Thursday, January 29, 2004

We Are the Majority | Bernie Sanders | February 2004 Issue:
"So how do the rightwingers get elected if they have nothing to say about the most important issues facing the American people? That is the central question of modern American politics. And the answer is that they work day and night to divide the American people against each other so that they end up voting against their own best interests. That is what the Republican Party is all about.

They tell white workers their jobs are being lost not because corporate America is downsizing and moving to China, but because black workers are taking their jobs--because of affirmative action. White against black."

If you turn on talk radio, what you will hear, in an almost compulsive way, is a hatred of women. And they're telling working class guys, you used to have some power. You used to be the breadwinner. But now there are women running companies, women in politics, women making more money than you. Men against women.

And they're turning straight people against gay people. The homosexuals are taking over the schools! Gay marriage is destroying the country! Straights against gays.

And if you're not for a war in Iraq waged on the dubious and illegal doctrine of "preemptive war," you're somehow unpatriotic. And those of us who were born in America are supposed to hate immigrants. And those of us who practice religion in one way, or believe in the separation of church and state, are supposed to be anti-religious, and trying to destroy Christianity in America--and we get divided up on that. And on and on it goes.

The Republican leadership does all of this in an incredibly cynical, poll-driven way, because they know when you lay out their program about the most important economic issues facing America, it ends up that they are representing the interests of 2 percent of the population. You can't win an election with the support of 2 percent. So they divide us, and the result is that tens of millions of working people vote against their own interests.

We know, that come election time, they will have huge sums of money that we will never come near to having. But we also know something else: that we are the vast majority of the people. We are the middle class and working families, and there are a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them.

http://www.progressive.org/feb04/sand0204.html

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