Why Rednecks Are So Stupid

I can't help but wonder why the average "conservative" supporter is so adamant about voting against their own best interests so constantly. I mean, from a bottom line point of view, every time they vote for a conservative, their lives get worse.

Conservatives believe in "fiscal responsibility", but exactly what does that mean? Not spending more than you make? No, that's not true because when it comes to military spending, conservatives are more than willing to print a bunch more dead presidents to finance a war. The same goes for subsidies of industries and businesses (what we also refer to as "corporate welfare"). This has come at the expense of the average taxpayer - and more so from those who traditionally support GOP policies. Far more of the budget is spent on military spending (including veterans benefits, research and whatnot) than on any three "welfare" programs, but the way "rednecks" talk about it, all the government wants to do is tax and spend on "socialism".

Given all the things the right-wing does (outside of advancing repressive social programs), it's patently obvious that they are catering to the rich at the expense of the poor, but the poor vote for them anyhow.

Case in point: GWB's proposal to privatize Social Security.

I don't think anything gives the rich a hard-on more than thinking about all those tax dollars being invested in their companies instead of the insurance policy that is Social Security. But let's face it, had GWB's plan been implemented, most people's retirements would have been wiped out due to the proliferation of subprime mortgages in investment packages, causing those packages to tank.

The rich, of course, were never hurt by this. They only got richer.

Another case in point: The number of government subsidies going to Big Oil. These are supposedly to offset the costs of finding and developing new reserves of oil. But when a company is making hundreds of billions of dollars in PROFITS (not just revenue, but extra cash that hasn't been spent that year), investors and executives get paid off, but the tax payers get left holding the high gas prices and bill to subsidize the oil company's search for more of what made them rich to begin with.

Taxpayer money going to increase oil company profits while the average American gets financially hammered at the pumps.

Another case in point: The GOP's adamant refusal to extend gas mileage requirements on new vehicles. Way back when, the Auto Industry predicted bankruptcies and millions out of work - over seat belts. The same was predicted over air bags. The same was predicted for improved auto safety standards. None of these predictions materialized due to those improvements. But again, they're bleating to the GOP about improved gas standards cutting into profits and the government backtracked.

FYI: Improved gas mileage saves you money, and cuts down on the amount of gas sold, which means smaller profits for Big Oil, but more green in your pocket, and possibly, in your back yard, too.

EVERYTHING the GOP and political conservatives have done has benefited big business at the expense of the people. Even creating jobs hasn't been terribly beneficial because the GOP's job creation method has always been to start a war (In fairness, Johnson continued the Vietnam war to finance his Great Society, but he was from Texas, so he was a conservative liberal - if there is such a thing these days).

And despite all the evidence that the conservatives favor the good of business and the enrichment of the wealthy over the good of the people, the most desperate and least wealthy of the people in the country still vote for them.

I believe it has to do with a carefully crafted campaign to misdirect them into this behavior. And with this "class" of people, it's a fairly simple thing to do.

Now before I get anyone's patched long johns in a twist, I'm using the Jeff Foxworthy definition of a Redneck: A person with a glorious lack of sophistication. They are not bright, but they are steady. They aren't quick, but they are stubborn and reliable. They aren't well educated, but they make their own way. They come from a culture where a man's word is his bond and a handshake is as good as gold. There is much to admire from this culture. In many ways, it's the backbone of the country. They are the "salt of the earth" types, who are, sadly, easily misled due to that lack of sophistication.

This lack of sophistication translates into a very narrowly focused understanding of the world. They want things simple, traditional and the way "god intended things to be". This, in and of itself, is fine and dandy. But with a simple point of view of things, they are very easily manipulated.

A typical conservative candidate is against abortion, pro guns, against "gay marriage", is all for a strong military, against "socialism" or "welfare", in favor of low taxes and less government in your life. Some go further, but we're going to use a "middle of the road" conservative as an example.

The typical redneck believes in all of these. Some because it's part of his culture. Some because it's part of his religion. But the typical redneck doesn't want anything to do with helping the rich get richer unless the rich are working hard for the money and earn it the old-fashioned way. This is where conservatives are very quite about what they do when they're in power. And this is why conservatives are in power at all: Money.

The conservative fiscal policy makes the rich get richer at the expense of the poor. And it's a policy which perpetuates itself. For example, a strong military is a conservative cornerstone. But if there aren't a lot of poor, uneducated Americans willing to die for their country, there can't be those wars the military is being strong for.

So it becomes necessary to ensure a continuing supply of people so poor, their only way out of grinding poverty is the military. To do this the tax burden is shifted from those who can afford it (the wealthy) to those who can least afford it (the poor). Further, the tax dollars, rather than being used to help the poor with education or vocational training to find better jobs, are given to businesses which are already making substantial profits. This is allegedly done to stimulate job growth, but in effect only stimulates the bank accounts of the rich and the company's investors. No number of tax incentives or subsidies has stimulated a significant number of jobs. Even today, this variation on the thoroughly discredited "trickle down" hypothesis of economics is still believed by fairly bright people to work.

