The problem with America is the tax system. Americans are conned into believing that a low-tax system is in their interests. It’s a stance created by the mega-rich. A low-tax system put huge amount of extra money in their pockets and hardly any in the pockets of the low paid. So the mega-rich, who own the media and control the narrative, paint a high tax system as socialist.
Since the 1950s and McCarthy there has been a consistent unrelenting propaganda campaign to demonize socialism and fairness. Seemingly fairness and equality in somehow Un-American. Really?
The result of this tax system is gross inequality – a land of billionaires and people sleeping under flyovers, and gross underfunding of all public services. America has a terrible police force full of thugs, a health system that only caters for the wealthy and an appalling education system.
I taught High School for a year in Los Angeles. Only a third of my kids ever turned up for school. Two thirds had completely dropped out. The ones who did turn up worked at the level we would expect from a twelve-year-old in the UK. It was dire (Loved the kids though!).
You get what you pay for.
MAGA is the result of this broken system. The ignorant and uneducated are easy meat to be manipulated and exploited by cults. MAGA and other ultra-right, white supremacist feed off this mass of disenfranchised fools. The standard fascist tropes are brought to play. They identify a target group – a minority – and make them scapegoats. They drum up fear and stoke hate and division.
Republicans do not want an education system that actually educates the masses. They do not want a knowledgeable thinking electorate. They want a mass of dumb sheep who can be exploited easily.
Fix the education system! Fix taxation! Don’t believe the lies!
