Tea Party Republicans are creating Hooverism and a hatred of the poor which will backfire

If the United State’s government stays on the present course, it may end up as one of the most oppressive backward countries in the world.

In Mark Twain’s famous, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a young boy’s father is jealous because his son is learning to read and write. In the 19^th century there were still people who had to sign documents with an “X” because they couldn’t write their names. It is hard to imagine a country which is will to move back in that direction. But that seems where the United States is headed.

All across the country, Republican state governments are making deep cuts to education. It would appear they are out to kill public education altogether. Maybe they envision a system where the middle class can afford private schools and only the destitute go to stripped-down public schools that teach them only to read, write, math skills and what they need for mediocre jobs.

According to CNN Money report, May jobs report: Hiring slows, unemployment rises, while, State, local layoffs to hit record levels.

There should be no surprise here. The Republicans vowed to cut the budget and that meant cutting government jobs. They promise the tax cuts and wonderful union-free work-place will bring back jobs. When this doesn’t happen they are ready to blame the Democrats for overspending and bloated social programs that actually don’t really exist anymore. The Democrats are still a minority party that really doesn’t know what to do other than scramble for compromises and hollow rhetoric to match the Republicans. They are still a party in decline. Their inability to counter what the Republicans are doing to this country proves it. President Barack Obama has compromised away any possible progressive gains he may have made.

The present leadership of the Republicans resembles those of the failed President Herbert Hoover. His slogan was “prosperity is around the corner.” And it never was. Instead he did nothing while unemployment went up, people lost their homes and farms, and the trains carried all the “hobos” who couldn’t seem to get work anywhere. The hobos were often arrested or even shot by rail road goons.

Hoovervilles were another development. Homeless people built shanties to live in and they named them after the person they believed was responsible for them, President Hoover.  

Hoovervilles

There were few social programs to deal with the needy at that time, so the Great Depression simply overwhelmed the country with homelessness, shanties, Hobos and tramps.

Unions were fighting in the late 1800’s for an eight hour workweek. Many factory workers kept people on the job for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Many industrial workers lived in shacks. Their pay was barely enough for them to live on. This is why President Theodore Roosevelt realized that busting unions might lead to the kind of revolution that Karl Marx wanted.

According to Wikipedia, “By August 1919, only months after its founding, the Communist Party USA had 60,000 members, including anarchists and other radical leftists, while the more moderate Socialist Party of America had 40,000 members.” This was at the height of the US left until the 1960s.

Marxism was simpler back then. Marx didn’t have to deal with massive consumerism-- policies that took place about the late 1950s. Years since then, the policy led workers to take their minds off their jobs and lack of real political and worker power and divert it by crass consumer products. Workers had the ability to divert their interest into new cars, TVs, and other house hold items they bought on credit. Since the 1990s computerized gadgets from phones to I-pads have dazzled workers with new “toys” to get them to think as consumers and not workers.

Communist groups are also getting wiser. They are using the internet to network with each other, even those in other countries. Marxists have gone through the Red Scare of the early 1900s and of the 1950s. They learned from the FBI’s program COINTELPRO of the 1960s and the cowboy cults of Ronald Reagan. But far from being beaten, Marxists and Maoists have learned from these experiences and know what to expect when the Republican Party first recreates the Great Depression then tries to use propaganda and repression against poor workers.

Recent articles here about the state of Kansas are found all over the country, where unemployment benefits are being cut, all social programs eliminated or under-funded, even social security is headed for the chopping block. There seems to be an outright contempt for poor people and unionized workers in general. Such contempt can only spur the contempt of those victimized by the new “Tea Party” Republicans. Already organizations, such as the Kasama Project are debating how to bring about revolution here in the US. Many other organizations have taken part in discussions as to how we can now reach the working class. The poor and workers are going to need an ally before they know it. They may continue their lunge towards right-wing ideas, but some are bound to see that they have put their faith in all the wrong people.

It was VI Lenin who said;

The writer ( of a letter) is full of a noble and working-class hatred for the bourgeois "class politicians" (a hatred understood and shared, however, not only by proletarians but by all working people, by all Kleinen Leuten to use the German expression). In a representative of the oppressed and exploited masses, this hatred is truly the "beginning of all wisdom", the basis of any socialist and communist movement and of its success.

So why is the Tea Party so intent on creating such hatred? Logically, there has to be a backlash at some time as impractical ideas flourish and common working people simply can’t.

-សតិវ​ អតុ