Kicking. Squealing.
Political pundits have been noting that white men are jazzed up about the up-coming mid-term election. Liberals are perplexed that a mostly white male led grassroots political movement would have sprung up as it did and would be as vociferous as it is. They interpret this enthusiasm as a manifestation of racism and misogyny. Instead of understanding that men are acting in their own economic best interests, pundits and progressives would rather paint us as irrational or bigoted; we’re seen as narrow-minded either way. But why wouldn’t a Tea Party or just a group of conservative-minded people get together to battle a President, a Party, and most importantly an ideology that doesn’t want their constituency? While Tea Partiers became activist early on in the Obama presidency, it seems that the fears that activated them come more to fruition with each speech, policy suggestion, and White House-backed economic analysis.
Chalk it up to playing to his base, but Barack Obama doesn’t care about men’s interests even when men are suffering most under this Mancession and even though an employed man has positive cascading effects on society. Because minority men – black men especially – are strictly loyal to Obama for obvious reasons (I don’t fault them for choosing race over substance given Obama’s cultural significance – not to mention that he has at least nominally pledged substantial reform solely for blacks) white men have had to focus on the economic misandry all by themselves.
Despite the fact that 69% of the jobs lost in this last recession have been men’s, and despite the fact that a whole generation of men are less-equipped to find employment due to the female-skewed college graduation rates (57% of college students are women) – which will in turn effect the next generation of men coming down the pipeline – Obama still prefers to focus on providing an insurance policy on womens’ jobs going forward.
The Council of Economic Advisers released this report yesterday titled “Jobs and Economic Security for America’s Women”. The meat of Obama’s position:
The President is committed to continuing to push for an economy that provides economic security and jobs for America’s women.
Notice the language used. Obama seeks to “provide” security and jobs rather than “create” the same. To him, providing jobs is a great thing, but unless we are all to become employed by the state (which would be fine to liberals but which would also be full-blown socialism) someone has to create private sector jobs at some point. The difference is important because a provision doesn’t lead to infinitely more provisions. Eventually funds run out. But a creation can create more creations etc.
According to professor Mark Perry, construction employment fell by 20% and manufacturing fell by 14% (with a male-skewed demographic of 88% and 71% respectively), health care and education industry employment (which is either directly or indirectly propped up by government spending) increased by 4% and is 74% female, and government sector jobs are held by 57% women and increased by 2.3%. Given that almost every job that President Obama has “provided” or “secured” has come from wealth transferred from private citizens to government and quasi-government agencies, those jobs came at the expense of other jobs or investable capital that could have lead to more jobs. For the income paid to those women who found gainful employment or kept their employment, a private sector business didn’t pull in revenue or a private sector employee didn’t receive income. Created jobs were foregone. The cash that was collected as income tax or the funds that were raised through debt-instruments which creates price inflation (which is a silent tax on everyone) would have had a much higher multiplicative effect on the work force than zero-sum gynocentric government jobs or other jobs that exist because of government funding. So when we think in terms of opportunity costs – as we should in order to glean a proper assessment of what we do have versus what we could have – President Obama actually destroyed jobs by focusing on getting women hired or not hired.
The report continues:
An increasing number of women are breadwinners for their families. In almost two-thirds of families led by single mothers or two parents, women are either the primary or co-breadwinner. In two-parent families, with the wage gap and the loss of jobs traditionally held by men in this economy, reliance on a woman’s income in their family budget is even greater…Since women are nearly 50 percent of the workforce, the recession’s economic impacts on women are even more consequential for the economy than they would have been in past recessions.
Here, today, the litmus test for focus on one group’s economic woes is their prevalence in the workforce. But this logic has never been applied at any stage in our government’s economic engineering. When men were breadwinners by a bigger margin nobody argued that, since men occupied an important place in the household, we should continue giving them resources by making them the top economic priority. Instead, quite the opposite attitude existed.
The White House report blatantly focuses on addressing womens’ employment even when that employment becomes important due to a male breadwinners’ drop in income. Rather than focus on getting that man back in to a job, we are compelled to focus on the woman’s economic situation. It is telling that Obama thinks that jobs held by women are the ones that allow this country to live up to the progressive Utopia that he and his liberal acolytes have subscribed to. To them, the best jobs are ones made for women; if those women are also able to reign over non-traditional households (i.e. single parent households or woman-as-breadwinner households) that is an added bonus. A job held by a man who is breadwinner to his wife and two children – all of whom are just as likely to be happy as any post-feminist career gal – is politically worthless to Barack Obama and Democrats. In short, Barack Obama’s goal – the same as that of every other progressive in this country – is to minimize the external costs of single parenthood, bad choices, or flat out unlucky circumstances so that women can have their cake and eat it too – in that fish without a bicycle sort of way. Obama’s values are his mothers.