It doesn't. It never has. It never will.

The ways the GOP have shifted the wealth from the poor to the rich are insidious, varied and effective. They have effectively created a "pro business" mentality among their followers which worships the notion of the "Free Market" (Something I had a few words to say about not long ago). But this is a vital part of the strategy they've used. In a "Free Market" the theory is that anyone, through hard work alone, can become a rich person. This is the dream of most of our oppressed "rednecks". They believe that through hard work, a person will "make it". The day they "make it" is always next year, though. The whole system is stacked against them. The illusion keeps them going, but the reality is, none of them are going to get there.

Consider this: To be good in business you need native smarts or an education. Most people lack native smarts, so they need an education. This is the first step.

To get a good education, the average person needs good schools, good fortune and a lot of help from higher up on the food chain. Granted, there are success stories about ordinary people having a great idea nad getting rich because of it, but they're about as frequent as hen's teeth. For every success story, you have tens of millions of people left behind. The sad fact is, most Americans will barely scrape by their entire lives and few will ever elevate themselves beyond what they grew up with - if even that.

The GOP has systematically destroyed the education system, creating one so expensive and impractical, we are graduating fewer people who can actually think from high school than ever before. The GOP has used the mythology of creation as a corner stone in the dumbing-down of America. We used to graduate more Doctors and Engineers than we needed. Today, we have to import them. Why? Because the lessons science teaches - critical thinking, logical progression and rational thought - are being undermined by conservatives pushing for a religious agenda in our nation's schools. Texas tends to push harder than the rest because if the Texas school system (one of the largest in the nation) adopts a particular policy regarding the sciences (or any subject for that matter), text book publishers tend to only publish that one policy, leaving the other states to deal with the aftermath. Texas is a conservative state, its policy makers brainwashed by the powerful who cater to religious notions (because it serves their purposes of having a large number of expendable minions to serve and service the rich) in order to forward the goals of their masters, the wealthy.

But in even more direct ways, the conservatives have undermined education. They have cut funding, raised tuition, and created a public school system that is perpetually underfunded, understaffed, overworked and focused on bogus issues like "no child left behind" (an impractical, unfunded and useless policy which focuses on passing tests rather than learning a subject). The scholastic emphasis is misplaced resulting in graduates who can't grasp subject matter and focus on tests. And the atmosphere in schools has never tended to encourage thinkers in the first place.

Cut off the head and the body will die. The rich can always afford to educate themselves at private schools. The rest of us... Not so much. The brain drain has created a dumber, less capable, less insightful America who needs to bring in educated foreign workers to help raise the bar in innovation, industry and manufacturing.

But it doesn't stop there. Aside from destroying most American's ability to educate themselves (and earn a more respectable income) through dismantling the education system and making what is left almost prohibitively expensive, the GOP and their rich puppet masters have managed to be more direct in reducing the average American's options by taking money from them directly. Policies that favor businesses have been a staple of the GOP diet for decades. But only now are those policies paying off in the form of higher prices, lower wages and other impacts that cost Americans more than they realize.

Oil futures were (and still are) manipulated by the rich to ensure the price stays high. This means more money out of our pockets just to get to where we have to go. And that price has been inching higher over the last ten years - 300% higher from about $1.50 to (at times) nearly $5.00/gallon. It's expected to go higher than that. People in Europe pay more, but much of that is taxes.

Union busting has been embarked on in a big way these days, reducing the wages of workers. It also reduces their benefits, which leads them to a decreased financial ability to practice preventative health maintenance resulting in higher health care costs and increased poverty because of it.

Relaxed regulations for Big Pharma (and anything else "big" for that matter) result in skyrocketing prices for medications which, several years years later when the patents finally wear off, can be had for pennies. Pharma says they have to recoup their losses on research. Well, GOP leaders made sure the FDA streamlined approval of these drugs - many of which have been found to be hazardous to human health and life. Further, they allowed advertising of these hideously expensive drugs, and allowed big Pharma to bribe doctors into prescribing them unnecessarily. All of this reduces the money the average American needs in order to get the education, material and means necessary to better themselves.

Subsidies for companies engaged in "alternative fuel", which is neither "Green" or particularly efficient (ethanol) have cost the taxpayers billions, but what is worse is the impact switching from food to fuel production in agriculture had on food prices globally. The price of edible corn went up 400% in one year. This cascaded throughout the agriculture world, resulting in higher demand (and prices) for other foodstuffs like rice and wheat. The cost of bread alone went up 200%. And despite vast profits for big Agra, they still were subsidized with taxpayer money for doing this. We all paid more for our food, leaving us with less for other things.

Nickle, diming and dollaring us to death, our money went from our pockets, to the rich, in a barely noticed, but highly effective stream of shifting revenue unparalleled in world history.

But it's the poor who suffer the most from this - and rednecks aren't known as the most well-0ff class of people on the face of the planet.

