them against us: Election 2016

By Mike Clancy

“them against us” is the strategy of Election 2016

Class ! Class ! Class !

That’s all they talk about. It’s a shocking blast from the past

Didn’t America abolish class?

Election 2016 is a good old fashioned class war!

Clinton and Trump will save the middle class. Clinton will tax the upper class. Trump will save the upper class from sharing with grubby lower classes. Trump will yank the working class jobs back to America.

Class is all they talk about.

Class ! Class ! Class !

20 years ago, “them against us” was very effective political strategy to justify exporting millions of jobs

In this book Mayor Gleeson explains how easy it is for politicians to use class to enrage and divide us

I know you want to understand the game that Clinton and Trump are playing in Election 2016.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Clancy
• Release date: Oct 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536574647

Mike Clancy

As a federal government community economic development officer, I worked to help people escape poverty and achieve equality. Then federal policy changed from equality to austerity. Your government actively created poverty. We were allowed to save middle class people from losing their homes but we were ordered to push working class people out of the 'lifeboat' because they were judged to be  "worth less," according to Liberal ideals and Conservative values. Your government sent millions of working class jobs other countries along while passing laws to park profits overseas so they wouldn't be taxed. My bosses declared, "There is nothing wrong with working class people or their children dying if they are, "not worthy of investment." I told the public on the radio.  I'm still fighting for equality. What are YOU doing about it?

Book preview

It’s them against us

It’s them against us, seems to be the theme of the 2016 Presidential Election.

Do you really want to know what’s going on?

Both Clinton and Trump are promising to save the middle class.

But they have different ideas about who is the bad guy.

Who made the deal with the devil?

Clinton is going to tax the upper class. Trump is going to reduce their taxes.

Trump is going to bring working class jobs back to America. Clinton not so much.

Class ! Class ! Class !

Why is there all this talk about class?

I thought America was the nation of equality that abolished class discrimination?

It’s a good old fashioned class war!

It’s all about class, Mayor Al Gleeson said, when he introduced workfare.

‘Divided we fall,’ is sadly true.

Read my conversation with Mayor Gleeson so you can see how Republican and Democrat politicians use class to divide us against each other.

I think it will help you to understand Clinton vs. Trump in Election 2016.

requiem for the working class

In Election 2016 all the politicians have been praising ‘hard working middle class values.’ They want to save middle class jobs. But what about the working class? Millions of working class jobs have been exported. Working class Americans have gone through hell for decades because of business and government decisions:

Lay offs! Bankruptcies! Foreclosures!

Why do bad things happen to good people?

It’s intentional.

It’s government policy.

Corporations profit from our misery.

Someone sits in judgement.

Someone gets pleasure from our suffering.

Someone feels powerful.

No one speaks up.

No one stands up.

They don’t care.

They are the winners

They say that we are the sinners

Blast from the Past

If the political slogans in Election 2016, sound a little old fashioned,

you are right.

We have been shoved back a hundred years to the middle of an old fashioned class war.

How did we become so bitterly divided against each other?

Democrats vs. Republicans

Middle class against the working class

It’s middle class people who vote for the cuts in services to working class people. It’s middle class people who decide whose job gets exported, who gets laid off, who doesn’t get a mortgage, who loses their home, who doesn’t get unemployment insurance or welfare or workers compensation, who doesn’t get health care and who goes bankrupt.

They get very well paid and bonuses for destroying our lives.

I’m sorry but popular thinking is wrong by 180 degrees. I ask you to reject the position that lower class people are inferior in any way from the middle class.

I am not seeking revenge.

Instead I advocate equality. Middle class and working class. Employed and unemployed. All races and genders. All classifications of people.

Anyone who sees equality as a threat proves the point of this book.

Americans need to know how American leaders in business and politics can find it in their conscience to send millions of steady, well paid American working class jobs to Mexico and China?

How could political leaders say it is morally right to use the citizens’ money to bail out the corrupt banks but abandon the citizens? How could they deliberately make millions of working class American families bankrupt and homeless?

How could leaders poison drinking water in their own community and abandon other working class families to floodwaters and other disasters?

Whose government is this?

Why do some good people go so bad after they are elected?