President Obama has shown an initiative to not care about men’s issues. As such, there should be no surprise or perplexity that men a.) don’t want to vote for the man or the party that he leads and b.) turn out in droves to do what they can to make it harder for him to continue disregarding us by voting for conservatives in the mid-term election. The old cliché is “Dance with the one who brought you”; it’s inverse would be “Don’t Dance with the one who didn’t bring you”. Men aren’t dancing with Democrats this go ’round.
The Tea Party is hardly grassroots, and most of them are voting against their own economic best interests. How many of them do you think make over 250K?
My brother is in his 20s and has a serious girlfriend. I think they would both like to get married and have children soon, but my brother probably doesn’t make enough money to be able to afford a family on just his income. They live in New York City and probably should look into moving to a less expensive area. I think this might be a common problem for young people today.
All the people that I know that have been laid off are men. Most women don’t even mind losing their jobs and enjoy having more free time. The men I know didn’t seem to like being out of work at all.
Well Dr. G, if the Tea Partiers are voting against their own economic self interest, then how do you explain blacks giving 90% of their votes to a party that supports the abolition of our borders, and guarantees that they’ll be competing with peasants from Chiapas for lower skill jobs?
As for the Tea Partiers – and I consider myself sympathetic to the cause – the concept is known as voting for the lesser of two evils. The GOP basically treats middle class people with a semi-benign neglect, or at least not overt hostility. The Democrats are actively looking for ways to screw people like me.
Indeed, for most people, voting has little to do with economics, and more to do with cultural affinities.
Because minority men – black men especially – are strictly loyal to Obama for obvious reasons (I don’t fault them for choosing race over substance given Obama’s cultural significance – not to mention that he has at least nominally pledged substantial reform solely for blacks) white men have had to focus on the economic misandry all by themselves.
Personally, I don’t get this. I “fault them for choosing race over substance”. For men of my dad’s generation, the loyalty to Obama makes sense. I understand it. He represents something great given the discrimnation and abuse they suffered under Jim Crow. But for black men under 50, the loyalty isn’t logical. Can racial solidarity pay the rent?
Not only has this president’s policies been damaging to the economic interests of men in general, but his economic policies couples with his immigration policies have been especially damaging to black men in particular.
Will S. may be right that most people vote with cultural affinities in the forefront of their minds, but that doesn’t make it right. This tendency to be led around by the feelings, which is even how kids are educated in school, is what has led our country to the brink of political and financial disaster.
I mourn the death of logic. I really do. Coming from a woman, that’s saying something, lol.
Terry:
I was going to write more within that parethesis but I didn’t want to divert from the focus of the post. But Obama provides young black men other positive externalities – aspirational qualities, self-esteem, no more victimology – that benefit young black men over everyone else. I won’t state definitively that those externalities outpace the negatives that Obama brings to the table through his socialist ideology, but I still believe that black men have a reason to support Obama that white men don’t have.
No more victimology? When the White House latches on every protest as an opportunity to cry racism? Well, okay.
I understand what you’re saying, Chuck, I really do. And in a world that made sense, what you are saying might be true. I was raised to believe you gain respect by doing respectable things. That the most impactful mentors are those closest to you who model hard work, honor, and integrity. Some guy far away can’t give us that, especially one who really hasn’t lived the life of a typical black man. Still, I get your point and I’ll even concede it.
Sorry if I derailed your thread. Have a wonderful weekend, Chuck.
You’re right that the Tea Party isn’t entirely grassroots, but it has grassroots/Populist elements. It started as such and certain large libertarian donors have capitalized on it (i.e. the Koch brothers) and kept pouring money into it. But the movement started with Ron Paul, in my eyes. And his was a very grassroots style campaign.
And Obama and Co. have made it clear that women will be their priority. Which means that men will not be their priority. The gov’t wants to redistribute wealth – even moreso than they already do – which may have an immediately positive impact for most of the Tea Partiers et al but doesn’t do much for them 6 months, a year, or a decade down the road. The conservative shift is a realization that we have to set fundamental issues in place *now* for success in the future. Obama’s pandering to women is a political ploy used to keep Dems in their seats and to hopefully get re-elected in 2 years. It doesn’t care about anything beyond that.
And its not about making $250k + per year. First, that’s a faulty premise because we all have sneaking suspicions that that figure isn’t wholly accurate. We assume that Obama will raise taxes – either explicitly or implicitly – for people of much lower incomes. Second, putting our nation further into hock (which, I’ll admit GWB did as well) to pay for social programs and to socially engineer this country isn’t going to fly. Such policies affect us by making it such that we can’t get anywhere near the mythical $250k figure you bring up. It makes it such that we *have* to support Obama’s socialist economic policies. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby Obama’s policies are employed to support middle class people and lower which thereby creates a teeming mass of people who fall into those categories.
