Decades of demonizing the left has had an effect. The effects for the most part have been devastating to communities and the economy as a whole. Cutting programs and regulations that help the poor, middle-class, workers, and consumers, while simultaneously cutting taxes for the rich and giving government handouts to the wealthiest 0.1%, has decimated the public sphere. Giant multinational corporations lease the public airwaves for free. They dominate the discussion with the bias of the corporate elite. And, this devastation did not come about by accident. It has been a well thought out plan and very successful campaign by the extreme right.

After the great depression, parties on the left organized. It was a time when practically everyone had joined a workers’ union. Two socialist parties, the communist party, and the workers’ unions got together to pressure Franklin Delano Roosevelt to implement the New Deal. There was talk of revolution across the country. In 1944, FDR proposed a tax increase of 100% on the top tax bracket of the time, which was $25,000 per year ($400,000 in today’s terms). He went to the wealthiest people (the people who had benefited the most from the system) and told them, if they don’t give something back they could stand to lose all of it. They settled on a tax of 94% on the top tax bracket. And, that paid for the programs that gave us the Golden Years of Capitalism. The New Deal was a half measure. It merely saved capitalism. One of the conditions, was for the organized left to stop talking about revolution. And they did, but the angry right began to plot their revenge.

Equality feels like oppression to the privileged. They couldn’t accept the fact that everyone was doing better and that they themselves were still benefiting the most from society. The generation that elected FDR understood the lessons their children never learned. The top tax rate stayed in the ninety percentile though out the 1950’s and 60’s, but by the 1970’s it was in the seventy percentile. The wealthiest generally pay about 30 to 40% less than they’re supposed to, so now that they’re supposed to pay 30%, they actually pay nothing, while still receiving huge subsidies to their businesses and districts, not to mention the bailouts every time they fail. We take from the poor and give to the rich. World War II did not save the economy. Our longest war is the Afghan War. Only war profiteers benefit from war. Even if war helped society (which it doesn’t), it would be the most immoral solution ever devised. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us of the growing military industrial complex, but the Traditionalist and Baby Boomers didn’t listen. Although, the Baby Boomers did make great contributions to society with the civil rights and women’s rights movements, which came out of the more stable more equal New Deal economy. Practically, everything good that we have today can be traced back to the progress of the left, and likewise, most setbacks can be traced to the achievements of the right and the decimation of the New Deal. As we take from the poor and give to the rich, inequality increases. It’s very predictable and easy to understand, unless you’re being informed by those who benefit from your misunderstanding.

In 1976 and 1978, the conservatives in the supreme court, who represent the rich, passed laws declaring that corporations are people and money is speech, making it fairly easy to bribe politicians with campaign donations. Since, we’ve shifted from a Keynesian economy to a Friedmanist economy (or Reaganomics), CEO pay has gone through the roof, while working conditions and wages have gone down for the majority. Worker productivity has gone up, but due to the rollbacks in regulations, workers receive no benefits from their increased productivity. Now, the wealth of the world sits stagnant in the Cayman Islands or other offshore accounts. Giving to the rich has done nothing the right had claimed it would, and yet has done everything the left predicted. The Millennials who grew up with the internet, have not been so easily indoctrinated, and hence the left can be demonized no more.

The decades’ attacks on unions, socialists, and the left altogether, has been disastrous to democracy, civic engagement, and collective action as a whole. In other words, community interests have been forgotten, while private profits for the rich have taken center-stage in national and international decision making in the United States. There is one small, yet not completely insignificant, side benefit to all of this demonization and marginalization. And that is, for the past seven decades the left has had to continually rethink and reevaluate it’s principles and positions, in so much as, now there is practically no extreme left. That which is generally considered to be the extreme left, are merely basic new deal economic policies, the lessons the Traditionalists forgot. What we are left with, are more well thought out ideas, yet there’s still much to figure out as we navigate through and hopefully out of this corporatists neoliberal era. Hopefully, the decades of reevaluation has helped, but if nothing else, it has certainly made the criticism from the right, laughable.
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