Those ‘good’ conservatives and ‘good’ liberals finally reveal their true values. They don’t really care about citizenship, family or community.

Listen to their speeches.

If you care about Liberty, please pay attention to what they say.

They twist the Liberty promised in the Declaration of Independence.

They marry a twisted American dream of ‘Liberty’ to a tainted version of Christianity that Christ wouldn’t recognize.

They are ‘wrapped in the flag and carrying a bible.’  I call it Americanity.

It’s a sick mutilation of America’s most cherished symbols of Liberty and Christianity and according to the Mayor of my town, It’s all about class.

Those political monsters brag openly about the dirty tricks they do to us.

‘divided we fall’

Who wants a divided nation?

Not me.

Mayor Gleeson said, It’s them against us.

Their slogans divide us.

Use your gifts of reason. Decide for yourself what is true.

We have been divided against each other.

My goal is equality. I want to help you recognize their deception, to stop them from dividing Americans against each other.

‘united we stand’

Just ask Patrick Henry, Abraham Lincoln and the Liberty Song

Stop the ‘them against us’ conflict.

I believe equality is the moral purpose that will unite Americans.

Americans will win the battle for equality if they unite in the wisdom of modern democracy.

In this Election 2016, please choose your candidate for President carefully. As a writer, I see problems with both Clinton and Trump. I guess I’m a radical in that I really don’t trust or believe the liberals or the conservatives, the Republicans or the Democrats.

I think each election is a kind of national conversation or argument. At first it looks like two ancient forces are fighting it out. But old Bernie Sanders inspired young people about socialism. Has that voice died? It would be tragic. The whole world is watching the American election. What other voices would add to democracy?

I think eBooks like this one and social media could have a very positive impact on social change. We need to try out new ideas and approaches. Electronic conversation in our time could be just as revolutionary as when Thomas Paine innovated and introduced paper political pamphlets at the birth of America. New media for public opinion could be just as subversive against the old guard and hopefully just as innovative for change.

This eBook is a hasty project. It’s not literature. I care, but I’m an old man, so if I can’t keep up with the conversation and social media please don’t wait for me. It’s not about me. Slam it. Ban it. Roast it. Share it, like it, hate it. Condemn it! If you have any advice, please send it along.

Create your change.

As you move out into this world, occupy every position of influence.

If we hold their feet to the fire of truth, we can win jobs for Americans and responsible government.

My Personal Story

I was 5 when the cop came to the door and told us that our father was killed. Mom turned to me and said, You are now the man of the family. I became an adult. That was nearly 60 years ago. I was raised by a single mom.

My country was good to me. To repay that generosity, I began a career in Community Economic Development and Special Needs Employment Counselling with the federal government; helping people and communities escape poverty. But after almost 20 years the federal government switched from helping citizens escape poverty to actively creating poverty for those citizens. That broke my heart and shattered my belief in the system. I learned that we must be forever vigilant to ensure the survival of democracy. I did my best to protect unemployed workers.

I told the head of my department that the government policy of poverty creation is immoral, unethical and illegal. He confirmed that is the purpose and my job as a public servant is not to disagree but to carry out that intent to keep my job.

I went on radio and television and to the newspapers, spoke in the capital city, knocked on doors to inform the public. I sincerely believed that the public would demand that the government stop its poverty creation policy.

I spoke up.

But sadly, most of my fellow baby boomers didn’t speak up, didn’t stand up to protect their neighbours, and didn’t care, not even to protect their own children.

My parents’ generation, the wartime generation endured two world wars and the worst depression in history. I admire their character. They sacrificed mightily to ensure a better life for us than the opportunities that they inherited. My generation of baby boomers enjoy the easiest life in the history of the world, but did the exact opposite. We turned our own children into a lower class, to serve us. We failed our children.

The mayor of my town introduced poverty creation at the municipal level. Mayor Gleeson said, ‘It’s all about class. It’s them against us.’

I am sorry to tell you that we are in a class war.

Human monsters can justify their evil.

In sharing my experience, I am hoping that I can help you to recognize your enemy, to help you understand why part of this world is rotten. I hope to share with you the conceited bragging of one political monster who gained power, made money, and felt pleasure when persecuting good people, the mayor of my town: Mayor Gleeson.