Terry:
You’re not derailing by any means. I’m not even saying that my point is entirely correct; I’m just saying that I can see how black men would have a better reason to support Obama than white men. Honestly, white men have no reason to support Obama. I find it off-putting, then, when white men are characterized as either racist, vitriolic, or insane for espousing their own economic self-determination. Which, to my mind, is what the NAACP tried to do with their recent report on Tea Party racism. Haha, see I’m derailing a derailment of my own thread, so its all good.
Have a good weekend.
Chuck–
Terry’s right that this is horseshite. They was what many whites wanted to see in his election, and was rather what he ran for office on, but it’s not how he’s acted in office, nor is it what he’s believed. Read Steve Sailer’s (short) book length review (it’s a free ebook called “America’s Half-Blood Price”) of Obama’s quasi autobiography “Dreams From my Father; A Story of Race and Inheritance”. Obama has worked to make himself more of a black race man all his adolescent and adult life. He only pretends to be a united to get liberal and young whites to vote for him.
*to be a uniter
The President is committed to continuing to push for an economy that provides economic security and jobs for America’s women.
He noted that we had an economy that provided economic security for America’s women before 1970, when a man could earn enough to support a family all by himself…
Many American blacks envision Obama as their Mugabe or Malema, not that they’ve ever heard of those two. This is a black world!
One planet, two words: walking through the city, I passed by some angry-sounding black demonstrating, ie, ranting into a loudspeaker. Two cops stood by bored, everyone else passed by ignoring him. At one point I’m making out him shouting “blah blah grievance blah blah Black Man in America!”
I thought “what, we’re still not giving you enough stuff?”
Because minority men – black men especially – are strictly loyal to Obama for obvious reasons
I supported Obama in the primaries after Iowa because I wanted to smite the Wellesley Queen and damn it, the woman’s pandering made me sick, and the entire idea of watching her campaign fail in the general election at the hands of a slick, Repubican media machine induces nightmares. Hope and change got me on board, and in a drunken stupor, I thought a DNC controlled Congress would mean we’d get revenge on the Republicans. At minimum, Amtrak got some additional funding, but the stimulus didn’t pan out as planned, the healthcare bill turned to mush, and quite frankly, I thought that my friends* and I would luck out with some government jobs at the state and local level.
*One white male friend presumed work at a transit agency or planning agency to build transit oriented developments. Another white male friend presumed work at the EPA, and one white female friend just wanted any work somewhere that paid better than her private sector gig. Like the female, I wanted to be housed somewhere in the bureaucracy too. Admittedly, even without the pension and health benefits, I’d take the generous vacations, something sadly, only civilized employers in the private sector offer.
guarantees that they’ll be competing with peasants from Chiapas for lower skill jobs
To a certain extent, the black elite could care less about those lower skilled jobs, as those jobs are beneath them from their perspective.
Obama has worked to make himself more of a black race man all his adolescent and adult life.
Which leaves the question of why would he do that given that he grew up with whites in a upper class existence? It’s admittedly the one thing that bothers me about him, especially when he blew off selecting white on the census forms…
Regardless, to a black male, while there could be a black President, it doesn’t really change the day to day reality for him that colours his views. So as long as he sees aggressive cops, poor neighbours in questionable housing (and no other white people in the same situation), and poorly and administered services, then he’ll conclude that nothing has changed, and the system is designed to keep black people oppressed and down.
I thought “what, we’re still not giving you enough stuff?”
To some no, because if they see that you’re living in a comfortable suburban home, while he lives in the ghetto, then by his standards, you haven’t given him enough.
health care and education industry employment (which is either directly or indirectly propped up by government spending) increased by 4% and is 74% female
So the plan to fix unemployment for men is to basically just dump the nurses and allied healthcare workforce and the teachers? Theoretically, while it can decrease government expenditures, the problem is that you’ve destroyed consumer demand and increased foreclosures which is what the economy doesn’t need right now. As resentful one may seem, the least prudent thing to do is to go firing these workers. Pay cuts are probably a better option for austerity, but firing them just makes the situation worse at the margins.
The construction workers sadly aren’t coming back for a while until the housing stock is exhausted, and manufacturing needs some demand to sustain itself in certain sectors. Ultimately, one could argue that the easiest way to deal with the unemployed blue collar men is to find somewhere to dump them in the employ of the government, and I don’t see where there’s room for them except in transit agencies and departments of transportation and other infrastructure sectors of the government. The second best option is to pay firms to keep their workers on their payrolls similar to current German employment policy.
is to minimize the external costs of single parenthood
Given that the alternative to single parenthood is women stealing from men directly with false promises of love, I’d rather bribe the single mothers to go away than to have women lie to their husbands and trick them into becoming wage slaves on falsehoods. Acceptance of single motherhood is probably the second best thing that happened to males followed by female middle class employment.
because if they see that you’re living in a comfortable suburban home, while he lives in the ghetto, then by his standards, you haven’t given him enough.
