Bill Moyers was President Lyndon A Johnson's press secretary. According to Moyers', this is how Johnson explained the phenomena: We were in Tennessee. During a motorcade, the President spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs by a few plain, he called them homely, white women on the edge of the crowd. Late that night in the hotel, long past midnight, he was still going on about how poor whites and poor blacks had been kept apart so that they could separately be fleeced-. ''I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll even empty his pockets for you." http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/1987_winter/second.html
Cynicism unclear. Please clarify, do you mean that people are too stupid to bother voting or is it people are too stupid to vote well? I'm still watching Season Five of the HBO program The Wire, so I don't quite have all the answers yet, but I'm pretty sure I remember something about education being as much the responsibility of the democratic state as a democratic people.
Not that choosing between political brand 'A' and brand 'B' constitutes a democracy in the first place, mind you. Let alone voting for a figurehead from either 'A' or 'B' when what we really need is options one, two, three and Medicare for All.
I mean people are too stupid to make decisions about who should lead them. You're right that there isn't really much of a choice, but presumably if you're poor and depend on social programs to survive, when faced with two crappy options, one of which is guaranteed to eliminate those programs, you'd choose the other, right?
Why do the poor vote for them then? There are many more poor people than rich people. The Republicans wouldn't win if the poor voted against them.
If they vote for them, then why do they complain? It's not like Republicans haven't been like this for a long time.
Bill Moyers was President Lyndon A Johnson's press secretary. According to Moyers', this is how Johnson explained the phenomena: We were in Tennessee. During a motorcade, the President spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs by a few plain, he called them homely, white women on the edge of the crowd. Late that night in the hotel, long past midnight, he was still going on about how poor whites and poor blacks had been kept apart so that they could separately be fleeced-. ''I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll even empty his pockets for you." http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/1987_winter/second.html
You assume the poor realize they’re poor, and not temporarily-embarrassed billionaires.
Ah, that explains it, of course!
Seriously, the problem with Democracy is that most people are too stupid to vote. People don't deserve Democracy.
Cynicism unclear. Please clarify, do you mean that people are too stupid to bother voting or is it people are too stupid to vote well? I'm still watching Season Five of the HBO program The Wire, so I don't quite have all the answers yet, but I'm pretty sure I remember something about education being as much the responsibility of the democratic state as a democratic people.
Not that choosing between political brand 'A' and brand 'B' constitutes a democracy in the first place, mind you. Let alone voting for a figurehead from either 'A' or 'B' when what we really need is options one, two, three and Medicare for All.
I mean people are too stupid to make decisions about who should lead them. You're right that there isn't really much of a choice, but presumably if you're poor and depend on social programs to survive, when faced with two crappy options, one of which is guaranteed to eliminate those programs, you'd choose the other, right?
That would seem logical,yes.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-425.../A-poisonous-conviction-taking-root-Left.html
I think he meant voting well. I don't think he is coming from am elitist position, unlike many others, even those landed gentry who founded the US.