Double-Speak

Stephen Marche, a writer for periodicals, is disturbed by a "war on youth". During a recent radio interview, he suggested that issues of class were irrelevant in the current state of the U.S. economy. He does not begrudge people being exorbitantly rich and not paying more taxes. He does seem to begrudge people who have worked all their lives for wages reaping the benefits of retirement. He also seems to begrudge a social security network which allows parents to support their unemployed adult children.

Mr. Marche's views represent the indoctrination of Reaganism. Rather than looking at the basic flaws of contemporary corporate capitalism and the Reaganite fantasy of mass entrepreneurship, Mr. Marche and others have turned their ire inward toward real people who need a social security network. In other words, kick the needy. It's an old ploy of conservative politicians. The people aren't broken. It's the system, stupid.

Equating the needs of a 70-year-old and the needs of a 21-year-old is simply stupid. Denying the progressive nature of retirement systems and medical care for the aging is barbaric. Blaming those who have fought and worked to establish and maintain these systems for their success at advancing medical technology and improving the general quality of human life is contrary to human self-interest. 

Trying to maintain the legitimacy of any unjust system, like Reagan economics, inevitably leads to double-speak. The equating of freedom with unscrupulous economic rape through war and outright algorithmic theft leads to a corruption of ideas and language about social justice. To accept that 1% of the population is entitled to live lives of immune aristocracy while the 99% descend into class or age-ist warfare is to accept capitalist Social Darwinism. You can wrap yourself in born-again religiosity or pretend great compassion for the poor unemployed, but the acceptance of the status quo of the haves and have-nots at the same time is double-speak, also known as hypocrisy.