September 19, 2011

Class Warfare (Top Down)

By Michael Shaw

First of all, Obama’s comeback yesterday morning (“It’s not class warfare, it’s math”) was not just his best soundbite since he’s been in office, and a rare instance of winning the day, but shows — as he apparently told Ron Suskind — that the President is absorbing one of his main takeaways from his first two years, that:

“(T)he symbols and gestures — what people are seeing coming out of this office — are at least as important as the policies we put forward.”

In any case, an art that the right wing has perfected is to take phrases that apply to them, and project them onto the other party. Along those lines, all those focused-grouped impressionable minds out there might not stop to question whether the economic stacked deck in this country, which has led to the gaping and ever-widening gap between rich and, well, everybody else, would be, in a tacit, highly corrosive and “systemically violent” way, “class warfare.”

Which brings us to this photo from the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations currently going on. I’m sure a John Boehner would point to a photo like this, of all those young and disenfranchised Americans marching on the Stock Exchange, as evidence of class warfare (andthe President inciting such). Except that, if you look at the photo and how this plays out, it’s the law lashing out, clearly aligned, balanced, supported by, and in the hands of the suits.

I mean, just ask yourself: who’s been sticking it to who?

(photo: Robert Stolarik/The New York Times caption: Police make an arrest during demonstrations in New York, Sept. 19, 2011. Protests that began on Saturday as a “Day of Action Against Global Capital,” continued on Wall Street on Monday.)