Then Michelle Obama is no better than this guy. And she was given Princeton, male-work Chicago jobs with insane salary, and not the best piece of real estate in the country. Nothing but our complete annihilation will make these people happy, right? either that, or our calling out their shit-test.
Acceptance of single motherhood is probably the second best thing that happened to males followed by female middle class employment.
In a roundabout sort of way, I agree with you. The present situation… clarifies.
Michelle Obama
Arguably, the woman is a bit of a megalomaniac who feels that the only reason she hasn’t done better is because of racism. Of course, I suspect even with her high status, it’s not good enough for her because there’s a billionaire out there with more than her.
Nothing but our complete annihilation will make these people happy, right?
I’ve jokingly alluded to the fact that the ideal place for black people is a flat society where nobody is richer, leaving nobody to envy. Oddly, basic tribal structures operate with similar features, except for the chief who happens to be the richest person.
Regardless, I think that there are some black people who are going to extract as much as possible until the shit test comes, and for others, they will always view whites as “rich” and as “oppressors”. Admittedly, there’s a part of me that wonders if such a viewpoint exists with blacks that live in places with poor whites, or is it a symptom of living in a place where the whites occupy high ranking positions with few poor whites to serve as a contrast. Or does it become a situation where the “poor whites” are okay, but the rich ones are the enemy?
David,
I think when feminists went on and on about how difficult it was for women to live under the patriarchy they forgot that waking up next to the same women every morning and going to work the same job for years and years probably wasn’t always all that much fun for him either.
Hi Terry,
Personally, I don’t get *your* comment, LOL.
You say that you understand the Black Men of your dad’s generation in supporting Obama, on the grounds of Jim Crow, etc. To me, this is ridiculous, because your dad and my grand dad certainly knew politicians who were far more effectual for Black folk – Ike Eisenhower, Harry S. Truman and Lyndon Baines Johnson immediatetly come to mind – than ANYTHING Obama has done for Black votes. Indeed, I see your comment as behind-backwards – that I see Black Men of my generation and younger voting for Obama as making a heck of a lot of sense, for generational reasons and them never having tasted the kinds of Jim Crow discrimination your dad and mine dealt with up close and personal. Those oldheads should look at Obama askance, and rightly so.
As for why Black folk don’t look at illegal immigration and so forth, my recent battles with RR over at my blog have caused me to give this matter a goodly bit of thought. I plan to address that in due course there, so stay tuned.
Chuck, this is actually an excellent post, and I plan to pickup where you left off very soon. Stay tuned…
O.
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I think when feminists went on and on about how difficult it was for women to live under the patriarchy they forgot that waking up next to the same women every morning and going to work the same job for years and years probably wasn’t always all that much fun for him either.
And that’s why I advocate for all women to go to work, for affirmative action to give these women jobs that pay well, and for beta males to avoid women and spend their free time and income on themselves so they won’t have to have deal with the same ugly woman for years. Leave the women for the alpha males, cats, and themselves.
Dave Alex,
Just curious as to why you’re avoiding me – rather odd given that we’re both Black, LOL. My readers would like to get to know you a bit better. Come on over! No one’s gonna bite ya.
O.
Umm, in the effort to be fair, I should note that Barack Obama doesn’t really care about *anyone*. He’s GWB with darker skin.
MaMu:
of course he cares about *someone*. he has to in order to get re-elected. if you mean that he doesn’t actually care, non-politically, maybe. but that makes him no different than anyone else.
Please don’t remind me.
I’m currently opening my purse for the (male)remodelers: painters, carpet-layers, tilers, window installers, mirror installers, plumbers, etc. I’m doing my part.
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Cannon,
I think this video is supposed to be tough in cheek, but unfortunately there may be a lot of truth to it. I do think many of Barack’s black supporters only see the fact that he has power as important. I remember reading about George Washington declining a second term as president because he didn’t want any man to have too much power. He went home and lived out his live on his farm. It takes a certain way of thinking and personal restraint to be like that.
tongue in cheek
Terry & Chuck,
As far as black men supporting Barack because he is a black man, I really don’t blame them much for that. I think Chuck gave good reasons why they would do this, mainly because it is inspiring to them. It was the same situation with Kennedy, the first Catholic president.
Hi Chuck,
I’ve been meaning to address what you said above more specifically back on my blog and hopefully I’ll be able to do that before the week is out because I want to get to it before the elections next week; but in the meantime, here’s what I recently wrote on a related matter:
http://theobsidianfiles.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/what-message-does-barack-obama-send-to-black-men-boys/
Feel free to holla back
O.
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