Okay, so why do righties fear, hate and distrust government, but trust big business implicitly?

Hasn't big business brought us the dotcom bubble, the housing bubble, the Wall Street debacle, the California electricty and Enron problems, and now the BP oil spill?

You'd think their idiot rank-and-filers would at least start to get some inklings of the truth...

However, there are two core reasons; Greed and stupidity.

You see, these folks have convinced themselves that what's good for business is good for America, and that (in an absurd irony) all Americans collectively share in the profits of these businesses. The thought process then goes to the logical conclusion that if all these businesses are completely fucking wealthy, every other person in America will also be fucking wealthy.

It's like the lottery addict mentality - except the lottery addict might actually win.

answer, because republicans know how to make money. Now the people I've asked were dirt poor and somehow they thought that if republicans and large greedy corps. make money they will too. It's absolutely inane foolish thinking, but that's what many of them say. So many of the citizens in this country are so damn ignorant it never ceases to amaze...

but not the military part. What goes on with the defense contractors is at least as corrupt and wateful as anything else wrong with the government.

They believe slogans and catchy jingles: "government IS the problem", "law'n'order", "better living through chemistry", "things go better with Coke", etc. So naturally, they fall prey to every business scheme to vilify government and give business a free pass.

And, yes, the persistence of the belief in Reagan's 'free markets,' 'small government' crap in the face of all the evidence is astonishing.

the start of the union movement and how union workers demanded a fair wage based on a standard work week instead of allowing businesses to pay workers whatever the owner thought the work was worth with no thought on how many work hours the person put in. Pretty much before unions a persons pay scale was done by a 7 day period or a monthly period unlike today where pay is based on hourly wages. All Reagan did was repackage the pre 1929 message of the con party.

It will take a complete change in perspective before they see that they've been used & lied to. Unfortunately, it will probably take a some pain in their personal life before that happens.

they don't have the common sense God gave a billy goat. They've been repeatedly told -- by their parents, by various stupid presidents, by churches, etc. -- that big business is "good" and government is "bad" and they had better never, ever question that, even when they were being royally screwed over by big business. Really very sad.

Shouldn't they be in favor of letting the corporation(s) handle it? Really makes no sense to me. :crazy:

government. Why do you think they mess themselves trying to privatize every thing.

If Bigco cheats them, they can just sue. Bigco's "reputation" will suffer and no one else will buy from them, putting them out of business. That's always their answer. If it went their way there would be many more lawsuits, yet they don't like lawsuits and want tort reform. But if they had their way, lawsuits after the fact of the damage would be all that was left.

sold to them by corporate media.

The government hasn't had a good salesman since FDR and his fireside chats.

...and was used after World War II, during the Cold War, as a way of training people psychologically to say that the free market-and by extension, business in general-is good, and that a government that is devoted to social welfare is bad.

We have seen hundreds of posts right here the last few days promoting fear and mistrust of government, and trust in corporations. Those posters have been as determined and even more persuasive than any right winger or Republican you will ever meet.

It's American business advocates in general, whether they be Republicans, Democrats, or Independents.

Yes, we have seen some of the worst promotion and apologism for the corporate powers on this very site just recently. It's insane, isn't it?

Democrats advocating regressive taxes, corporate bail outs, privatization, austerity measures, police state crackdowns on various people, "free market" ideas and apologies for Wall Street and corporations do far more damage than Republicans ever could.

The line of argument is always the same - we must be "practical" and "realistic" because this is "the way the world is," we have to "face facts" even though we "may not like it." If we refuse to knuckle under to the "experts" and to the people "who know a lot more than you do," we are mocked and ridiculed for being dreamers or idealists, or for "having an agenda," or for being unpopular "losers" on the "fringe."

I am amazed that more Democrats are not resistant to this bullying that controls the discussion all of the time.

Over the last few days we have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of Democrats expressing "fear, hate and distrust of government, and trust in big business implicitly." I think we have gotten a glimpse behind the curtain, as it were, around the BP disaster, and that this goes a long way toward explaining all of the intra-party bickering as well as the relative lack of success by the political left.

It was becoming more and more clear that we have many libertarian and privatization advocates here, and everywhere within the Democratic party. Of course, that reveals the lie about the exaggerated and absurd partisan split, and the idea that we are to see all politics as being about Democratic versus Republican, which are supposedly at opposite poles of the political spectrum.

Whenever the Democratic party is being revealed to not be that different from the Republican party, there are a rash of posts that try to reinforce and recreate the spit in people's minds again. Otherwise, people might see through the ruse, band together, rise up and overthrow the rulers.

it would be very difficult to teach those folks enough to know for themselves who to trust. They just pick a leader and follow.