OpEds: Demagoguery a thriving industry in the land

MIKE INGLES

Huckabee: He knows what he’s doing. But he’s shameless.

Economists, like proctologists, tend to hold a narrow view of things. And, a viewpoint is a powerful thing. We all know that statistics are malleable, that what is an asset in one column is often a liability in another. When an economist, with a narrow viewpoint, hooks a politician, with a voracious appetite, you get broken government—you get Mike

“Last month, the Senate Budget Committee reports that in fiscal year 2011, between food stamps, housing support, child care, Medicaid and other benefits, the average US household below the poverty line received $168 a day in government support. What’s the problem with that much support? Well, the median household income in America is just over $50,000, which averages out to $137.13 a day. To put it another way, being on welfare now pays the equivalent of $30 an hour for a 40-hour week, while the average job pays $25 an hour. And the person who works also has to pay taxes, which drops his pay to $21 an hour. It’s no wonder that welfare is now the biggest part of the budget, more than Social Security or defense. And why would anyone want to get off welfare when working pays $9 an hour less?”

Huckabee, is no dummy; he understands the reality behind these numbers. No, Huckabee is not a dummy—he’s a demagogue. If it is true that all these poor people are doing so well, why do they chose to live in dilapidated homes and in neighborhoods where the most common reason for death is by murder. And, why send your well-fed and well-tailored children to sub-standard schools—with that kind of money, their kids should be in private schools.

You and I know that these statistics are skewed. You and I know that these poor families are not on each government program for an extended amount of time. You and I know that these statistics include children with terminal illnesses being treated in hospitals and poor people who have been injured in some terrible accident, or shot in their deluxe living quarters by an errant bullet from a weapon with 30-in-the-clip. Huckabee knows that too.

But he also knows that the guy and gal who works hard, 8-10 hours a day, and are getting nowhere for all their labors, who knows something broken but not sure what or why, who go to church each Sunday and listen but do not hear—they want to blame someone. Who better to blame, than the blameless, the indigent,the Samaritans.

The demagogue who wrote those words knows full-well that folks on welfare don’t average 30 bucks an hour, while sitting on their hams watching Dr. Phil, and drivin’ dem Cadillacs ’round town. But, it’s a great image for Fox T.V., if you want to protect the status-quo and deflect the real-world problems of poverty and stagnation of real wages and unemployment and broken capitalism. Hunckabee offers no solutions but carefully frames the debate to reach his audience with code.

I too have a proctology problem; my vision is also skewed. I have this vision of Ma and Pa drinking a beer, sittin’ in a barcalounger cheering-on the opaque image of a former Southern governor, capped teeth, spewing carefully laid out statistics to a gullible people ready to lap up any nonsense, simply because that particular demagogue also believes that automatic weapons protect people, and women should be forced to have babies that they don’t want and can’t afford, and poor people are lazy.

As long as these two visions exist equally, nothing can be done to fix what is broken. Liberals counter with their own television programming over at MSMBC, with self-righteous commentators who vilify the opposition with their own Ivy-league sly code references, and can never relate to that guy and gal in the barcalounger, because, deep inside, somewhere where they don’t want to go, they don’t like Ma and Pa very much. Deep down, they don’t think blue-collar workers should have that enormous power to vote and so set the direction of this most powerful nation. I know who they are because, often, I am one of them. And so, every once in a while, I have to write a column like this to remind myself that it takes two to demagogue an issue. That Samaritans walk on both sides of the road.

MIKE INGLES writes a regular column on national affairs.