An Old School Beatdown

Over at BJ, Mistermix points out that the Baby Boomers approaching retirement and the elderly already there will happily throw younger Americans under the bus and embrace the New Republican Austerity Plan to get their entitlements.

I grew up in a small town with an aging population, and I live in a suburb that’s a bit older than the area average. Even though the senior citizens in each town put their kids through the local schools, the school budget is always in danger of failing at election time. A few years ago, for example, the current parents and the senior citizens in my suburb engaged in a standoff. After the bond issue for the new library (the seniors’ pet project) was voted down, the budget authorization for the schools was voted down. A big PR campaign/forced love-in ensued and both issues passed the next election, but it was a pretty ugly example of how the last generation of parents is ready to hold the current generation hostage to get what they want.

Similarly, the partial dismantling of programs for the elderly that Ryan envisions won’t affect the current generation of retirees. Ryan and the Republicans are betting that their older base, which turns out reliably, will be happy to cut the retirement benefits of the next generation as long as the current generation gets theirs. I think they’ll find a pretty receptive audience for those cuts, and it might be a short-term winning strategy that leverages an ugly side of human nature.

Hey, leveraging the ugly side of human nature is what the Republicans are all about these days, from Islamophobia to xenophobia to racism to homophobia and everything in between.  It's all about gathering the coalition of Us Versus The Other.  And yes, it comes back to "I Got Mine, Screw You."  Republicans aren't stupid, just cynical.

And frankly, it's working.  It will continue to work as long as our economy continues to fall apart and people are scared about losing their jobs to undocumented workers, losing their culture to another religion, losing their health care to the poor, and losing their status as majority to a country of minorities.