The stories white guys tell themselves

St. Petersburg - Tampa Bay Times ^ | August 12, 2012 | Robyn E. Blumner,

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Joan Didion wrote, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." I'd modify that slightly for this presidential election year and say, we tell ourselves stories in order to vote. Which is why Mitt Romney maintains a huge lead in the polls among blue-collar white men.

The differential is staggering. Non-college-educated white men give Romney a 37-point advantage over President Barack Obama according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll. Why would struggling wage earners support a candidate who would give tax cuts to the top 1 percent, a group that controls 43 percent of the wealth in the country, while adding to the tax burdens of people at the lower end of the income scale? Racial issues aside — and I'm not discounting the significant "black president" factor, it comes down to the power of myth and story.

White men have been fed the myth of the rags-to-riches, self-made man, the quintessential American narrative that says hard work and perseverance will equate to success. The idea cemented in the male cerebral cortex is that people who start from nothing can work themselves from the Horatio Alger mailroom to the corner office.

The unflattering flip side of this is that failure is a character flaw. If you don't succeed, you didn't work hard enough. As the story goes, anyone who takes government help falls into this category.

A recent Romney campaign ad draws on this theme by accusing Obama of trying to take the work requirement out of welfare. (A false assertion, by the way.) As CBS News' Bob Schieffer explained, this ad is designed to shore up support among white working-class men. In shades of Willie Horton, the ad offers a racially divisive subtext while reinforcing the self-made-man corollary that people who need government assistance are lazy moochers.

[SFRigger]

What about the lies that minorities (read blacks) tell themselves? That they are being held down by the white man, and that they are owed their welfare check and foodstamps from the gubmint because of slavery. What about those lies you ignorant wench? These liberal “journalists” really fry me.

[Arthur McGowan]

Only non-college-educated white men should be allowed to vote.

[KeyLargo]

“BARF ALERT” required in headline.

[ontap]

Are you believing this idiot!!

[Vigilanteman]

Why would struggling wage earners support a candidate who would give tax cuts to the top 1 percent, a group that controls 43 percent of the wealth in the country . . .

Well, let's just start listing a few reasons, such as:

1. That nasty 1% also does most of the hiring. They have the choice of doing it here or moving their money off-shore to do it somewhere else. Guess where they are going to move it if we keep squeezing and demonizing them?
   
2. The elitist nimrods who control the top 1 percent in media, academia, law and government have a far more dismal record on hiring. They redistribute wealth to their enablers to spend on propaganda dissemination, booze, drugs, lottery tickets and overpriced construction contracts for the 7% of the workforce which is unionized and an army of bureaucrats to enforce their new social order.
   
3. Many of us struggling wage earners have stood behind EBT card users in grocery lines and seen them buy food we can't afford and drive away in cars we can't afford.
   
4. Many of us struggling wage earners have had to take family members to ER or clinical visits where our loved-ones can't even be seen until we produce an insurance card and make a copay and have seen non-English speaking people waltz to the front of the line with no expectation to produce either. If we question it, we are branded as xenophobic racists.
   
5. Many of us struggling wage earners frankly trust the elite 1% in business to provide us job opportunities to earn our way more than we trust the elite 1% in government (and their enablers in media, academia and law) to give us a handout of somebody else's money.
   
6. Many of us struggling wage earners are smart enough to understand that even though Mitt Romney is far from our first choice, he is likely to do far more for us by helping the 1% in business do more hiring and giving us the opportunity to work than BO and his 1% in government can possibly do by fundamentally transforming America into a third world country like Kenya.

[WashingtonSource]

Mz Blumner is obviously a hed-hot passionate bigot of the first order. What about other groups, including blacks and Jews and “Latinos”, voting in a monolith? What sort of lies to those groups tell themselves. Hmmm? Mz Blumner?

[ctdonath2]

The prospect of having a taxable income is surprisingly motivating.
The Left does not understand this.

[facedown]

"Blumner is a graduate of Cornell University and NYU School of Law. After working as a labor lawyer in New York, she became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah. In 1989, she took over the directorship of the ACLU of Florida, where she worked until joining the staff of the Times." profile

Yeah, I really, really care what this goof thinks.

[BitWielder1]

Why would struggling wage earners support a candidate who would give tax cuts to the top 1 percent...

Because those 1% are the most likely to create employment for the rest of us.

[RC one]

Well, you sure as hell won’t get rich sitting on your ass, doing the bare minimum, collecting welfare checks. You may survive though, minimally.

[papertyger]

Because "Non-college-educated white men" are the group most disadvantaged by affirmative action...

A "sound byte" is born!

Bravo! Profound insight!

[KeyLargo]

I'm an atheist - so what?

By ROBYN E. BLUMNER Published August 8, 2004

"What is it," asked German philosopher Friedrich Neitzche, "

Though I was brought up in a religious faith, it was at a very young age - preteen - that I realized I had no belief in God and no amount of indoctrination was going to change that. This sense of nonbelief has been so strong and abiding throughout my life that I find it virtually impossib

Robyn Blumner

Blumner is a graduate of Cornell University and NYU School of Law. After working as a labor lawyer in New York, she became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah. In 1989, she took over the directorship of the ACLU of Florida, where she worked until joining the staff of the Times.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

BUMP!!!

[MrB]

I notice she mentions that “we” think that being the recipient of a government handout is indicative of flawed character.

Yes, we as a society used to, and still should, see an able-bodied person living on the forcibly confiscated earnings of others as being indicative of a character flaw. It used to be SHAMEFUL. But, the left has done their best to remove the shame aspect.

[Steamburg]

Joan Didion is plagiarizing from the SEIU notebook again. What a crappy rehash of Union talking points.

[driftless2]

Blumner is either an ignoramus or a typical deceitful lib scribbler. Or both. At no time do these overpaid, undereducated nitwits ever ask the question if we are spending our way to Greece-type insolvency. With these morons it's always the same tiresome drivel about middle-aged white men worrying about their "privileges" being taken away by minorites.

Has Blumner ever ventured outside her self-imposed lib cocoon and actually talked to people with conservative beliefs and asked them why they believe what they believe? Does she ever ask herself what the proper role of government should be? I seriously doubt it. Instead, Blumner offers up the same moronic, pompous, class warfare, leftist talking points you've read thousands of times.

[MrB]

Ah, a “humanist”, someone that believes in the full autonomy (unaccountability) of humans, that “reason” can discover truth, and that mankind is perfectible if only the right environment is imposed on them.

When you start out with your feet dangling in mid-air on a false worldview, you’re going to reach obviously flawed conclusions such as she has.

[arrdon]

See; here the moonbats go again. It’s all the working-class white guys’ fault. If he didn’t go to Berkeley but chose to work his ass off doing what HE wanted to, and then falls on less than good times, HE’S RACIST AND THE CAUSE OF ALL OF THE BLACK MAN’S PROBLEMS - especially Obammas’. Somebody please flush!

[Steamburg]

Joan Didion is plagiarizing from the SEIU notebook again. What a crappy rehash of Union talking points and Joan Didion is plagiarizing from the SEIU notebook again and Robyn E. Blumner is simply copying the work.

Not an original thought here.