Keynesian economics still work, even in the global economy.

The New Deal had saved the middle class in America.  But, when Democratic Party  swung into supporting  civil rights, the white middle class had enough.  It reacted negatively to the Democratic Party, joining Nixon's Southern Strategy and Reagan's "Shining Beacon on the Hill", and started voting Republican.

Meanwhile, the rich benefactors of this political shift, cynically began changing the game in America, accumulating more riches and cutting opportunities for the American Dream.

And the middle class fell into a trap of voting contrary to their self interests.  And the middle class committed suicide.

Fox News was a  direct reaction to this "victory" of the wealthy over former New Deal Democrats.  It continued and perfected the propaganda of right wing commentators, with devastating effect.   Reagan even changed the Federal rules for mass communication, enabling a huge advantage for conservative propaganda.  And white middle class Americans began watching Fox News all day long.

Remarkably, even though their votes brought them NOTHING, middle class whites continued to vote directly against their self interests, electing more and more conservative pro-rich, pro-special interest legislators.

Northern California is a perfect illustration of this.  The logging industry imploded in the 1980s.  The working class in Northern California bought the lie that environmentalists caused the closing of mills.  The logging industry, that cynically outsourced work, closed plants that had simply ran out of public  land lumber.  Clearcutting had simply cut down all the timber.  What was left were private lands, the last of the old growth forests, that had to be preserved.  The sad fact is it takes over 100 years for a forest to regrow.

And the Democratic Party has been perpetually blamed for this .   And the voters in the North State continue to vote for the interests of the wealthy class at stark variance to their own because they see environmentalists as the enemy.

Meanwhile, thanks to an incredibly foolish adherence to an anti-immigration position, the statewide Republican Party has shrunk in size and power.  Currently Republicans do not even have 1/3 of the legislature, do not have one state officer position, and are even losing more influence with the demographic changes in the state.

And in Northern California a nonsensical separation of the state movement grows with absolutely no chance of success.  Conservative groups push for secession, knowing full well there is no chance it will succeed.

And rural people buy it.  Blinded by propaganda, they vote again and again directly opposite of their self interest.

As a result, northern California gets poorer and poorer, "patriots" tilt at the windmills of secession, and the poor get poorer.

People seem to enjoy getting fooled.

And the interesting thing is, in many other areas of their lives, they are getting more progressive.  Families are including gay brothers and sisters, inter racial marriage is commonplace, even in the most conservative of families.  But their churches, who invariably are Christian Conservative, continue to work to blind them to what is in their self interest.  The conservative press doesn't let up.

Of course  they buy it!   Millions are being spent EVERY day to keep the middle class silent.

They continue to waste their votes, sending people like Doug LaMalfa to Congress, who are there for one reason only, line their pockets and vote for their agribusiness profits.

The easy fix for the alienation and lack of representation at the state and federal level, is to elect Democrats.  It is that simple.

And they won't do it!