Perishing as they should
by digby
Mike Konczal has published a fun and informative history of the 47% meme, starting with the Lucky Duckies back in the beginning of the last decade. I’ve been following this pretty closely and I had no idea that it was both so coordinated and so pervasive.
But the basic concept itself goes waaaay back. You can read various iterations of tales of the “idle poor” throughout Victorian literature. (The picture in this post shows our own All American history with the theme.) But I think my favorite example has to be this one from 1957:
Just so. “Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason, perish as they should.” That’s called “unrelenting justice.”
Nobody should think a thing about the fact that the same man went on to become the most powerful Central Banker in world history for nearly two decades. The same decades that saw the system changed dramatically to favor the 1%. There’s nothing to see there at all. Move along citizen.
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