Maybe you should provide documentation instead of "some people's" rumors.
Look, there will always be a small subset of people in any system who will take advantage of that system. That's simply reality. Using these examples to discredit the whole system serves only the purposes of ideologues. There has to be a government, we all (or at least most of us) agree on that. Where we differ is what we believe that government should do, what it should be responsible for. I say more, you (KB, Thrash) say less. That's why I keep referring to "you" collectively. I am aware that King Biscuit and Thrash represent opposite ends of what we might call a Libertarian Spectrum, still at heart they/you are fundamentally anti-government. Or at least that's the impression I have gotten. If I am mistaken forgive me.
I did play the race card, but it wasn't aimed just at Thrash. It's aimed at a media that consistently seeks out the dumbest black person they can find to put on TV for "man on the street" quotes. How often do you see a black professor or scientist being interviewed about anything other than race issues? I'm sure it must happen, but it doesn't seem like very often.
As I have grown older it has become more and more clear to me that race is still a very powerful motivator for our behavior, whether we are aware of it or not. The right-wing media manipulates this very craftily to work in their favor. I wonder if we would have seen the same reaction if Barack Obama had been Barrett O'Hara, Irish white guy from Chicago, but everything else had been the same. Would there even have been a Tea Party? I don't think so, at least not as it exists today. There is anger there, no one denies that. But there is something else too, something uglier. Matt Taibbi writes of this in his excellent 2010 piece about the Tea Party. Most of America does not support them, yet they wield vast political power, far out of step with their actual numbers. They are mean-spirited, narrow-minded, petty, trivially moral, trivially patriotic, racist, sexist homophobes. That is the core of the Tea Party. That is the hateful, bile-filled vein into which the Koch brothers tapped when they created this movement. And I don't believe that ANYONE here is like that, regardless of their politics. Thrash and I disagree on almost everything politically, yet I love him as I have loved few men on the Internet (Craigslist excepted). I think he — and a lot of people — are tired and angry and worn out by a system that they believe has done little or nothing for them. And I agree with them — it hasn't. The difference is in who we believe is to blame. One side chooses to blame the poor, who are in fact the victims of the same forces. You rail against the guy in front of you buying a candy bar with his EBT card ("food stamps" haven't actually existed for a while, I'm told), yet you ignore the fact that in that same time Exxon took you for $9000. That makes no sense.
The people responsible for the current economic situation in the United States are at the top of the pyramid, not the bottom. They have the resources to exert their will. The only entity with the power to restrain them is government. That's why they want you to believe that government is the enemy. Government is not the enemy, they are. Government is us, we elect them, we choose the people who represent us, we have the power to change the system, if only we have the will. That government bureaucracy that everyone hates so much? Yeah, it can be a pain in the ass. But at the end of the day government bureaucrats work for US. It may take some effort, but we can almost always get results. Call your state rep or congressperson and see how fast your problem is resolved. You can fight City Hall, because ultimately those city councillors need your vote. Private companies work for no one but their shareholders.
The so-called One Percent has convinced a large slice of the American electorate to vote against their own economic interests by using social wedge issues and subtle race baiting. So it's frustrating when I see people parrot back their arguments, or cite their "news" sites as valid, or buy their line of bullshit.
*exhale*
Okay, rant over.