A house divided between the Real Americans and the parasites
by digby
Remember that tumblr called "We are the 53%"? It featured "stories" like this one:
It was in response to the popular "We are the 99%" theme, with "the 53%" referring to the hard working Americans who allegedly sacrifice for the deadbeats who pay no income tax (because they don't make enough money.) This 47% would include children, sick and elderly people, all of whom should get out there and work like this fine woman is doing.And just because you are working at a low paying job doesn't mean that you shouldn't be forced to go without food so that these lovely people can maintain the illusion that they don't receive any benefit from the taxes they pay.
In any case, these people have a new hero who is predicting a civil war between the decent 53%ers and the 47% parasites. It's Richard Mourdock, the newly anointed GOP candidate for Senate in Indiana, who explained it this way:
The Republican Party’s nominee for Indiana’s U.S. Senate seat recently compared the fight over tax rates and reform to former president Abraham Lincoln’s concern over slavery, alluding to Lincoln’s famous “House Divided” speech ahead of the Civil War….
“MOURDOCK: What he meant by that was that slavery was either going to be totally eliminated from the United States or it was no longer just going to be restricted to the Southern states, it was going to go everywhere. I am here to suggest to you that we are in a house divided. You know this past April, when our federal taxes were paid, 47 percent — 47 percent — of all American households paid no income tax. In fact, half of that 47 percent almost, actually got tax money back from the government that they never paid — because a few years ago we revised the welfare program to make it part of the tax code. When 47 percent are paying no income taxes — they do pay Social Security — but they are not paying income taxes, and 53 percent are carrying the load, we are a house divided.”
Ed Kilgore quipped:
Hoo boy! Aside from the great historical and moral insight that leads Mourdock to compare the antebellum Slave Power to people with no power at all, you do have to wonder if he’s suggesting another Civil War may prove necessary to crush the Rebellion against the rights of the better-off to fully enjoy the fruits of their labor, their capital gains, their inheritances, and their own government benefits without having to share any of them with those people. Hell, isn’t it enough that those people were the beneficiaries of the first Civil War, earning the precious right to earn their own wealth as sharecroppers? No wonder there’s a Tea Party Movement!
Just don't call it a class war because that would be very rude and demeaning to our fine fellow Americans.
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