I do not heart Bill O'Reilly

I'm really tired of people blaming the victims of Katrina. It's just wrong. Again and again I've read these smug narcissistic elitist jerks tell us how the poor that have been killed and displaced by hurricane Katrina have no one to blame but themselves. In a recent post, Elitist Jerks, I shared with you some of the hateful and shallow rhetoric coming from the Right. Today as I was enjoying my Sunday paper I was again assaulted with the stupidity of Bill O'Reilly: Katrina and the Poor

In all of his wisdom, Bill O'Reilly believes that Katrina can be a powerful tool in helping educate the poor. If they would only wise up and realize that if they work real hard in school they can get a great job and buy an SUV and they will be better prepared for natural disasters. And if you can't afford an SUV?

But if you couldn't afford a vehicle, you might have wound up in the Superdome where there were few supplies and little security. With 20 thousand folks in the building, bathrooms quickly broke down, and so did civility. I covered the story almost non-stop for days. I didn't see one affluent person in the Superdome. Not one.

No, there were no affluent people in the Superdome. But the lesson here is not what O'Reilley thinks it is either. His Horatio Algier dreams are a myth and the people in the Superdome and more and more Americans realize this. O'Reilley and his ilk want to harp on the idea that the poor need the rich, but what nobody wants to admit--let alone talk about-- is the fact that the rich depend much more on the poor.

I applauded Kanye West's openness about race in light of the current disaster. But it's never really been about race: it's about class. And we have one of the most regimented class systems in the world. Race is used to perpetuate this class system, but the elite will use anything to pursue their agenda of keeping us fighting for the scraps they throw us.

So how do the rich depend upon the poor? George Carlin does a great bit where he discusses class. He says something to the affect that there are the poor, the middle class, and the rich. The middle class pays all the taxes and does all the work. The rich reap all the rewards for the work the middle class does and pay hardly any of the taxes. The poor are there to keep the middle class going to their jobs! Sure he's just a comedian, but Alan Greenspan said basically the same thing. When asked about the gains in productivity during the 1990s he attributed it to "greater worker insecurity" (sorry, no link just memory). That is, American workers were scared as hell they were going to lose their job and they worked their ass off to keep it. That's great for the elite in this country, but for the rest of us it sucks.

A true capitalist ideologue will tell you that unemployment doesn't exist. That is, according to their free market theology (and that's what it is essentially) if someone wants to work the market will accommodate that need. Thus, those who are not working must choose not to work. Anybody who has been unemployed knows what bullshit this is, but they really believe it.

And what is oddly left out of the conversation is the very real fact that at a fundamental level capitalism depends on unemployment; it depends on the poor and disenfranchised. The bigger the pool of unemployed workers the less power the employed have because the capitalist pig always has a ready source of replacements.

Let me get back to something else Bill O'Reilly says:

Here's the end zone on this: the government can force your parents to send you to school but can't force you to learn. If you do not educate yourself or develop a marketable skill, the chances are you will be poor and powerless. If you react to that situation by committing crimes or becoming addicted, you will
sink further into the swamp of hopelessness and your life will be largely meaningless.

It's so much crap I don't know where to begin. You must develop a marketable skill so that some kind and benevolent capitalist will rent you out for a livable wage.O'Reilly doesn't really mean what he says about getting addicted. The wealthy are addicted to plenty of drugs; the difference is they can afford a doctor to prescribe them instead of going to the local pusher. And, of course, the wealthy commit crimes, too; it's just the police aren't paid to bully the rich around.

You can see the class structure in our society by pinpointing who the police target. The CEO's of large corporations can swindle billions from us; they can dump toxic sludge into our rivers and lakes and the air we breathe; they can place their rented wage slave in unsafe work conditions with the knowledge that the likelihood that they will suffer for it is minimal. When the poor rise up against corporate greed, when we band together to demand a better wage, safer working conditions, or a cleaner environment we can bet that the police will stand up against us.

The system is designed to favor the few over the many. Or, as James Madison put it during the constitutional convention, the aim of government is to "protect the minority of the opulent from the majority." This is what government does.

When idiots like O'Reilley point out the fact that the government failed us and we shouldn't think we can rely on the government it is precisely because we are not the "minority of the opulent." The primary objective of our government has always been to protect them from us. No amount of studying is going to change that.

But education is key to organizing a more just and humane country; one that looks out for all its citizens. We have to begin to understand that class warfare is being waged against us and that our only option is to band together and stand up for what is right. The wealthy depend on us to do the work that keeps this country going. Workers of the world unite!

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