You’re Not On Their Team
Our political climate today is one of increasing divisiveness. For a while it’s been “Democrats vs. Republicans”. Today, with the BLM movement at historic levels, many politicians and media members want you to believe we’re split into “minorities vs. white people”, or “criminals vs. cops & law-abiding citizens”. However, the fact of the matter is that these are all distractions. The real divide is everyone vs. oppressive elites, and a large portion of the US just doesn’t know it yet.
As soon as the protests started following George Floyd’s murder, Republicans and conservative media positioned themselves as the opposition to the protesters. From what I’ve seen, most Republican voters, who are overwhelmingly white, have taken that stance as well. I can certainly understand the appeal to those who oppose the protests: protests get in the way of others going about their life and cause destruction. For someone who hasn’t experienced the oppression that is being protested, these protests are nothing but a nuisance. At least, that’s what it seems like at this moment.
Before going on, I should clarify that supporting the protests doesn’t mean supporting every method we’ve seen in this country. By basically all accounts, Seattle’s CHOP was a failure, which led to a boy’s death and lost touch with the original intent long before that. We should be critical of the bad, but not use that as justification to oppose the entire movement. Those politicians and media members who are trying to divide will try to make you think the bad is the majority. But ask anyone who’s been on the ground at these protests, and they’ll tell you they have been overwhelmingly positive and peaceful, with many cities seeing meaningful change as a result. That’s democracy in action.
These protests, when they’re not co-opted by people just looking to wreak havoc, are about much more than one man’s murder, they’re about a system of oppression that exists in the USA. Right now, that system is oppressing minorities more than anyone else, so those not oppressed can think of it as “not my problem”. Even if we ignore the lack of humanity and empathy in that stance, it’s still flawed, and here’s why: These two posts explains how the Republican party is dangerously close to installing a fascist government in this country. One characteristic of fascism is a militarized police force aligned closely with the fascist party as a tool to keep the population under their control. Sound familiar? See, fighting back against a police force that has become overly militarized and shielded from consequences is fighting to prevent fascism, even if the protesters have framed it more around racial oppression. As evidence, Portland’s protests have grown significantly after the secret police were dispatched, which isn’t just a step in the direction of fascism, it is itself an act of fascism. And here’s the key point:
If our government becomes fascist, everyone gets oppressed
Do you really think, once a select group of people that’s keen on oppressing others takes authoritarian control of a country, that they’ll spare those who voted for them in the past? If you do, you need to read up on your history. The poem First they came…, written by Martin Niemöller, a German pastor who regretted staying silent during the Nazi’s rise to power, addresses this perfectly:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
- Martin Niemöller
If you change “socialists” to “Democrats” or “antifa” (both of which get called socialists anyway), and “Jews” to “black people”, “Mexicans”, or “Muslims”, you have an eerily accurate depiction of the USA today. The trade unionist part doesn’t even need to change, since the Republicans have been going after them since Reagan.
Now inevitably, some people will look at this comparison and point out that the Republicans haven’t had mass killings of black people or Mexicans or Muslims, so the comparison isn’t fair. Well, you know who else never started a genocide? Hitler, before he started a genocide. The exact same arguments made today excusing racism from the Republican party were made excusing Hitler’s racism in his 8-year rise to power before he started the Holocaust. If we don’t learn from history we’re going to repeat it.
Trump allowing COVID-19 to spread because it was mainly in blue states and failing to act on Russian bounties for American soldiers shows he clearly has no regard for the lives of his own constituents, even the ones he’s not racist against. He even called for protesters to be shot. Let’s also not ignore the fact that, since the protests started, he has used Nazi symbolism on several occations (1, 2, 3, 4). It’s far past the point where we can apologize for this behavior. Doing so amounts to sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring reality. And it’s not just Trump. Every Republican in congress had the chance to show disapproval of Trump and get rid of him during the impeachment, and all but one, Mitt Romney, expressed complete support of his actions and rhetoric. Tom Cotton, a rising star of the Republican party, called for all protesters to be shot on sight, something so criminal and evil, we aren’t even allowed to do it to our enemies in war. If these people get complete control of this country, atrocities will happen, and everyone but them will be oppressed.