As I said, I don’t have much faith in most of my boomer generation.

I hope my children’s generation sweeps that kind aside.

If my point of view from inside government seems harsh, consider this quote from an advisor to presidents: John Kenneth Galbraith.

John Kenneth Galbraith

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy.

That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

It’s an exercise which involves contradictions and absurdities. The wealthy urging the character-building value of privation for the poor."

John Kenneth Galbraith, US Congressional Record 1963

Working class people are morally inferior

People on welfare are morally, mentally and physically inferior. That’s what Mayor Gleeson told me.

"You heard my workfare speech. When we market workfare, we sell two main ideas. It’s all about class. It’s them against us:

Number 1. Ascendancy: Middle class people are morally, intellectually and genetically superior. Life is a competition. In the marketplace, we control the game. We are the middle class. We are the winners. Working class people are morally inferior. They are the ones who go on welfare. People on welfare are morally, mentally and physically inferior. They are sinners. We are the natural aristocracy, the glorious ascendancy. Middle class people don’t need social programs. The abusers on welfare and public health care are a class of thieves.

Number 2. Liberty to Pursue My Happiness: I’m an individual. ‘What’s in for me?’ is the central question for becoming middle class. There’s no room in the lifeboat for lower class people. We won’t feed them or their governments. We demand liberty to live a separate life in a separate economy from losers in a free market."

My people are the glorious ascendancy, the moral middle class, the upper middle class, the enlightened.

Middle class people never go on welfare. Welfare is the safety net that is theft of our taxes exclusively for the working class. Working class people are morally inferior. The working class are thieves: those parasites who demand public health care and welfare and those immoral unionized working class people who blackmail their employers for a middle class wage.

‘It’s them against us’

"When I call the middle class the ‘glorious ascendancy,’ I am praising the class of professionals, executives, politicians, entrepreneurs, business owners and managers: the decision makers. The ones who do the hiring and firing. The ones who decide who will get government benefits. Social workers. Intellectuals. Negotiators. Lawyers and Doctors. The ones who generate wealth for shareholders.

I’m certainly not talking about the piece of meat who became a union member in order to gang up on an honest businessman and blackmail him to pay an hourly wage higher than the foreman. The 70’s have been hell for the business community with the onslaught of workers’ rights, human rights, civil rights and unionization. There are now 20 million unionized workers in the United States. There has never been so many unionized workers. Free trade will wipe them out.

Higher wages for working class people are an abomination for middle class professionals and entrepreneurs. When working class people are able to buy a suburban house, a nice car and good life they have delusions that they are middle class. The only advantage for us is that they then turn around and judge other working class people very harshly. So perhaps they are middle class. But that really is an abomination. It’s important to shun them when they move to the suburbs. Come on. It’s like they thought that just because you have money you can talk to royalty.

There has never been so many well paid working class people. We will take them down a few pegs. In fact, they will probably help us to reduce the wages of other working class people.

Look at Detroit, full of working class blacks, waps and pollocks who are suddenly living beyond their class. The middle class has lost its liberty. We have been forced to hire masses of working class workers and pay them obscene wages because of the Auto Pact. The natural aristocracy has to fight back. We can sour those workers against their unions. The beauty of think tanks is they give us the perfect weapons: values research and slogans to motivate people. Voters will parrot our message if it fits American values of Liberty and Christianity: 1. Liberty – When workers demand the right to work, they are begging for their own wages to be reduced. 2. The Golden Rule: When workers demand a level playing field, they are begging for their own wages to be reduced to match wages in foreign countries. When workers demand free trade, they will vote for us to tear down the Auto Pact so we can export their jobs. Detroit will rust out and those workers will be put back in their place.

Condensed Version:

Who was Gleeson?

The mayor of my town.

What is Americanity?

The unholy marriage of a twisted American dream of Liberty and a tainted Christianity that Christ would not recognize

The secular religion of Mayor Gleeson

Gleeson said this is the religion of the middle class.

Americanity provides moral justification to harm people in poverty, in America and around the world.

Gleeson’s message: the working class are morally inferior

Who is my audience?

