We Don't Need Your Stinkin' Collective Good...

Tea Party tax protesters: Don't tread on me... I prefer you sh*t on me instead.

I'll say again that it's hard for regular people to understand the whole 'cut taxes for the rich' deal because most of us aren't rich and don't know anyone who is. So, instead, we get the mushroom treatment and have to rely on TV pundits and GOP propagandists to keep us in the dark and feed us bullsh*t. According to them, rich folks hate paying taxes and shouldn't have to. According to them, we proles should feel guilty for hitting up on the wealthy to educate our snot-nosed kids and provide cops to keep us from killing each other. Just because we're too lazy or dumb to get rich, why should they have to pay taxes to help us?

Thanks to the Republicans and those 'moderate' Dems in red districts who play along, we can't even have rational discussions about wealth and social responsibility any more. We, the middle class, are supposed to just tip our hats to our betters, work our fat asses off and let the rich keep all the money... just like in that good ol' fashioned institutionalized class system we were supposed to have left behind in the 18th century. (American Dream... yay!)

According to conservatives, we should not expect the rich to "redistribute" wealth and be more active participants in the civilized, prosperous society we aspire to be. That's just rude and somehow un-American. Like the gods on Mount Olympus, the rich and their money are to be left undisturbed... high above and beyond the petty travails of us mere mortals. They're like the the rich overclass book-ending the abandoned, welfare-dependent underclass. And we're the perpetually screwed middle class picking up the endless slack in the middle.

But in spite of all that, you can still glimpse the real world that exists beyond the Reaganite socio-economic fantasy. Sometimes you get to hear the unfiltered opinions of rich folks themselves like Abigail Disney, Walt's rich-as-f*ck granddaughter, who has this to say about taxes:

One thing I do know is this: In a far stricter tax environment, my grandfather still managed to accumulate and pass on ample funds to make three subsequent generations very comfortable indeed. And as an inheritor I am here to tell you, the estate tax is not as much of a bogeyman as you've been led to believe.

Disney also talks about how the tax system "incentivizes people like me to do good with our wealth" through charity donations and investments in non-profits that help stimulate the economy and provide jobs. This is obviously more constructive than just shoveling untaxed income into banks and sitting on it. She then goes on to talk about countries that really are living the small government, low tax dream conservatives keep pushing:

I have seen the business environment in Liberia, for example, a country with no tax revenues. I suspect even my brilliant grandfather would not have been able to build a successful business there. I have been to places like Sudan and Congo and know what it looks like when there is no 911 to call, no schools and where governments are disinterested in working toward the collective good.

But there's the rub: That awkward concept of the collective good. As much as Abigail Disney makes logical sense, conservatism itself represents the perfection of belief over logic... so her words wouldn't sway a conservative 'mushroom' for a moment. For them, the 'collective good' is anathema because 1) it sounds communist to their ig'nant ear and 2) they prefer to worship alone in a church whose credo is "I got mine, f*ck you".

A conservative doesn't even believe in society, the embodiment of the collective, anyway (see Reagan's sensei Margaret Thatcher). Conservatives are happy instead to take their own futures, their own kids' futures, and offer them in willing sacrifice to the rich on Mount Olympus... So how could they buy into a concept like the collective good that entails actually giving a sh*t about you or your kids? Nope. No sale.

But conservatives aren't like this the world over. For all the dumb whooping and hollering about 'socialist' Europe, at least Europeans - even most conservatives - understand the socilist-y notion of the collective good and how it's inextricably connected with the conservative-y notion of individual self interest. That's why Europeans get to work fewer hours, get paid more and enjoy the kind of healthcare, education and employee rights that America's peasantry wouldn't dare to dream of.

Instead, we seem to believe there's a uniquely American third way to prosperity - some nebulous synthesis of Reaganism, the "American Dream" and unrestrained greed that'll work for us. But it can't because it's BS. Historical examples of other societies from - Mesopotamia forward - demonstrate there are only two choices: either build a prosperous society around the concept of the collective good or become a failed society that says "f*ck the collective good" and lets poverty prevail for all but a tiny minority. There is no third way. There is no precedent for a society that somehow prospers by dead-ending wealth. There has never been a civilization even close to the American conservative ideal that ever made it to the majors.

I don't know how you'd change American minds. But I'd say asking more rich people like Disney what they think about taxes - instead of just believing the words conservatives put in their mouths - would be a great start. I'd say we should start looking at the idea of the collective good in a positive light... not just poke at it with suspicion as if it's something socialistic and foreign like a soccer ball. Hell, we could still be America and believe in the collective good. We wouldn't have to go full Sweden.