Obama’s campaign of class and race resentment

I don’t agree with everything in Peter Wehner’s article at the Commentary website about Obama’s $1.5 trillion tax speech yesterday, but his main points seem to be correct: (1) Obama dishonestly conceals how much in taxes the rich already pay, so as to increase resentment of them; (2) he presents his own positions as the opposite of what they really are; and (3) he views wealth creators and those who are successful in life as bad people who are getting unfair advantages.

What Wehner doesn’t address is the question: why should anyone living in America over the last 30 or so years NOT view wealth creators and the successful as bad people enjoying unfair advantages? As far back as I can remember, mainstream media routinely describe, not just wealthy people, but middle class people living ordinary, functional lives (i.e., not in need of government help) as “privileged,” the implication being that people who have acquired the ordinary good things in life that everyone aspires to, people who have decent homes in decent neighborhoods and send their children to good schools, are guiltily enjoying unfair “advantages” over those “less advantaged”—which in turn implies that the “less advantaged” have been prevented by some malign external force—the malign force being the “advantaged” themselves—from having advantages. This ubiquitous Marxist message, coming from the media, schools, and everywhere, has never been seriously challenged, but has sunk into the American consciousness and subconsciousness. Combine that cultivated resentment of the middle class and the wealthy with systematic and increasing anti-whiteness in a country becoming more and more nonwhite as a result of mass nonwhite immigration, and it’s remarkable that white people with incomes over $250,000 a year have not been carted off to prison, but only made the target of invidious rhetoric.

As a final note, let us remember that Obama in his “race” speech on March 18, 2008 made crystal clear (to anyone who actually reads it) what he thinks about racial inequities in wealth and what should be done about them.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 20, 2011 07:12 PM | Send