Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Propaganda of Despair
Townhall.com ^ | November 26, 2020 | Laura Hollis

Posted on 11/26/2020 11:51:16 AM PST by Kaslin

What the Democratic Party pitches as compassion for minorities and the poor is nothing but forced dependence, and now Democrats are seeking to expand their targets.

Theirs is not a message of hope and opportunity but the propaganda of envy and helplessness. "You can't succeed because the deck is stacked against you," they say. "You don't have X because someone else has it." "The only reason someone else has X and you don't is because they have exploited you." And the big finale: "The only way you can get X is by electing us to take it away from others and give it to you."

This self-serving sales pitch has made generations of Democrats very wealthy, but it hasn't done much to raise the standards of living for those in poverty.

What has moved people out of poverty is entrepreneurship and business ownership. All across the globe, countries that have embraced an entrepreneurial culture (including the rule of law, private property, and liberal human rights) have seen untold millions lifted out of poverty. Indeed, the U.N. and the World Bank reported that extreme poverty was reduced by half globally between 1990 and 2010.

Old-timey Democrats would have been happy about these success stories. But today's Democrats are not, because this evidence blows a C4-sized hole in their narratives that condemn capitalism and call for top-down control of national (and global) economies.

Some of this is a function of ignorance; most politicians (and leftist activists) have ZERO experience starting or running a business. Politicians spend money extracted by force (through taxes) and don't seem to get that commerce is free exchange based upon quality, competition, and persuasion.

Increasingly, however, it is not ignorance of business but hostility toward it that is the force behind Democratic policies.

Democrats love to criticize business and, in so doing, convey the impression that all business is "big business." This is a deliberate and dangerous deception. The Democratic Party is, in fact, a globalist, corporatist party that loves big business because big business makes big donations. The big businesses themselves shrug off any inflammatory "anti-business" rhetoric, knowing that they'll pay lobbyists to carve out exemptions from the most profit-hostile policies enacted by a Democrat-controlled Congress.

But 99% of the businesses in the United States are small businesses, and most are family-owned. According to the U.S. Census, of the roughly 30.2 million firms in this country, fully 80% of them -- 24.3 million -- do not employ anyone but the owners. Of the remaining 5.9 million firms, nearly 90% employ fewer than 20 people. Fewer than 50,000 employ more than 500 people, and there are only about 6,000 publicly-traded companies in the U.S. (And even that number has been shrinking every year for 20 years.)

This matters now more than ever because small businesses and the entrepreneurs who own them have been a bulwark against communism and socialism in the United States. Countries, where Marxist ideologies got traction, had primarily two classes of people: the extremely rich (often nobility), who owned land, and the extremely poor, who neither owned land nor could navigate the impenetrable bureaucracies to acquire land or business licenses.

By contrast, the United States has always been a place where anyone could start a business. The poor, minorities, and even immigrants who didn't speak a word of English have used that freedom to create their version of the American dream. Since the founding of this country, those small businesses have been Americans' ticket to financial security and upward mobility. With them, we built a middle and upper-middle class of millions of people who are impervious to the communists' propaganda of despair.

But collectivists understand this. And so, those businesses are under attack.

Front and center are COVID-19 lockdowns. They may have started as health protocols, but they are being twisted into political opportunities for collectivists whose objectives include the destruction of the United States economy and the stalwart objections business owners have to their statist aspirations.

Since just March, 100,000 small businesses have closed their doors for good. In typical fashion, this has hurt minority-owned businesses worst -- 41% of black-owned businesses closed from February through April. (And this is without mentioning the minority-owned businesses destroyed by looting and arson that Democratic mayors and governors allowed to happen.) States have had the freedom to set their own COVID policies, but if the puppet masters pulling putative president-elect Joe Biden's strings get their way, we'll soon have national lockdowns. Experts say that as many as 1 in 5 small businesses will close if another lockdown goes into effect.

"You can't fix it without us."

Gone is your independence, replaced by the ring in your nose by which they plan to lead you around. You can't vote against them now because they control everything you have.

That is how a relative handful of people who produce nothing become more powerful than millions of people who produced everything. They, not you, will decide which industries will prosper and which will shut down. They, not you, will decide which enterprises operate, what those enterprises make, how much they can charge, who owns them, what the owners can take from them, and what their employees must be paid.

That is the ugly reality hiding behind the left's propaganda of despair.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Philosophy; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: capitalism; elitism; socialism

1 posted on 11/26/2020 11:51:16 AM PST by Kaslin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

The supreme allied commander of propaganda is non other than Barrack Barry Dumbo Obama with his recent explanation of just how Trump garnered a huge share of the Hispanic vote. This disgusting little liar is insanely jealous of the Trump Administration.


