A few sheep shots from supporters of OB-A-A-Ama

When I got up this morning, I turned on the TV to get the weather report. As it happened, the dial was on PBS, where Tavis Smiley was interviewing some left-wing author on his new book claiming that the middle class is shrinking because those evil corporations aren't paying them as much as they could easily afford to.

He pointed out that European corporations pay their employees much more, but seem to do all right. Of course, he ignored the fact that the benefits American corporations have traditionally paid are unnecessary in Europe, where the government takes care of health care and suchlike. He also ignored the fact that tax rates are so much higher in Europe than in the United States- in some cases a majority of a worker's paycheck goes to the government- in order to pay for all those government benefits, and that as a result worker salaries have to be substantially higher than they are here. It's a wash for the corporation and the worker alike.

But Tavis didn't point any of that out. He simply nodded and pointed out that there seems to be enough money to pay American CEO's generous salaries. Of course, last time I looked, most corporations had only one CEO, no matter how many employees they might have.

Of course. Free enterprise is evil, corporations are evil, and the rich live to exploit the poor. That's what the Party Line says, so it must be true!

While waiting for my bus, a group of young people (Occupiers?) were discussing how soon all the rich people would be paying them to teach them how to start fires without matches. I find this unlikely.

Then I got on the bus. Seated in front of me were an Hispanic gentleman and an African-American gentleman loudly discussing the folly of a person who rides the bus voting for Mitt Romney (since I wasn't wearing my Romney button, I assume that somebody else on the bus was wearing his or hers).

The African-American gentleman seemed sober. I am not certain about the Hispanic gentleman.

There was no logic in his arguments, such as they were. Just dire predictions about how people voting for Romney would regret it in two years, and how Barack Obama should be allowed more than four years to clean up the mess Dubyah made in eight (the fact that Obama's policies are getting us nowhere, and that he has in many ways made that mess worse didn't seem to occur to the man). His friend injected the opinion that one shouldn't oppose Barack Obama, because God had made him president.

Then came the kicker: the Hispanic fellow pointed out that his college professors had told him never to vote Republican. I wondered whether he always did what authority figures told him to do.

If so, it wouldn't be surprising. The apocalyptic us-against-them class warfare mentality that seems to dominate the Left- a combination of economic ignorance and utterly closed minds- is a phenomenon I got used to when growing up in Chicago. You couldn't appeal to logic when talking to a Machine supporter, because logic seldom had anything to do with why they were going to vote the way they were.

As someone once said, you cannot reason somebody out of a position he or she was never reasoned into in the first place. People who are told what to believe and meekly acquiese are simply not vulnerable to appeals to re-examine the logic by which they arrived at their positions, because no logic was involved.

I hasten to add that this phenomenon is not by any means confined to the Left. I seldom found the conservative Republicans I went to Missouri Synod grammar school and high school and college with exactly prepared for a lively debate on the issues of the day, either. Of course, you can sort of expect kids to more or less repeat back to you what their parents have told them. But you expect better of grown-ups.

But again, growing up in Chicago leads me to temper that expectation. I well remember the interview with an Hispanic gentleman in the neighborhood where I grew up, Little Village, before the last presidential election. He bitterly condemned George W. Bush for his opposition to immigration reform, and stated that Hispanic-Americans, who had voted for Mr. Bush in numbers unprecidented for a Republican candidate, should never allow themselves to be fooled like that again.

The trouble, of course, is that Mr. Bush was an outspoken supporter of immigration reform, wanted to provide a path to citizenship even for illegals- and had gotten into a great deal of trouble with his party because of it. But that's not what that gentleman had been told. So he found it easier to believe what the precinct captain had told him.

"Plantation politics," they used to call it back in the day when the African-American wards in Chicago were held firmly in the thrall of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization by the carrot-and-stick method of granting and withholding patronage jobs and city services depending on how much like sheep voters behaved. The problem isn't nearly as bad, I understand, as it once was; Harold Washington no doubt deserves a great deal of credit for that.

But the practice still exist- and not only in Chicago. I recently had a conversation at a local restaurant with a former Iowa state Republican chairman, who told stories of local African-American leaders who backed off from contemplated endorsements of Republican candidates because they'd been threatened with the loss of government services if they dared assert their independence.

Doubtless there are places where Republicans use the same sort of tactics. But there are few Republican areas in which the voters are economically and politically powerless enough that they're as easy to intimidate into acting like sheep as are the disadvantaged and minorities, or as willing to believe what those who have the power to do them serious harm if they assert their independence tell them to believe.

There was a time in this country when it was the plutocrats who bullied the less wealthy into toeing the line. Today, it's at least as often those who claim to be working for their political benefit against those evil rich people.

Mitt Romney has undergone a great deal of criticism in the last 24 hours for a video in which he was caught criticizing Obama voters for seeing themselves as victims and being dependent on government. The outcry has been very loud indeed.

But perhaps it's been for the wrong reason. Perhaps Gov. Romney underestimates the degree to which they really are victims- victims of those who claim to be champions of the poor and the disadvantaged, but whose political power is absolutely dependent on keeping them that way- and thus keeping them in line.