Fine art of distracting the American booboisie

Ninety years after HL Mencken coined the term ‘booboisie’ to describe the gullible citizenry, the American booboisie have reelected those who indulge in the institutionalised plunder of the US.

The loyalty of the booboisie towards the Republican and Democratic parties is so farcical that it remains strong even when the two parties swap their arguments. Today’s Republicans oppose the carbon-trading scheme that the Democrats claim will save the environment, but this scheme was first touted by the Republican President George HW Bush in 1989 as a “free-market solution to save the environment.” At that time, the Democrats led by Ohio governor Dick Celeste opposed it and claimed   it would destroy jobs in the coal industry.

Barack Obama’s healthcare law also has a similar history. The Republican booboisie who oppose the law compelling the purchase of health insurance cheered when Mitt Romney signed such compulsion into law in Massachusetts during his tenure as governor. They also supported a similar proposal in 1993 when Republicans called it a “free-market solution” for healthcare with a “choice” of private insurance companies. The Democratic booboisie who opposed that proposal favour Obama’s law.

The politicians plunder the loyal booboisie after distracting them into arguing with each other over peripheral issues. Christian and socialist booboisie fall for this tactic and obsessively argue over abortion and homosexuality thus preventing discussion on economic matters.

Blacks too get routinely exploited. Laws force them to pay membership fees to trade unions which are mostly controlled by whites. The government gives universities and non-profit organisations billions as grants but most of this money goes to whites. The recipients of these large grants divert attention by accusing blacks who receive much smaller welfare payments of damaging the economy.

Blacks are themselves responsible for their predicament. They shun black leaders who oppose government grants and extortion by trade unions. They instead get swayed by Democratic Party leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who make inflammatory calls for a race war and convert the resulting rage of the mob into votes. These leaders lead a life of luxury but keep the black booboisie dependent on the government so that they can be controlled.

Among the white booboisie, the women want the government to look after them. After destroying the family system in the US, these women now look up to the government as a nationalised version of a caring husband. Obama played on their insecurities and got their votes by promising to care for them throughout their lives.

For its part, the Republican Party controls its followers by putting on a show for them. The party trots out multiple candidates all belonging to the same faction during the process to choose its presidential candidate. This time, Rick Santorum was the “social conservative” whose job was to deflect attention from the economy by talking about homosexuality, abortion, condoms and the bible. Santorum was otherwise not a serious candidate and ignored filing paperwork necessary for nomination. Rick Perry, labelled the “fiscal conservative,” served to split the vote share of non-establishment candidates who were potentially real fiscal conservatives, but his campaign ended in a comical manner when he forgot the lines he had memorised on reducing the size of the government. Mitt Romney was the “moderate” candidate in favour of whom other establishment candidates retired during the show. The party held back on the candidate usually labelled “strong on national defence” after the Bush administration invited ridicule for creating a colour-coded system to control the collective fear level of the booboisie.

The methods of the two political parties and their bipartisan plundering of taxpayer money resulted in the smarter Americans forming the “Tea Party” protest movement with the TEA in the term expanding to ‘Taxed Enough Already’. In response, the Republicans and the Democrats tried to redefine it as a movement unrelated to economic issues. The two parties then teamed up to defeat Tea Party candidates in the elections and redrew the electoral map to eliminate congressional districts where Tea Party candidates enjoyed strong support.

One group of the booboisie now believes that their candidate won this year’s election and another believes that their candidate lost, but the only victors were the crony-capitalists and the crony-socialists who siphon away billions of dollars from the system.

 The author can be reached at arvind@classical-liberal.net