This is why white people living in the suburbs and rural areas, despite what they might think, are on the same side as the protesters and should be supporting them. Just because you haven’t been oppressed up to this point doesn’t mean you won’t be if the oppressors win, which they’re dangerously close to doing. Nine days after George Floyd was killed, rap duo Run The Jewels released the song walking in the snow, which couldn’t have been more relevant. These lines perfectly express the point I’m making:
Funny fact about a cage, they're never built for just one group
So when that cage is done with them and you still poor, it come for you
The newest lowest on the totem, well golly gee, you have been used
You helped to fuel the death machine that down the line will kill you too
- El-P
And every day on the evening news, they feed you fear for free
And you so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me
Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, "I can't breathe"
And you sit there in the house on couch and watch it on TV
The most you give's a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy
...
I promise I'm honest
They coming for you the day after they comin' for me
- Killer Mike
Perhaps the saddest thing about Killer Mike’s verse is that it was recorded in 2019, long before George Floyd’s death. Killer Mike also gave this speech in Atlanta during the height of the George Floyd protests, which is a good example of being critical of the bad while supporting the overall message.
Not just recently
This behavior is not new for the Republican party. It’s really no secret that the Republicans are the party of wealthy people and Democrats are the party of non-wealthy people. For example, Obama’s Affordable Care Act gave healthcare to many low-income Americans, then Trump’s American Health Care Act cut the healthcare of low-income Americans and simultaneously cut taxes for wealthy Americans. These Republican policies only benefit a tiny fraction of the population, so they have to convince people who aren’t a part of the wealthy group to think that they are.
As an example, the Republican party of today has opposed any environmental regulations, which allows a select few business owners to suck as much profit out of the Earth as they can, at the expense of our homes. Average citizens do not benefit from that, and in fact are actively having their lives worsened by it, so they shouldn’t support it.
Taxes are also a good example. Here’s a graph that shows the taxes paid according to the 2019 tax brackets of 100 people, one representing the average income of each percentile in the USA in 2019, giving an accurate cross-section.
Graph 1: Average Taxes Paid by Percentile
The point of taxes is to fund public goods, meaning the payout of the taxes should be felt roughly equally by everyone. This is why I included the average line in Graph 1. Anyone who pays less than the average is in theory getting more in return than they spend in taxes. The following graph shows the difference between the average and the amount of taxes paid for each person.
Graph 2: Net Tax Benefit by Income Percentile
This graph shows that most people are benefited by taxes, if the taxes are spent appropriately. To be exact, 75% of people, or anyone making under about $114k/year, have a net benefit from this tax system. This doesn’t even factor in the fact that taxes increase equality, which strengthens the economy for everyone, meaning the portion that benefits from taxes is actually much higher than 75%.
In reality, the only people who don’t benefit from taxes are the people who are insanely rich and thus would own the privatized equivalent of government services. The reason is simple: once they privatize a government service, they can and will charge more than the tax-funded cost, so they can profit. This is the entire point of privatizing: government services charge as little as possible to fund the service, but private companies charge as much as possible to maximize profits. This means everyone will pay more than than they did in taxes, and only the owners will benefit. So, unless you’re rich enough to own your own school, police department, etc. (which almost no one is), you are benefiting from taxes.
The Republican party typically tries to cut taxes, which, again, disproportionately benefits the wealthy. If most people benefit from taxes, this should be unpopular, and they should never be elected. This is why they demonize taxes in general, using rhetoric that treats them as theft, without acknowledging the good they do: roads, schools, libraries, clean air & drinking water, police & fire departments, not to mention the progress in industry that these services allow, strengthening the economy for everyone. You may argue that the qualifier “if the taxes are spent appropriately” from two paragraphs above is a key factor here and that they’re not spent appropriately, but doing so is a critique of our choice of allocation, not the taxes themselves. Cutting taxes does not solve that. Taxes should be popular, but the wealthy few want everyone to think otherwise so they, and no one else, can benefit. Remember: you’re not on their team. They just want you to think you are to get your vote.
Path Forward
In the words of El-P, don’t “fuel the death machine that down the line will kill you too”. The Republican party as it exists today is not interested in the welfare of this country, and no one should support them. People should also support protests that are fighting for equality and fairness, even if they’re not currently the subject of oppression.
