If you have been following this blog you know I have been trying to understand how an ordinary person would vote Republican. Thanks to the feedback I have been carefully listening to, I may have figured it out. It's not that these people are deluding themselves into thinking they will ever join the upper one percent of Americans who control 90% of the country's wealth, unless they win a mega lottery drawing. Republicans and Democrats have very fundamentally different attitudes and ways of viewing the world.
The simplest way to distinguish Republican voter thinking from Democratic voter thinking is to identify that which concerns them. The Republicans like to make it seem they are concerned about everyone. But they don't think women and homosexuals should have the same rights as the rest of us, us being real men, I guess. What they don't care about is the totality of life on the planet Earth. What does concern them is the economic status of themselves and their families. Democrats tend to care about the whole. Whereas Republicans tend to care for themselves and what is personally theirs. There is a difference between caring about and caring for. Whereas one can care for certain people, animals and or plants that one likes or loves, one can't care about just certain life forms. Caring about life transcends personal relationships. If one is genuinely caring, one cares about those living in poverty as well as polar bears. If one genuinely cares about, one favors solutions that help impoverished humans without endangering polar bears. If one is a Republican, the fate of polar bears as well as those in poverty is not one's top priority.
Republicans believe that if they take care to ensure their own personal financial prosperity, the country as a whole will be fine. When do Republican leaders prosper? When the richest people in the country are getting richer. I suspect there is some sort of trickle down reward system for loyal party members.
Why else are there so many millionaires in Congress? Of course, if your prosperity depends on the financial security of the upper one percent, it is reasonable to do what you can to protect the financial interests of the one percent, i.e. limited taxes, foreign contracts, awarding them government-financed projects, etc. The fact is the legal system, government institutions, the media in this country are all designed to protect, empower and enable the richest to prosper.
Republicans in government care for their wallets and they care for the people who have plenty of wealth. The people who vote for them value personal wealth as well and believe their chances of accumulating more of it are better under Republican leadership. Unfortunately, they they may be correct.
It is unfortunate for the poor and former members of the middle class. Wealth is not infinite. Not in this country nor in the world in general. "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer" may be interpreted as jest. This is why it is not jest. If a group of people (let's say 100) has a total of $1000 among them. One of those hundred people eventually gains control of $900 of those dollars. Five others gain control of $50 of the remaining $100. That leaves 94 people with a total of $50. If the 94 people have to borrow money from the richest six at high interest rates and have to pay a higher percentage of income tax to the government than the six richest of the group, one can understand how the total wealth available to the 94 would decrease as the wealth of the 6 would increase. That is a microcosm of what has been happening in America. The Democrats may not be able to stop this trend but I am sure that the Republicans aren't even going to seriously try. They will, of course, try to appear to be trying. They are good at that.
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