I think with Covid we’ve got another variant on President Johnson’s quote, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>the LBJ quote about making the lowest white man feel superior to the best black man.
Per Bill Moyers:
We were in Tennessee. During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. “I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” he said. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
And now with Covid we have the least educated man feeling superior to the most educated doctors and scientists. I wonder if they’re emptying their pockets too.
4 responses to “LBJ Quote”
They are. At least some of them. (I’ve got a gullible aunt…)
KC – I am sorry to hear about your aunt. Especially if she’s a person who is not a billionaire giving cash to a billionaire.
Technically I’ve got two aunts suckered by this, one rich and one not. I know the not-rich aunt buys fake stuff [earthing! mail-order probiotics! ‘classes’!] and donates; I do not know whether the rich aunt does or not, since I’m not in regular contact with her (she has kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids; she likes seeing me when I’m local, but the family quota is frankly adequate).
Part of the deal is that the more social support these things can get, the more plausible they look to more people, and thus the more money they can pull out of (some) people, either for campaign donations or “to support” companies like myPillow or for scams that are buddies with the groups. So even people who “aren’t getting suckered” into paying a dime but who are communally giving plausibility to the scams via supportive comments, shares, or just nodding along to the slightly-less-loony stuff that builds into the more-loony stuff, are helping others get suckered into Stop The Steal campaigns funneling money into things that aren’t even Stop the Steal, covid prevention nutrition programs, etc.
The second deal is that there is a surprisingly large amount of foreign money paying for a lot of social media robots and marketing. I mean, surprising that it’s just… allowed? (not surprising that it is profitable/useful to other countries to knock down the US at least a few pegs) Because seriously folks, why exactly do we put up with other countries doing this to our citizens?
KC – I am sorry to hear that. I agree about the foreign countries, too. You would think that is Russia isn’t allowed to own multiple radio stations it wouldn’t be allowed to have free rein on Facebook. I feel absolute freedom is like all the other absolutes, it is suspect, and that it should be curtailed in times of war or crisis. That or shut down Facebook and go back to legitimate non-tabloid newspapers, where information is vetted.