Beware, The Strawman Cometh by RoseAnn Salanitri

When political arguments fail in the face of reality, those of the failed party have made a practice of creating strawmen. In so doing, they strive to take eyes off their failures and point them somewhere else – to another target. In some cases, the offending party can be hard-pressed to find a legitimate target and therefore they create one that they can enjoin others to help them strike down.  Such is the nature and need for strawmen.

On October 16th, an interview by Chuck Todd of Meet the Press and Senator Bernie Sanders is worthy of examination. In this interview Senator Sanders does his best to create villainous strawmen as targets to engage the support of those that cannot think their way out of a paper bag.  Below are a few of the strawmen Sanders attempted to created,  He said:

• “We cannot let right wing extremists undermine what is so important to this country, and that is the right of all people to participate in the political process.”

In this statement, Sanders is attempting to create strawmen out of the very people who are trying to keep the election process clean and free from fraud. It is his way of vilifying his opposition and all conservatives in the process.

• “We see an economy where the people on top are doing phenomenally well, while the people on the bottom are struggling. We have more income inequality today than at any time in the United States…So…I think the Democrats should talk about the economy. They should contrast their views with the Republican positions…I believe, and most Democrats believe that at a time when half our people are living paycheck to paycheck, we should raise the minimum wage to a living wage.”

There is so much illogic in this last quote that it is almost hilarious. Let’s begin with the “people on top.”  Of course men like Bill Gates, George Soros, and the like immediately come to mind. However, those in Congress (many of whom have never held a private sector job) are amazingly among the people at the top.  Whether it be through insider trading or the monetary and influential ingratiation of special interests, those who pretend to represent you have mostly represented themselves to the point where they are among some of the richest and most affluent among us. They certainly qualify as the “people on top.” If there is any group among us that exemplifies income as well as legal inequality, it is those in Congress.

Sanders goes on to say that the Democrats should contrast their view with the Republican positions, but of course he doesn’t mean that the reality of their policies should be contrasted.  We have seen and lived the reality of the Democrats’ economic policies – and they have accelerated income inequality ad infinitum.

The last statement in Sanders quote above talks about raising the minimum wage to a living wage.  Either he fails to understand that the minimum wage is no longer a living wage due the economic policies his party has forced upon us or he attempts to create this impending class structure as another strawman.  Furthermore, I can tell you that as a former small business owner, paying the wages the Democrats champion will result in less jobs being available – especially for those at the lower end of the wage scale.  Small Mom and Pop operations who are barely hanging on in a failing economy simply cannot afford to pay employees more than they themselves may actually be earning. If Sanders’ policies should triumph, these operations will be forced to close their doors and the recession will escalate.

Among the usual group of strawmen is corporate greed, which according to Sanders is detestable, while he sweeps congressional greed under the rug. And for good measure, to have the unthinking keep clamoring to the corrupt voting machines to vote for the Democrats who are the authors of this country’s failing economy, inflation, recession and impending depression, Sanders throws in the war in the Ukraine.

God help us all should the gullible voters swallow the lies and attribute our present state of distress to the strawmen being crafted before our very eyes.  It is true. There are none so blind as those who will not see.  As for the rest of us, keep up the good fight, for the fat lady still isn’t singing.Beware