2 posted on 11/26/2020 11:57:19 AM PST by Kahuna
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Many Freepers cling to it!


3 posted on 11/26/2020 12:00:21 PM PST by DarthVader (Not by speeches & majority decisions will the great issues th the day be decided but by Blood & Iron)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kahuna

The supreme allied commander of propaganda is non other than Barrack Barry Dumbo Obama with his recent explanation of just how Trump garnered a huge share of the Hispanic vote. This disgusting little liar is insanely jealous of the Trump Administration.

You’d think Obama would be jealous of Biden. Biden didn’t even bother to campaign and he got millions of more votes than Obama.


4 posted on 11/26/2020 12:12:34 PM PST by Flick Lives (My work's illegal, but at least it's honest. - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

My father, who passed away at age 92 in 2016, was a small businessman. He served as a Marine in the Pacific, came home, married my mom, joined his father who had a small heating and sheet metal shop, learned the trade and opened his own shop later.

He got a small loan to start it from my mom’s mother who had some extra cash working in the Ray-O-Vac battery plant in Madison WI during WWII. Dad was a master journeyman and knew all the building trade work. He worked alongside the two men he employed. He went out to do installations and service calls on the furnaces. We lived above the shop.

He did good work and was proud of it but worked so hard to get jobs that I think he sold his labor too cheap. Despite that, he earned enough to give us a middle-class life style. I learned the trade as soon as I was old enough to come down and sweep up the shop. I saw how hard he worked so I convinced him to let me go to college.

That’s the sort of small businesses the socialist Democrats hate.


5 posted on 11/26/2020 12:26:42 PM PST by RicocheT
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

great read


6 posted on 11/26/2020 12:47:33 PM PST by Leo58 (Those who cheer you today will curse you tomorrow, the only thing that endures is character.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

L8r


7 posted on 11/26/2020 1:29:30 PM PST by preacher ( Journalism no longer reports news, they use news to shape our society.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Good stuff! Thanks for posting.


8 posted on 11/26/2020 3:09:49 PM PST by MV=PY (The Magic Question: Who's paying for it?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
Theirs is not a message of hope and opportunity but the propaganda of envy and helplessness. "You can't succeed because the deck is stacked against you,"

This is a tried and true left-wing tactic: demoralize conservative base. They convince conservatives that the time has changed and there is no chance that conservatives win. That is, they became a minority for good. However, there is a huge number of conservatives. This is their way to chip away conservative base little by little. The way to counter it is to stay the course and recruit new conservatives which Trump has done recently.

The future is not necessarily on their side. In my opinion, their brand of cultural Marxism has peaked, and is on its way out. The right and the radical left such as Bernie supporters will rise against current establishment. There are many young people who believe that they face bleak future. They will gravitate toward to the true left and the true right. Establishment has to put them down.

You can see the sudden rise of radicalized right after years of neglect by the establishment right such as GOPe who are would rather be a junior partner of liberals.

On the other side, you can see the resurrection of classic Marxist ideology, a messianic ideology preaching a revolution. Such an ideology is supposed to be dead for good, but now coming back. For now, they may be a useful tool for doing dirty work for the the establishment left. However, it may not last. In time, they could turn on their masters and take over the left.

Establishment may have a lot of resource. However, the determined resistance by tens of millions of people could be an existential threat which, unless they make a radical change of their own, will destroy them.

9 posted on 11/26/2020 3:42:08 PM PST by TigerLikesRoosterNew
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Whenifhow; null and void; aragorn; EnigmaticAnomaly; kalee; Kale; AZ .44 MAG; Baynative; bgill; ...

-


10 posted on 11/26/2020 5:50:35 PM PST by bitt (The left gave us 4 years of Pearl Harbor. Now its time to give them Hiroshima.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DarthVader

Too many. That’s why I skip over many comments. It’s sickening.


11 posted on 11/26/2020 6:48:52 PM PST by little jeremiah (Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: RicocheT

Your story said it better.


12 posted on 11/26/2020 7:18:21 PM PST by The Westerner (Protect the most vulnerable: get the gov (CHINA) out of medicine, education and forests!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Fred

Ping to genuine view of the current leftist morass.


13 posted on 11/27/2020 2:48:15 AM PST by Candor7 ((Obama Fascism:http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html) )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Marking


14 posted on 11/29/2020 10:51:53 AM PST by AllAmericanGirl44
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson