Frankly Nancy, I don't give a Damn

The New York Slime whines and groans about the threat Trump posed to "our democracy." The only thing honest in this exercise in editorial hysteria is the word "our" because the only thing Trump threatens is the Demorat lock on power, position and privilege.

Let's face it; American elections are a sordid farce. Districts are gerrymandered to entrench incumbents, a busy network of insects-in-the-grass insure ballot stuffing and miscounting at the precinct level and an equally busy network image consultants and professional bribers work to put lipstick on pigs and shove dildoes up swines asses. To top it all off, a federal constitutional system insures that the majority of anything never gets to rule, except in circumstances so exceptional as to amount to a systemic failure (at maintaining deadlock and oligarchy, that is).

Let's take a step further back. Since 1970 the real income of the American worker has flatlined. In fact, in real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today. [Link]  Since year 2000 wage increases have remained flat for everyone except the top 10% and some slight rise in the 75th percentile.

A closer look. Between 1947 and 1979, the average real hourly wage grew 2.2 percent per year. From 1979 to the present, average growth fell to 0.7 percent per year. However, that is just the average. For middle wage workers inflation adjusted growth was just .4 percent per year and for low wage workers, 0.2 percent -- a virtual zero. In contrast, real wealth for the top 10 percent has soared. [Link]

In terms of net worth, the picture is even more grim. In 2021, the top 10 percent of Americans held nearly 70 percent of U.S. wealth, up from about 61 percent at the end of 1989. The share held by the next 40 percent fell correspondingly over that period. The bottom 50 percent (roughly sixty-three million families) owned about 2.5 percent of wealth in 2021. 

In terms of income inequality, the U.S. lags behind only Brazil and some shit-hole African countries. It is on par with Mexico. Even Russia has more income equality. And all this is based on government figures which we all know are cooked to make the situation look better than it is.

 

And those are just the metrics. In terms of quality of life America sucks. While the upper 10 percent live lives of professional privilege, sybaritic plenty, technological creature comforts and spiritual narcissism, the vast majority of Americans are undereducated, overweight, stupefied by mass media, drugs or religious insanity and totally bereft of any opportunity for civic participation and social validation. If you doubt my diagnosis: just waddle into any Walmart on pay day.

Every president since Lyndon Johnson has been a creep or a scumbag, and that includes Jimmy Carter with all his goodie do-good Baptist yap about learning to lower our expectations. Oh the humility! Imagine when Lyndon is the best you can remember.

As for the parties: same shit, different icing. It ought to suffice to say that almost every member in Congrease is in the top 1% of wealth-hoarders. Even the newbies who from out of nowhere jumped on the bandwagon are in the top 5%. They don't care about you because they don't suffer as you do.

Let's be honest. How much does anyone care about some bloated-tummy starving baby in some drought stricken fourth world country? You look at the picture, think "Oh that's awful." You say to yourself something ought to done about it, and then go and get your latté at Starbucks. And so it was that when, two years ago, people were lining up for miles at food distribution points, Nancy Peelousi took to the air to talk about her favorite designer chocolates.

The word com-passion means co-suffering. Combat veterans have com-passion. Poor people have com-passion. The rich in Congress do not. Cannot. The Repubs say they care about the average Joe and that the way to help him is to feed the rich. Let the rich be rich! This will somehow help the poor by "creating good paying jops" Whatever jops are. How has that worked? Real unemployment is up and what jops have been created come sans benefits. Whoopee.

The Demorats say they too care about the average Joe and that the way to help him is with government programs. Well that, IMO, is actually true; but what have the Demorats delivered? Zip. Lessee Teddy Kennedy blocked a single payer health care bill back in the 70's because he didn't want Carter to get the credit. Clinton ran on shipping jops out of country and shipping Negroes to prison. His welfare reform was about on par with Britain's penal colonization policy for Australia, aka "freedom through work for scraps."

And then came the Great Magic Obambi with a mouth full of hopey dopey treacle and kitsch which the oh so multi-cultural top ten percent scarfed up like pigs at the trough. It made them feel so good to be able to vote for a minority. A minority whose first act in office was to assure bankers that he had their backs and who then went on to continue unabated Republican neo-con wars and torture programs before pushing through a Republican conceived scam to pad insurance company profits under the guise of "healthcare [sic] reform." Meanwhile the flatline and decline of real wages continued unabated.

And then came Trump whose main purpose in history was to complete the progression and prove just how nauseating, narcissistic, self-serving and corrupt American politicians could be.

And some howI should care about January 6th? Frankly Nancy, I don't give a damn

The New York Slime intones "Our duty, as American citizens, is to participate fully in this [hearing] process, by watching and absorbing the committee’s evidence and considering what it would mean for our democracy if Mr. Trump were to run for president again."

In their inimitably oblivious way, the Slime just dropped their pants. The only difference between Biden and Trump is their choice of kick-back buddy. Trump does the dirty work for one group; Biden for another. Neither group includes you or me. Whose "our" democracy? Not mine.

Both parties -- the hydra heads of corporate capitalism -- have connived to destroy the traditional trade- and industrial working class. To the extent that a working class exists it has been rolled into the military. The remainder has been reduced to a sub-proletariat scrambling to make ends meet in menial, brain dead service sector and clerical jobs.

The Demorats ran on a cornucopia of promises to materially improve the lives of the vast majority of Americans who are not in the privileged upper middle class. They have utterly failed to deliver on any one of those promises. And on top of that they have given us gas-inflation, rent-inflation, food-inflation, drug-inflation, medicare premium inflation, and interest rate inflation at the very time Americans are being forced to live off their credit cards. Now, everyone except the top tier is scrambling.

What the Slime urges us to do is to "absorb" the spectacle of scandal and intrigue that consumed Versailles in its final days, as if these had any significance for the common man.

Frankly, I don't give a damn.