It is sad comedy to view working class individuals lather themselves up about Mexicans (when in fact more Mexicans are leaving this nation than entering these days) and steam up over Black Lives Matter (cause White Lives Matter, too, they bellow….the best response to this I’ve seen is….just because you say “Save the Rainforest” doesn’t mean you believe “Fuck the Tundra”)…..and these people don hats that say “Make America Great Again”, as if there was a magical time and place with greatness falling from the heavens on the white and shining American hordes. Okay, maybe that sort of happened, but there were quite a few “others” who did not receive such blessings. Some even received blessings like genocide and slavery, but those are pesky details, “Make America Great Again!” Sometimes these people seem just lost, not evil (but plenty are bile dripping Evilsaurus Rexes to be sure). The billionaire knows these people are disgruntled souls to actively mine–lots of rancor, insecurity and lust for authoritarianism under that crust and mantle. The hats sell for $25.00 on the official Trump site, or about 3 ½ times the Federal Minimum Wage, so what a bargain.
You have a choice however: you can pay $30 (of course a bit over 4 times the hourly Federal Minimum Wage) for a hat to support the DNC. This was their learned response to the Trump hat phenomenon. This hat is more costly, but you are paying for the tone-deafness baked in the hat, steeped in its fibers…… that doesn’t come cheap. This hat is blue, not red (crips instead of bloods kinda thing) and proudly proclaims “America is Already Great”. This is an amazing statement when the United States continues to fall behind in so many measures of health and decency as many other nations actually, are….you know…..progressing. Tremendous numbers of children are in poverty, college students often are with no options but loan servitude to get even the most basic education, and of course, there’s no guarantee that health care and the resultant life/death issues won’t rely on the size of your wallet. If this is “already great”, I certainly hate to think what “needs improvement” might be. I guess bloody diarrhea for everyone, all the time.
The incredible arrogance shown by the DNC in its installment of Queen Hillary is so tone-deaf that the hat should be at least $225,000 (that’s what they offered!). To bandy about the boogeyman that Trump certainly is to funnel support to an individual that offers nothing but self promotion and likely continued hideous foreign policy decisions ( but it’s her “turn”) will certainly have horrific results. The candidate that polls much better against Trump is handily dismissed and shouted down in places like Nevada. If you are in charge of your state party, go power crazy…..just refuse requested recounts, 2nd your own motion yourself, and call in the cops to threaten that Bernie supporters will be arrested for Feelin’ the Bern (aka tresspassing in the parlance of the DNC). That is truly a brilliant plan to turn the Berners over to the Hillary side in the general election. The hubris is astounding-I am grudgingly impressed. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the leader of all this: You are a loathsome, offensive brute, and yet I cannot look away.
Dismiss the very real concerns a large portion of the population voices (especially the Millennials, the unfortunate recipients of Boomer and Gen X selfishness-the ones that will have to deal with this dumpster-fire-shit-show) —and there very well could be a President Trump. And there will be nobody to blame but the DNC leadership who have caved to craven status quo. In reality, the “America is Already Great” sign is true for those who are comfortable in their upper incomes, and they exhibit a tremendous lack of empathy (who knows….. maybe they take too much Tylenol).
Trump of course smells like a nutcase, looks like a nutcase, is a nutcase, but he’s a performer and don’t be shocked when he starts to perform like a sane man. It’s all schtick, I’m thinking, and lots of Americans are dupes who have a vague sense that things are shit, but have no idea if it is Mexicans or BLM culprits (Black Lives Matter and/or the Bureau of Land Management). Many think life would get better if we just had better hats and the ability to say horrible things about the race and sex of our fellow citizens. It makes them feel better about themselves, and these are some mighty damaged folks.
But sadly even Bernie seems to be falling into the accepted corpo-paradigm, giving hints he would be okay with being a VP for Hillary. If Sanders has any of the ethics he proclaims, that would not be an option. He needs to show some balls and run as an Independent or join up with Dr. Jill Stein for the Greens. He would be in the right to issue a fuck you to the party that treated him in this dismissive, even fraudulent manner. It was never a fair fight. I for one don’t want a choice between the $25 malignant narcissist’s hat or the one for $30 from the narcissist who is malignant.
Others with similar character have been shown to be frauds. I hope this isn’t the case with Bernie. I truly hope he runs and smashes Hillary and Trump. I am also very naïve on occasion….even mentioning I want this to happen is along the lines of a 3 year old truly believing that wishing will bring a pony home. As far as disappointing frauds, I submit Elizabeth Warren, a woman I greatly admired until she showed herself to be playing the role of trash talking twitter attack idiot. Yes, when someone is wildly immature it’s best to match that rhetoric. At first it was mildly amusing, I will admit, until it was obvious what was up. She didn’t endorse the candidate, who on the surface, has the policy statements that agree with her progressive rhetoric. No, she let Massachusetts go to Hillary, stayed quiet on that, and played the twitter insult game with Trump. I’m sure skilled feuding highschoolers have had more interesting exchanges than those two. Now it looks like she is biding time until she gets the VP request call herself. Then Hillary can claim progressive creds with Warren on the ticket while she continues the path that leads us to more fracking, more Wall Street control, more Big Pharma price gouging deaths. It’s a sound plan, for sure. If you are comfortable in your life it might not touch you, but others will be suffering and there will be a reckoning at some point.
It’s a pivotal election, for the first time in ages, huge numbers have turned out to show that they want a more progressive, left leaning future. Our very survival demands it. If the media, and the Washington power-brokers continue to snuff out the voices that are calling for an extension of decency and empathy in our nation, it is likely that the voices calling for a hellish authoritarian land will win out. The choice should not be $25 versus $30. We are worth more than that.