Bitter?

“We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful.They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient,and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. . .


As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.”


- - - - - - - - - - - Oscar Wilde





Hey Folks -

Bitter??

You bet your ass I’m bitter!! And anyone in the bottom 90% 0f the American populace who isn’t bitter can be pitied, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.

Read Free Lunch by David Cay Johnston and tell me you aren’t bitter. In this country (and three others: Russia, Brazil, and Mexico) the super rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is sinking into poverty.

Johnston writes: “This growing concentration of income at the top is nothing like the distribution of income America experienced in the first three decades following World War II. Nor is it like that found in Canada, Europe [remember those evil Frenchmen?], Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.” According to Johnston, the average income of the bottom 90% of Americans is $29,000 per year, and “the vast majority has to get by on about $75 less each week than it did a generation earlier, tax return data show.”

Why is Obama raking in so much shit about his “bitter” statement? It’s supposedly because he sees himself as an “elite,” because he’s condescending toward and out of touch with regular folks, because he supposedly said people were religious, pro-gun, or xenophobic only because they were bitter over the behavior of government.

This is all crap.

Obama is being demonized for telling the truth. The truth of lesser importance (in explaining the reaction to his words) is that difficult times lead to religious revival, upsurges in “rugged individualism” (often associated with guns), and xenophobic scapegoating. Of course, many people have been steadfastly religious, gun-toting, and/or bigoted for many years, through good times and bad. Pretending that Obama doesn’t realize these differences is self-serving nonsense.

These specious arguments do not explain the establishment’s anger with Obama. They are simply the best hope of distracting the duller among us from the more crucial reality, the reality that the vast majority SHOULD be bitter for their exploitation by the top 10%.

For some time I have been asserting here that everything is presented to us from the perspective of those 10% on top. No recession existed until the big boys got bitten. Everything was looking good – especially the labor market - until the stock market got hit. Losing ones home to foreclosure didn’t merit government help – unless you were Bear Sterns.



It flies in the face of the official dogma, but people OUGHT to be bitter!!

So, are they? Yeah, sure, many are, but we don’t hear much about it. We’re not supposed to. Reality is not helpful to maintaining the dominant order. The truth is revolutionary. Just as the poor who ARE poor as a result of the system into which they are born are supposed to be thankful for the crumbs thrown their way by those who keep them in their degraded state; we are supposed to be thankful for our degradation. It should be enough that McCain and Clinton and the talking heads tell us we are self-reliant, resilient and can compete with anyone. Yeah!!! They like us!! It’s morning in America (just get "re-trained") !!

What shit!!

But, to the actual elite, the top 1%, it's IMPORTANT shit. If too many of us get a true picture, too many of us might go to the window and scream, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more.” That could upset some apple carts.

Bitter?? You bet!! And most of us OUGHT to be bitter.

In my opinion, every election is an IQ test. We shall see whether Americans are smart enough to see and admit the truth and act upon it, or whether we can be distracted from the truth by distortions and disingenuous flattery.

- Uke Man