People who seek equality.

Not for those who believe the middle class is morally superior

Panoramic View

In the 1970’s, Al Gleeson campaigned for Mayor. Middle class voters fell in love with Gleeson’s promise to punish the ‘thieves’ on welfare. I interviewed him for local newspapers. Gleeson said his workfare was based on principles drawn from American liberty combined with Christian morals and his personal secular religion. I called his religion, Americanity.

The mayor considered himself an evangelical missionary for his ideology.

Gleeson was confident that his religion and his message would appeal to the hearts of middle class people. Workfare would punish people on welfare in the same way those welfare recipients in the southern US were forced to work in gangs without chains maintaining the county roads. I talked to middle class voters. Gleeson was right. Middle class people admitted Gleeson’s plan was harsh but workfare appealed to their desire to see people on welfare suffer. It nauseated me that middle class people so enthusiastically endorsed Gleeson’s plan.

Before workfare, there were very few homeless people.

Forty years later, there’s an idle army of surplus working class workers, on workfare or unable to qualify. It’s not the zombie apocalypse but everywhere I go, I see people on workfare. Look at them. They are slowly starving to death. Many are homeless on the streets or living in their vehicles like I did. Their mental and physical health has been destroyed.

If the people you see downtown seem disgusting then you have already distanced yourself from human beings that you harmed by voting for their deprivation.

This harm to citizens is a direct and predicted consequence of workfare.

Over the last forty years, our economy has produced more wealth than ever existed on earth before. As working class people, we have pleaded with the middle class for fairness, compassion and respect for our equality. It was a waste of effort. Why should they? Middle class people – by their self-definition – are totally opposed to equality.

Why should they change their values? The media and politicians loudly praise middle class values, as though middle class people are morally superior.

Middle class people don’t give a damn about equality.

According to the religious and political values of middle class Americanity, working class people like me are inferior and expendable.

Starvation of the poor has never stopped.

So my audience is exclusively lower class and people without class prejudice.

Gleeson was right on with his insights of the middle class’ fondest desires. The sadistic appetite of middle class people to inflict suffering will never be satisfied.

Americanity is now the moral code, the value system, religion of the middle class.

Americanity = the American dream of liberty + Christianity (terribly mangled)

Why take it personally?

My family and I are lower class – working class. I know the middle class doesn’t give a damn about us. Our values aren’t based on class. Our sense of pride is not based on climbing over other people or keeping them down. People who don’t seek a higher social class, in my experience, tend to be more altruistic, more compassionate, more generous, less discriminatory, more equality driven, more empathetic and more honest than people who see themselves as middle class. Our traditional values make social class irrelevant.

Frankly, we could imitate the middle class strategy and collaborate with the wealthy to tear down middle class privileges, pensions, medical services, benefits, jobs and wealth. We would be unstoppable. We have enough votes to accomplish the destruction of the middle class through the ballot box. But working class people aren’t driven by the need to rise above and dominate other classes of people. That is a middle class value and character trait. That would make us just as morally bankrupt as the middle class.

I don’t want to find equality at the bottom of the heap.

My Life

There’s nothing exceptional about me. I was raised on welfare. I escaped poverty in the 1970’s. For that gift, I am grateful to the generation who survived two world wars and worldwide depression. Millions of their families starved or were slaughtered by man-made disasters of war and famine that destroyed human beings based on the classification of one group of human beings as morally superior and another as morally inferior: Aryan / Gypsy, rich/poor, white/black, Catholic/Protestant. The war time generation learned that no person or class or nation is safe from these man-made atrocities. Their eyes were opened. They overthrew their corporate and political rulers for 30 years and built democracies. They forced the aristocracy of each country to share their profits with ordinary people. They built human rights and workers rights and civil rights. Within that generation, there was a strong current of brave souls who demanded equality.

So the public morality gradually evolved away from allowing one class to dominate another. Public morality rose above class differences such as Protestant or Catholic or Jewish or liberal or conservative. Public morality didn’t conform to the rules of any particular group. Equality was emerging as a neutral public morality for dealing with each other in society and dealing with government.

I am grateful.

To share my joy, I became a Special Needs Employment Counsellor and Community