Daniel TilsonWhat if you were part of a strategic planning team tasked 35 years or so ago with helping America’s most profitable businesses and richest citizens avoid and evade taxation, regulation and other social responsibilities historically mandated by government?
Of course, many would shudder at the very thought of being in on such a scheme, but for the sake of argument, think about it for a minute or two.
Your overarching goal might be to undermine Americans’ trust in their own government.
A good place to start would be to get a U.S. president, like Ronald Reagan, to say something like, “Government is the problem.”
Then, you’d want to build out on that theme.
You’d develop a newly interconnected political and media empire to start spreading the news that our government had gone from problem-solver to problem-creator.
You’d want to turn public opinion very broadly against the kind of progressive tax policy that built the American middle class and a strong national economy in years gone by.
Consistently, repeatedly, and falsely equating higher taxes on the rich with higher taxes on the middle class could only help the cause.
Consistently, repeatedly, and falsely claiming that strictly enforced taxation and regulation of big corporations hurts small businesses and stymies job creation would be clever.
You’d want folks to stop caring much about time-honored values like “the greater good” and “common interests,” and instead to adopt a “just looking out for me and mine” ethos.
You’d need to start making greed good.
Demonizing the poor and persuading good middle-class people to picture the poor as “welfare queens” and “wolves at the door” would be good, too.
You’d want to re-brand Medicare and Social Security as wasteful “entitlements” and better targets for reducing the deficit than raising taxes and closing loopholes for America’s very wealthiest people and corporations.
All the while you’d want to be draining funds from public education, public health and other public sectors and services, stretching their capabilities to the breaking point. Then you’d be ready to pounce with front-page headlines, allegations and investigations when performance problems inevitably arose.
You’d want income inequality to keep growing and the middle class to keep shrinking, while blaming their struggles on the dependent poor rather than the irresponsible rich.
By the time anything unforeseen happened, like a president who personified your plan so glaringly that he crashed the economy, you’d be ready for anything; even the backlash election of a moderately liberal Democrat as the nation’s commander-in-chief of Change.
You’d have gotten so far along in your plan that you had a large chunk of the middle class and even working poor white America now believing anything you told them, completely distrusting their government and many of their fellow citizens.
You could take solace, and some credit, for a recent study showing Americans’ trust in one another is at its lowest point since the study was first done in 1972. Then, two out of three people gave strangers the benefit of the doubt. Now, two out of three are inherently suspicious of others.
That climate would make it a whole lot easier to have a defamation and character assassination plan in place to stigmatize any president who came along threatening to mess with the overall plan too much.
Just make him (or her) the other, worthy only of suspicion and distrust.
When mistakes are made, scream about competence and character, undermining public trust and confidence even further.
Relegate any purportedly powerful presidential agent of Change to limited power and reduced effectiveness.
It could happen.