Which means these poor sods, the redneck, is still stuck with the Army or poverty.

So why do these people continue to vote against their own best interests?

Because the conservatives have poisoned the well.

Simple people don't like anything different than themselves. They are often racist, intolerant, blindly faithful to family traditions and religions and are pretty much incapable of breaking out of that mold. But within this predisposition lies the handle one can grasp to manipulate them.

In manipulating a simple-minded culture, one must first create a scapegoat. In this case it's "liberals". Liberals have to be "the enemy". They are vilified, demonized and finally cast into a political purgatory no self-respecting redneck would ever want to visit. They are stereotyped as elitist intellectuals who don't know any better (at best). This creating the scapegoat is exactly the same thing Nazi Germany did to the Jews. Much of the impact of that scapegoating they did in the 1930's and 1940's remains today.

As long as there is an "enemy" upon which to focus their hate, these folks can be relentless. Not once will they stop to question things if they can be made to believe something is a certain way.

Next, one must cater to their culture by supporting those "traditionalist" beliefs in a socially proactive way. Promoting the banning of abortions, demanding a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, demanding that public buildings be used for religious purposes.

It's all a bunch of horseshit.

This is the distraction they use. The handle they have on the average "redneck". The smoke and mirrors the politicians pull on their followers. If they're asked a question about their support of a particular bill that gave billions of taxpayer dollars to Chevron, the crafty conservative politician will say, "I supported the rights of a baby by blocking Planned Parenthood funding when I was a state representative!". Or he could respond with, "I voted to increase military funding and saved 500 jobs!" Anything but a straight and honest answer to the question.

This is how they use their voters. They find some stupid, utterly meaningless social issue and blow it up out of proportion. "Gay marriage undermines the sanctity of marriage!" I don't know of a single straight marriage ruined or made weaker because a bunch of homosexuals want to have the same civil rights as them. There never has been. There never will be. It's a horseshit issue. The same for abortion. If you don't like abortion, don't get one. Beyond that, it's a horseshit issue. All of the conservative social agenda is for is to garner support among a people who love traditional values, and practice them. Making them a party platform is blatantly catering to them to get their vote. But with that vote comes the authority to strip them of their wealth and give it to the wealthy.

The wealthiest 20% of Americans control 85% of the country's wealth, earn 85% of the income and only pay 35% of the total taxes. The rest of us (80% of Americans) split the remaining 15% of the wealth and income available, but pay 65% of the taxes that are needed to run the country.

Now, I don't know about you, but to me, that doesn't seem like a fair and reasonable disposition of the tax burden in the country. The bottom 15% paying 65% of what it takes to run the country? And here's the kicker: The poorest 20% of Americans control 0.1% of the wealth and income and pay about 15% of the taxes.

All thanks to the misdirection and horseshit smoke and mirrors tactics the conservatives have played on them all these years. These poor slobs actually think these social programs are going to ever be put into effect despite their blatantly unconstitutional natures just because some candidate in the back pocket of some big corporation or conglomerate says they're going to do it. They say these things (and occasionally try to implement them) simply because to do otherwise would eventually be noticed and remarked upon by the rednecks who elected them.

Rednecks may be unsophisticated, but if you hit them over the head enough times with something, eventually you get their attention.

Unfortunately for the country, the damage has been done insofar as trying to bring these folks back into the political fold goes. In creating their horseshit smoke and mirrors tactics, the conservatives have managed to turn what are supposed to be (and were in the past) political issues into a religion. The faithful shall forever be voting more and more radically conservative while the rest of the "libturd", "libtard" heathens rot in their socialist hell. Or something like that. I was never very good at creating words to insult other people with. I figure the words we all already know are good enough for that.

The rednecks can now be called rednecks because they have served themselves up to be beheaded on the altar of corporate greed and the pursuit of political power, willingly sacrificing themselves on the battlefields chosen by the rich and powerful strictly to preserve the wealth and power of the rich and powerful having been tricked into believing it will make any difference or help the average American back home.

And despite mounting evidence of the detrimental nature of their relationship with and support of conservatives, there is no sign that they're going to wake up from their enchantment anytime soon. They are being beaten over the heads repeatedly, spilling their blood endlessly, almost never able to live better than their parents, believe the conservatives who say it's all the Liberals fault and keep voting for more of the same from their elected officials. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. In politics, it doesn't ever change if you vote for the same platforms over and over and over again. And yet, they expect things to get better for them each time.

And that's why Rednecks are so stupid.

Wake up, people. See what's happening. Whether intentional (which I think it is) or not, it is what is happening NOW. Conspiracy theories aside, this is what's going on and the GOP and conservative movements are all behind it. Cause and effect, whether intended or not, the GOP and conservatives are keeping you down and doing everything to keep you there. I'm not saying you need to vote for a bunch of incompetent liberals, but for your sake and the sake of this great nation, don't vote for conservatives who always say what you want to hear. The essence of politics is compromise. Absolutism is destroying us.

And you're helping them do it.