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Lou Dobbs: Patronizing, Separatist, Statist by Angelo Mike Exclusive to STR November 7, 2006 I’m
sick of Lou Dobbs. I’m tired of his pompous moralizing, as well as his
bizarre fixation on the middle class, as if we’re this discretely hidden
group of people with our group status tattooed on our arms for corporate He
is condescending towards the middle class, as if our well being is opposed
to the well being of everyone else; as if our prosperity depends on
special government protections, privileges, maximum wages on our
employers, special schools (which you all have to pay for), higher minimum
wages, regulations, and protectionist tariffs to stop the less skilled of
us from losing our jobs to relatively cheaper competitors (foreigners).
And we should all object to his patronizing, paternalistic talk of how we
can only have our lives improved when our Democratic and Republican
sovereigns just take charge and jawbone for our prosperity. If
only we were such piddling, helpless little losers! Mr.
Dobbs has been railing, week after week in his columns and day after day
on his CNN show, about the war on the middle class. And I agree with him
on some important points. In his
latest article, he says of the impending elections, “Most Americans
understand that all the major decisions have already been made.” And,
“Unfortunately, the choices we'll be permitted to make on November 7
will do little to mitigate that peril.” Unfortunately,
Mr. Dobbs’ criticisms of the lack of recourse against our government
ring terribly hollow, given that he wants our government to have every
power to manage what wages we can work for, what prices we can pay for
foreign goods (when will those foreigners just realize that we don’t
want their cheaper, higher quality goods?), where you can send your kids
to school, how much to tax you over your own objections, and to regulate
industry . . . but he just doesn’t want the government to abuse
these powers.
At
this point, any observer of Mr. Dobbs may tell me that, well, of course he
wants us to resist the establishment. He talks in the very article I
quoted above about our lack of choices in government, and the need for
“all of us who care about this great nation and the world’s greatest
democracy [to] find the energy and commitment to insist on political
choice.” And I don’t doubt the sincerity of these beliefs to which Mr.
Dobbs devotes so much energy and attention. My
objection to this line of argument is simple. It’s the means he desires
to bring them about which are totally unsatisfactory. Lou wants the
government to have the power to suppress any of these more active roles in
decision making we should desire because they are our rightful sovereigns
and upholders of the Constitution. He
doesn’t want us to ceaselessly alter our conditions for the better. He
wants the very obstacle in place to prevent us from withdrawing from,
abolishing, or having legal recourse against the monopolist government
that tells us when we can vote, who our candidates are, and the laws
handed down by the elected, whether you voted for a winning candidate or
not (or even if you voted not out of conviction in the desirability of a
candidate, but because he or she was better than whoever was worse). And,
once our politicians have been elected, we are to have no means of
ignoring or disobeying those in government who, by Dobbs’ own admission,
are at war with the middle class, as the title of his book pronounces. Nowhere
does Mr. Dobbs say we can come forward and say that, in this allegedly
representative system of government, we should be able to come forward to
our representatives and tell them that they have violated their oaths to
us and we will no longer patronize them for their services, which have
become more and more invasive and destructive. Nowhere
does he say that, as bad as government is, we can tell our
representatives or our president, “You’ve violated your oath and have
failed to fulfill your contractually bound duties as a steward of the
people and the Constitution. I will no longer patronize you with my money,
but will take it to someone whose services as a sovereign I appreciate.
And if I can’t find one, I will provide those services at my own
expense.” In
fact, I have a hunch that Mr. Dobbs would view such an idea as absurd,
despite his
announcement that our government has unofficially told working folks to go
to hell. If
this is the case, then I must concede that Mr. Dobbs is right. We are
marginalized as decision makers in popular government if we should keep in
place the government which ensures that the most manipulative, demagogic,
and power hungry will get to the top by getting the votes and
contributions of the right people. And he would like to keep it this way. Lou
Dobbs offers no fresh voice of opposition or legitimate refuge against the
correctly diagnosed problem of the authoritarian state which is beholden
to two monolithic parties. Lou Dobbs isn’t against the establishment. He just wants more of it. |
