by Steve Stav
Just as the old saying about a liberal is just someone who hasn’t been mugged yet, logic would seem to dictate that the Right’s foot soldier-regiment on this issue would be in a constant state of flux. Reason would suggest that the dum-dums, as they experience their own health care crises, would re-examine their positions. But, no… that’s when the blame-shifting comes in, the total ignorance of both recent and distant U.S. history kicks in. It’s when religion kicks in – how else could blue-collar workers be persuaded to be anti-progressive, anti-reform? A major difference between blue collar people in the U.S. and Europe: religion’s fairly recent acquisition of the U.S. working man – at the behest of the Right (and at the top of the pyramid, corporations).
The question is, what will it take for people to realize they’re being had? I think many on the Left realize it, they’re just on the side of lesser of two evils. There’s a chance, a tiny chance for reform on the Left. On the right – status quo, 1959. They actually think they can return the country to 19 freakin’ 59.
In the 41 years I’ve been alive, we’ve had a Democrat in the White House for 13. And Clinton kinda doesn’t count. Years and years of de-evolution and destruction for the sake of a dollar. We were close to legalizing Mary Jane more than 30 years ago, and now we’re back to debating it again now that people are murdering people over it. Health care went from almost ability-to-pay (when I was born) to an outrageous scam, the legal definition of racketeering. Poor Jimmy Carter said, Hey, we need to reduce our dependence on Arab oil, we need to get with alternative energy sources, put on a goddamn sweater – and everyone just chuckled at him and Billy Beer and voted for Satan’s pawn in 80.
And where are my parents’ generation, the generation of Civil Rights reform, of the Summer of Love, of Make Love, Not War? Nowhere. Everywhere. Pardon my language, but my parents’ generation is a bunch of worthless fuckin’ losers. Or winners. The last winners; a generation killed themselves trying to provide a better life for their kids, and those spoiled kids then turned around after the 60s and got self-indulgent, careless and greedy. They’re the last generation who enjoyed a gasp of job security, of family wages, of affordable homes, of affordable food and gasoline. And they know it, just like they know these little desert Vietnams are blood-for-cash scams. And they don’t dare raise a finger against corporations or the wars and other congressional BS that help fund corporations, because everyone’s retirement is tied up in the stock market, tied up in corporations, tied up in the goddamn insurance industry. Worthless fuckin’ sell-outs, I hope they burn in hell. It’s my generation’s turn to try to make something happen, and you look at the crowd during the State of the Union: we’re being held back by a bunch of old good-for-nothing politicians who won’t go away or die; by an Emperors-For-Life Supreme Court who are so collectively, embarrassingly old, and who have been removed from reality for most of their lives. Christ, the Right almost commits seppuku when they can’t prevent a young-ish Latina woman from being sworn in.
A fine mess we’re in.
