The majority of the elite

In response to Polls Show That Democrats’ Favorite Campaign Themes Fall Flat With The American People:

You will, of course, be Made To Care about all these issues, because they command majority support among the elite.  The Thought Leaders on both sides of the aisle think immigration reform is hugely important, so it doesn’t really matter that the American people disagree.

If nothing else, the Left wants to use immigration reform as a negative issue, a gaffe trap – they want to keep it bubbling through talk shows and interviews, in the hopes a Republican will say something “insensitive” they can use to pillory him.  That works quite well with a significant portion of the electorate, no matter loudly they declare immigration reform to be a back-burner issue.  

Likewise with “income inequality,” which has visions of Mitt Romney’s “47 Percent” speech dancing in the heads of media liberals like sugar plums orbiting through the skulls of sleeping children on Christmas Eve.  The income inequality crusade is the second greatest open-ended bid for power in modern America (global warming hasn’t quite relinquished the crown yet, and soon health care will give income inequality a serious run for its – well, our – money.)  If people can be persuaded to empower the government to “fix” income inequality, they’ll be handing the Left an unlimited warrant for control over the economy.  There will never be income equality, after all, and even if such a thing was possible, Big Government crusades reliably make whatever they were intended to fix worse.

Income inequality excites totalitarian leftists because, more than any other notion they’ve bandied around in recent years, it makes everyone into a presumptive criminal.  That’s how you control people: get them to think of each other as criminals, so the State can bring the force of law to bear against them.  Income inequality due to disparities in talent, effort, accumulated family resources, or even pure dumb luck invite no coercive government remedies – none of those things is criminal or predatory.  

The poll you cited is encouraging.  It looks like a lot of people are refusing to take the first steps into these rhetorical mousetraps.  I wonder if a lot of it boils down to the inescapable sense of sheer incompetence emanating from ObamaCare.  These are hard times for managerial liberalism.  A government perceived as inept has a tough time convincing people it’s the solution to their problems; even if they’re willing to grant it the moral authority to act, they don’t trust it to get the jobs done right.

But the majority of the elite believes in all these things the majority of Americans have rejected or set aside, so we’re never going to stop hearing about them.  When everyone is convinced that everyone else accepts the judgment of the elite, the polls may shift to the satisfaction of the Ruling Class.

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