Two igno­rant crack­ers got them­selves arrested today after plan­ning to assas­si­nate Barack Obama.

Law enforce­ment agents have bro­ken up a plot by two neo-​Nazi skin­heads to assas­si­nate Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Barack Obama and shoot or decap­i­tate 88 black peo­ple, the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco Firearms and Explo­sives said Monday.

Assas­si­na­tion plot tar­get­ing Obama dis­rupted — Yahoo! News

Frankly, I’m sur­prised we haven’t seen more of this by now. I grew up in Texas, in a pre­dom­i­nantly black neigh­bor­hood. Seri­ously, there were three white kids in my high school, one of the larger schools in Hous­ton. Until I was ten or so, I thought I was just a really pale brother. But even so, I ran into enough big­oted red­necks to under­stand that the irra­tional roots of racism run deep in the south. It was only 40 years ago that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment had to inter­vene to guar­an­tee the right of reg­is­tra­tion and vot­ing to African Amer­i­cans (which still doesn’t work that well, see Florida 2000, Ohio 2004).

There are still a lot of igno­rant white peo­ple in the south who just can’t accept the idea of a black pres­i­dent of the United States. It is lit­er­ally alien to their entire world­view. I think one of the few things the Repub­li­can party has done right this elec­tion cycle is keep­ing these wingnuts out of the news, sweep­ing real domes­tic ter­ror­ists like the Klu Klux Klan under the rug until the elec­tion is over. But those idiots are still down there, and they’ll still be there after Novem­ber 4^th. What do we do about them then?

I over­heard a dis­turb­ing story at the office today. A woman went out to din­ner over the week­end, and noticed that the waiter was wear­ing an Obama tie. She didn’t say any­thing through­out the meal, but when it came time to pay the bill, she struck up a conversation.

“So, you’re a big Obama fan?”

“Sure am,” the waiter said. “Pretty much believe in every­thing he stands for.”

“Well,” the woman said, “Obama’s all for the redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, did you know that?”

“Uh,” the waiter said, con­fused as to where this was going.

The woman pulled out a ten dol­lar bill. “This is ten dol­lars,” she said. “I was going to give you this as a tip. You earned this. But instead, I’m going to give it to that guy out­side.” She pointed to a guy sit­ting on a bench out­side the restaurant.

“That’s not fair!” the waiter said.

“Hey, I agree,” said the woman, “but you said you agree with Obama, and this is what he’s try­ing to do.” She got up, leav­ing exactly the price of the bill itself, walked out the door and handed the ten dol­lar bill to the man on the bench.

Why am I telling you this story? Because as usual, it shows how the Repub­li­cans have it wrong. They’re ticked off because Obama’s talk­ing about rais­ing taxes on the rich (and cor­po­ra­tions, which despite what the law implies, aren’t really peo­ple) while cut­ting taxes for every­one else. They see this as unfairly tak­ing money from them, money they earned. And from their per­spec­tive, I can see how they’d feel that way. They’ve been allowed to be greedy for so long they’ve come to see it as normal.

Let me tell you a secret. All tax­a­tion is redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. Every dime the gov­ern­ment col­lects from cit­i­zens gets given to some­one else, be that as enti­tle­ments like Social Secu­rity or as pay­ment for goods or ser­vices. The Repub­li­cans aren’t really upset at the idea of redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth (except the Ayn Rand lib­er­tar­i­ans who see all tax­a­tion as evil), they’re upset at the prospect of the money flow­ing from them rather than to them, as it has dur­ing most of the last 30 years.

What Obama’s really sug­gest­ing is every­one pay­ing their fair share. Those who have ben­e­fit­ted the most from Amer­ica can afford to give more back to help other Amer­i­cans up the lad­der of suc­cess. Fair share doesn’t mean a flat tax, either. A 10% income tax hits a school­teacher mak­ing $25k/​yr a lot harder than a CEO mak­ing $10M/​year. The school­teacher would have to get by on $22,500, while the CEO would still have 9 mil­lion dol­lars. Pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion is about giv­ing back to the soci­ety that made your suc­cess pos­si­ble pro­por­tion­ately to how much suc­cess you were able to achieve.

Really suc­cess­ful peo­ple, guys like Bill Gates and War­ren Buf­fet, real­ize this. At the very least, the rich need to under­stand that if they end up with all the money, yay, they “win” but then there’s no one left that can afford to buy their goods. A strong mid­dle class means the rich have a viable mar­ket to sell to.

But in the end, that’s not what this is about. I’m almost pos­i­tive the woman in the story would actu­ally see her taxes go down under Obama’s tax plan. She’d ben­e­fit from an Obama pres­i­dency, but she’s been duped by the noise machine of the super-​wealthy into vot­ing against her own best inter­ests. She’s the real vic­tim in the story. How many more Amer­i­cans like her are out there? How many peo­ple have been fooled into think­ing that the Repub­li­cans are look­ing out for them?