After some 30 posts on “The Far Right Threat to Democracy” – it is time to revisit a major part of their strategy to enrich the top 1%. Simple!!!! Just “educate” Americans…..teach them that the rules and norms of the unprecedented middle class golden era of prosperity, 1947-73, were wrong…were “distortions’ of the Founders’ “original intent”….were “socialism,” or even worse “communism.”
There were no American billionaires in 1956, at the height of American global economic power. By 2024, there are a reported 1,400 American billionaires. The wealth and income of the top 1% are at unprecedented levels. AND – more and more “ordinary” Americans in the lower 60% are living paycheck-to-paycheck. More and are running up credit card debt – and, of course, paying extortionist “late fee” penalties – to the same people who caused the 2008 Crash.
This post will begin to give YOU some of what YOU show know about how YOU, and other good Americans, were brainwashed by DELIBERATE LIES by the Far Radical Right. They have twisted and cherrypicked American legal, political, and economic history – to come up with PARTIAL TRUTHS that “prove” their false “facts.”
We begin with Jane Mayer”s “Dark Money” and Nancy MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains.
Mayer”. “During the 1970s, a handful of the nation’s wealthiest corporate captains felt overtaxed and overregulated and decided to fight back..they launched an ambitious, privately financed war of ideas to radically change the country. They didn’t want merely to win elections; they wanted to change how Americans thought.”
[STOP HERE: “change how Americans thought.” Think hard on this.]
Mayer: “As the Olin and Bradley Foundations had demonstrated, and as Charles Koch’s early blueprint for advancing libertarianism showed, winning the hearts and minds of college students had long been a core strategy on the right.”
[“core strategy on the right”]
Mayer: The Kochs. were also directing millions of dollars into online education, and into teaching high school students, through a nonprofit..Charles devised called the Young Entrepreneurs Academy.”..
“At the June summit, Stowers stressed to..donors..this “investment” in education had created a valuable “talent pipeline.” Assuming..thousands of scholars on average taught hundreds of students per year, they could influence the thinking of millions of young American annually.”
[an “investment” to “influence the thinking of millions of young Americans annually.”
MacLean: “..in our time, governors and state legislators under the influence of the capitalist radical right have been moving aggressively to transform public higher education..After 2010, as the Koch-funded project moved forward in the states, its representatives sought to slash their state’s public university budgets while simultaneously raising tuition, ending need-based scholarships, limiting or curtailing tenure protections, reducing faculty governance, and undermining support for the liberal arts curriculum [particularly those parts..most known for dissent]. In each case, Republican-appointed members of the university governing boards acted with unprecedented speed while at the same time limiting deliberations…In North Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Iowa, and Wisconsin, they shoved out chancellors who would not do their bidding.”
[reread this! just in YOUR local news – how much of this is happening at YOUR state’s colleges?? WHY the attack on “liberal arts” curriculum, “particularly those parts..most known for dissent”! Isn’t one purpose of college to train the minds of young people how to think – meaning if they do, they might ask questions? Are questions “bad”?}
MacLean: the blueprint for the right’s plan to transform public higher education: “..turn state universities into dissent-free suppliers of trained labor, run with firm managerial hands and with little or no input from faculty, and at the lowest possible cost to taxpayers..if you stop making college free and charge hefty tuition..you ensure..students will have a strong economic incentive to focus on their studies and nothing else: certainly not on trying to alter the university or the wider society..also arguing for something else; educating far fewer Americans, particularly lower-income..who could not afford full-cost tuition and telling businesspeople who tended to dominate governing boards..it was time to get tough with their wards, faculty and students alike.”
[ much of this has ALREADY happened, especially students concentrating on getting only a focused degree as “trained labor’ for corporations. Even schools in “blue’ states are stripping out ‘soft” subjects found in the liberal arts}
MacLean:
With Justice For All 