The destruction of the American Middle Class

No one can use words better than Gore Vidal to describe what is happening to America..

Berman [Morris Berman, a professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and author of “Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire” ] sets his scene briskly in recent history. “We were already in our twilight phase when Ronald Reagan, with all the insight of an ostrich, declared it to be ‘morning in America’; twenty-odd years later, under the ‘boy emperor’ George W. Bush (as Chalmers Johnson refers to him), we have entered the Dark Ages in earnest, pursuing a short-sighted path that can only accelerate our decline. For what we are now seeing are the obvious characteristics of the West after the fall of Rome: the triumph of religion over reason; the atrophy of education and critical thinking; the integration of religion, the state, and the apparatus of torture—a troika that was for Voltaire the central horror of the pre-Enlightenment world; and the political and economic marginalization of our culture…. The British historian Charles Freeman published an extended discussion of the transition that took place during the late Roman empire, the title of which could serve as a capsule summary of our current president: "The Closing of the Western Mind."

Mr. Bush, God knows, is no Augustine; but Freeman points to the latter as the epitome of a more general process that was underway in the fourth century: namely, ‘the gradual subjection of reason to faith and authority.’ This is what we are seeing today, and it is a process that no society can undergo and still remain free. Yet it is a process of which administration officials, along with much of the American population, are aggressively proud.” In fact, close observers of this odd presidency note that Bush, like his evangelical base, believes he is on a mission from God and that faith trumps empirical evidence. Berman quotes a senior White House adviser who disdains what he calls the “reality-based” community, to which Berman sensibly responds: “If a nation is unable to perceive reality correctly, and persists in operating on the basis of faith-based delusions, its ability to hold its own in the world is pretty much foreclosed.”

Anyone who has read enough history to begin to recognize the difference between a free nation and a tyranny can see that this is the very essence of the so-called "Republican Revolution." We are today watching America under the Bush administration undergo ‘the gradual subjection of reason to faith and authority.’ We are also watching the destruction of the Middle Class, to be replaced by a powerful and influential extremely wealthy class and an uncertain and powerless working class with no power and little control over their own lives and futures.

The great expansion of the American middle class came after the Depression legislation which created Social Security and placed organized labor on a level of power similar to that of large corporations. The middle class never achieved a full degree of control over their families and lives since the right wing has systematically blocked any reasonable form of universal health care.

Since Reagan was elected in 1980 we have watched as the power of labor has been systematically destroyed. The Republicans systematically dismantled the Clinton health care proposals in 1993, and since Bush was elected in 2000 the attacks on Social Security have been constant and escalating.

These political attacks on the American middle class, together with the technology that has made global outsourcing of the most lucrative high tech jobs to labor around the world has seen the rapid destruction of the American middle class.

The uber-wealthy have used these trends to split the middle class by offering hope to the upper middle class that if they support the political policies that are destroying the middle class, the top level of that middle class will be absorbed into the ranks of the wealthy. All they have to do is abandon democracy and the power of labor to deal with the wealthy owners of large businesses. But then the ladder into the upper levels of the middle class is removed. That is what it means to price a college education out of the range of the middle and lower economic classes. That college degree is the entry certificate into the upper middle class. Today it is less available to the general publican than at any time since WW I.

This is a two phase attack on the America we thought we knew. The attacks are both economic and political. Along with the economic phase of the destruction of the middle class comes the attack on the liberal American Constitution in which is enshrined the rule of law and a set of individual rights which the government is bound to respect, and which are protected by an independent Judiciary. The political phase is to destroy effective Constitutional democracy protected by an independent Judiciary and replace it with the tyranny of the wealthy who control the government and the courts.

The policies of the Republican Party are ensuring that the America we thought we lived in will not exist within a generation. It's not inevitable. They can be stopped, of what they are doing is recognized and blocked.