I must confess.
Good, loyal pro-labor, pro-choice godless pinko immigrant that i strive to be, i don't sympathize for a moment with this idea that We are the 99%!.
Now hear me out. It's not like i got the ideas from the free republic or something. There's a reason behind it, and along with it you'll discover why I would never say I support Obamacare even if it didn't fly in the face of everything I believe health care should be.
The problem i see more often than I would like to admit on the left is a failure to set the tone. To properly frame the narrative, if i were to utilize the appropriate buzzwords.
To illustrate, a brief divergence. Immigration. There are countless people in America who are both immigrants and Not Brown. Well ok, not "countless". But a number somewhere within the range of "lots and lots" and "i'm too lazy to find an exact number for some brief divergence". When you see the right speak against immigration, what do you see? Inevitably, someone hispanic and shifty looking. So the left tries to prove the stereotypes about immigration are false...by trotting out a hispanic pillar of the community. Jesus H Christ on a badly patrolled border crossing...Can we just ONCE not play into the predetermined image of immigrants that your supposed opponents dictated?
(Honest, that was brief for me.)
Which brings me to the 99%, or so it's called. First, as i see it one can either admit that class war is real and very much active, or ignore what one knows to be true in order to preserve inner peace or whatever else may gain from such voluntary ignorance. So yes, it IS the rich vs the poor, or at the very least vs the not rich. So yes, ok..In that sense, maybe it is the 1% that we're up against.
But that is WAY too easy. Any time a message popularizes with a message or moral this simplistic, so easily consumed and black & white, it should automatically raise the hackles. Sure, you may be saying, but we MADE the message! We got the word out and they HAD to repeat it! Only, um...They didn't. You may have made the slogan, you may have put it on the signs, but you still don't determine content at CNN or the AP. There's plenty of grassroots effort that gets ignored blatantly, simply yelling loud enough does not determine mainstream adoption. The idea of the 99% became popular because it's easy. Rich vs poor. So simple anyone can grasp it immediately, and so simplistic anyone will automatically feel included. Hey, i'm not rich! Shit, it must be because the rich are greedy. Well, partially perhaps.
But you know, there's plenty of working class, non 1% people i can think of that have dedicated significant time and effort to opposing issues like rights for workers, healthcare and immigration. They're part of the 99% too. No, I'm sorry. To quote the immortal Chuck D, every brother ain't a brother. I know i wouldn't stand shoulder to shoulder to someone dedicated to RTW, deporting everyone not like him and obliterating social security, and I know he probably isn't going to jump to support me.
Not all of the rich are wrong, not all of the poor are right. It's insulting to the intelligence of the reader or listener to suggest to them that it's that easy. But hey...Give people a slogan, a sign and a cause, and they'll march. They'll cheer. They'll occupy....and then? Well, they issue a loose list of demands saying they won't leave until corporate greed is officially a class A felony...and the news proceeds to show video of the most violently inclined and unwashed among them committing petty crimes and everyone, despite technically being part of the 99%, sits smugly in the thought that the poor are lazy and self-inflicted and don't respect the rule of law. Rich are still rich. Poor are still marginalized, middle are still utilized as layer of insulation between the two.
Why do we let our supposed opponents dictate the terms? Do you really believe that anyone in the supposed 1% stays up at night worrying about the 99% ending his good life as he knows it? No, because he knows full well that when push comes to shove, he can buy off a strong enough segment of that 99% to fight the remainder. This ideal may be empowering to many, and there is value in that. But my concern is that this sense of empowerment, of being part of the struggle, of fighting the good fight simply by speaking out against the unnamed 1%...Comes at the expense of ever really fighting anything. The same logic that led to camping out in a park leading to people calling it the equivalent of the great protests of the 60's: The rules have been written for you, often enough by your opponent; now just do your part, wear your tshirt and show up. Congratulations, you're fighting the man.
No. You are fulfilling their predetermined role of someone fighting the man.
Which, in a brief closer, brings me to health reform. I still refuse to use the term obamacare, much as i may not like it. First, in brief: I am Canadian, I grew up in a place with a health care program that was perhaps flawed...but at least it was there. i needed minor surgery 4 times before i was 10, and my parents never stayed up worrying about hospital bills. i needed surgery, so i went to the hospital and got surgery and we all went on with life. THAT is healthcare.
We in the US, however, have a web of corporate insurance agencies and the marketing of health as a commodity similar to motor oil and tide. I've been hospitalized a time or 20 here as well, and even WITH insurance, i couldn't tell you what i owe. Enough that i wonder if i could keep up even if i ignored just about everything else, at any rate.
So Obama wants to reform it...OK. One: HR 676. You want reform? it's been languishing in the house for years. Pass it, reform is done. but no..because Two: Obama sold out to the insurance and pharma lobbies from day 0. As such, we got a watered down joke of a compromise that could've been written by Aetna.
Republicans, of course, still hate it because Obama signed it and Obama = evil always and forever. Repeal Obamacare! Scrap Obamacare! it's all his idea! kill it with fire! In a eerily 1984-ish feeling, i clearly DO remember democrats saying the term Obamacare was an unfair term, that this was health reform that helped Americans, not some personal presidential agenda. Smart. Sell it as reform, even if it isn't or isn't something i like: At least define the terms, that he DID something.
Skip ahead to current, and we've got Dems proudly saying they support Obamacare.
Now, is this a case of their taking the term back? Stripping its power by using it on their own terms?
Or maybe just that once again, the ground rules of the fight have been set by one side, and ironically and sadly enough, the side that I truly believe is right and has the people behind it has ceded its power to its opponents in allowing them to write them?
So...no. I can't say i'm with the 99%, noble as it is. There's just too many in that 99 that aren't with us, and we are only weakened by allowing our issues to be collectively crammed into that one neatly labeled box.
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