The bumper sticker on the beat-up pickup truck read: “Friends don’t let friends vote Democrat.” The driver was obviously not affluent. Yet, despite all the news about mega-trillion dollar bankster bailouts, mega-million dollar bonuses for financial crooks, and unimaginable compensation packages for corporate CEOs who have moved middle class jobs out of America, something made the down-and-out pickup truck driver associate with the political party of the super-rich. As I wondered at this strange alliance of the dirt poor with the mega-rich, I remembered that in 2004 Thomas Frank wondered about how the Republicans had managed to convince the poor to vote against their best interests. Frank’s answer, or part of his answer, is that the Republicans use “social issues,” such as gay marriage and Janet Jackson’s exposed nipple to work up indignation over the threat to moral values posed by liberal Democrats.
Category: Global Issues
Currently, the crisis in Syria is chaotic and ever-changing with the situation consistently on uneven ground. The ongoing fighting between Western-backed rebel forces and the Syrian regime have plunged the country into a civil war…
Israeli expansion and occupation in the Gaza Strip is losinginternational backing, according to Matthew Gould, the British Ambassador to Tel Aviv. Gould said: “Support for Israel is starting to erode and that’s not about these people…
Kofi Annan, UN envoy to Syria, has quit his mission by stepping down from his attempts to facilitate peace through his 6 point peace plan. Mainstream media is blaming Annan for failing to bring peace in an obvious…
The Science of Genocide On this day in 1945 the United States demonstrated that it was as morally bankrupt as the Nazi machine it had recently vanquished and the Soviet regime with which it was…
The situation in and around Syria is still one of the most important issues being in focus of international events. This is the case when diplomacy equals military operations in importance. The failure of the…
Polarization No Extremism Yes Since the time of DeTocqueville’s Democracy in America, if not earlier, Americans have been aware of the tendency of their two-party system to restrain ideological polarization through an automatic process. In a…
Is Saudi Arabia on the Edge? By appointing Prince Bandar bin Sultan as its new intelligence chief, Saudi Arabia has installed what looks like a war cabinet at a time of rising tensions with Iran…
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Days that will live in Infamy At the beginning at the 20th century, two world-wide military conflicts of previously unheard of brutality, suffering and destruction shook the world. The first world war…
India still maintaining double standard toward exiled Tibetans After the 1959 rebellion, tens of thousands of Tibetans went into exile, following the Dalai Lama, and lived as refugees in India, Nepal, and…