Greenberg's Relentless War on the Working Class

Man O'War

I had the misfortune to pick up a copy of the editorial section of the state's only state-wide newspaper.   This is the paper (along with the predecessors from which it was forged) which has had such influence over the policy makers of this state over the decades, and as such bears considerable responsibility for the wretched economic conditions which the state finds itself in.

Only the northwest corner of our state had, until recently, a healthy regional rival paper, and not coincidentally only that corner of the state had a good run of economic and educational performance.   The only other part of the state to grow would be the seat of state government, in part because a growing state government apparatus sucked wealth and productivity from the rest of Arkansas with the Democrat-Gazette's approval.    I have often said we will never have good government in this state so long as the citizens give that newspaper credibility.

So my eye fell to the column written by Editor Paul Greenberg.  It was today's paper but it was like I had fallen into a time warp.   Greenberg's column was almost identical to the stuff he was writing back in 2006.   In a column he called "Still Fighting the Problem" he first equated anyone who objects to illegal immigration as being like those who opposed civil rights for black people in the 1960s.    Apparently, if there are any politicians who oppose granting amnesty to illegal aliens they are "demagogues".

In Greenberg's ossified mind, it appears there can be no valid public policy reason for opposing amnesty.  If you oppose amnesty for illegal aliens, then you must be racist.   If that sounds familiar, just substitute "Obama" for "amnesty for illegal aliens" and you will recognize where Paul gets his tactics.

This is the same shtick Greenberg was pulling years ago.  If the man has no new material since 2006 he should step aside and let someone else waste space in the paper.   Not only is his copy old, its wrong.  It was male bovine scat then, and it is male bovine scat now.    Opposing amnesty now does not equal racsim from the 1960s.   These are different issues from different centuries with different people and different legal circumstances.   His pathetic attempts to equate the two are stretches beyond any rational credulity threshold.  But then propaganda, and that's all he is doing here is using propaganda to demonize people who don't share his policy position, is not meant to survive rational analysis.  It is meant to herd people by fear and/or emotion.   Because of this, Greenberg himself is near to becoming the demagogue he so often accuses others of being.

Much of the rest of the long column uses what I call "The Borg Argument."   He basically says "resistance is futile, you will be assimilated."    That is, we can't control our borders and it would cause catastrophic economic and human disruptions if we did.      This is defeatist nonsense.   The reason our borders are porous is that the ruling class want them to be porous.   They have spent more money and devoted more personnel trying to secure Iraq's borders than they have securing ours.

Those who control our political system make their money hiring people to work the capital they own.   It is in their interests to flood the market with labor in an effort to bid down the price.   Working class Americans have the opposite interests.   They make money selling their labor.   They benefit when the borders are tightened and only those immigrants who can really and legally add some value to our nation are allowed to come here.   Since the ruling class wants the cheap labor, open borders and ceaseless pushes for amnesty are what we get, regardless of what the majority of the citizens of this nation want.

Greenberg does not have to feel the heat with illegal aliens competing with him for employment and depressing his wages.   He just get his lawn cut for less money.   Since the ruling class typically live in gated communities in up-scale parts of town, and often send their children to the best schools, they are not in the least alarmed by the transformation of much of middle America into a third world slum by swarms of illegal aliens.   The don't even seem to care what 10 million more undereducated voters will do to our electoral system.    The rest of us though, have to live here.

In short, Greenberg is sanctimoniously trying to pass off policies that are in the best interests of him and his friends as morally superior to policies that are in the interests of working class Americans.   He wants to punish families who respect the law because rewarding those who did not respect it is in the economic interests of his cadre.    He would pass off disrespect of the law as a moral virtue and paint who insist on the rule of law as immoral.   When the riots start, he and men like him are going to wish that more people felt restrained by the very rule of law which he now disparages!

The economy is collapsing and Greenberg and his ilk were the ones in charge when it happened.  Even in mid-collapse, when more and more honest citizens cannot find a job with wages sufficient to support their families, Greenberg insists on pushing for more amnesty, which will only lead to more illegal immigration.  He wants to expand the labor pool even further, because apparently wages around here are still too high and job opportunities still too numerous!   The man is so myopic, so stuck in the 60s, and so fixated on his own self-perceived moral superiority, that he seems oblivious to the war he is waging on working class Arkansans in desperate economic straits.

Incredibly, immediately after his Bravo-Sierra "Borg Argument" he reminisces about an old commander who told his men to quit wasting time arguing that a job was impossible and instead start getting it done!    This of course runs counter to his previous argument that securing the border is Mission Impossible, but again this is propaganda Greenberg is engaging in, not journalism, and therefore his writing does not have to be able to withstand logical scrutiny.

The mission he urges us to undertake is to "solve" the problem of illegal immigration, by of course, making them legal!    We are wasting time arguing about it, he says, its time to solve it or it will never go away!  That's right, it will never go away.  That's because the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.   We will argue for policies in our interests, and the ruling class will argue for policies in theirs.   Greenberg suggests that it is time to end the war by having the working class surrender to the elites.   I suggest that it is time to end the war by returning this nation's government to its people.

Paul Greenberg ends his illustrious career in journalism as the Minister of Propaganda for the establishment in Arkansas.    As his title suggests, he is "Still Fighting the Problem."  But he sees "the Problem" is that the citizens of Arkansas want policies that support our interests rather than just laying down and letting our betters change the law to favor their interests.   He is still fighting the problem, and if you are a working class Arkansan who does not want to lay down for him, you are the problem.