Anyone who blindly believes that there isn't a class war is fooling themselves. The growing ill-will toward the poor, underpaid and uneducated is rapidly building just as much as the distrust and anger at the Bernard Madoffs of the world.
War against the mounting poor and/or unemployed plays out in the grocery store checkout line, as a wealthy conservative mocks a hungry and needy family spending their meager food stamp allotment. It belches up in hateful neo-conservative GOP remarks of "too many taxes," who needs schools, roads and "entitlement" programs; or when Limbaugh barks socialism when what he really is is anti-middle-class.
And this vicious distaste for the lower-class is bubbling through the cracks now in local newspapers, like this letter published in the March 13th issue of The Lexington Herald-Leader in Lexington, Kentucky.
The letter to the editor, titled Letter enlightened, reads:
I would like to thank a letter writer for enlightening me to another Communist tax on the hard-working and God-fearing homeowners of this fine city.
It is an outrage that homeowners are forced to shoulder the onerous LexTran [Lexington's local transit system] tax. Undoubtedly, the shiftless and selfish bus riders feel entitled to this subsidy to and from their less-than-desirable jobs.
Like the writer, I am sick and tired of these freeloaders. They do not look like us, they do not act like us and, let's face it, they are not very clean. As it is written in the Bible, they should repeat how unclean they are when, or if, they are allowed among us. I hope the writer will join me in a Christian fellowship prayer, so we can be delivered from these parasitic riders.
Ermanno Petocchi, Versailles, Kentucky
Mean-spirited... worrisome... vicious.
The letter writer contradicted himself, calling the "shiftless and selfish bus riders" "freeloaders," yet admitted that they are riding the bus to "less-than-desirable jobs" -- but jobs nonetheless. So are they really freeloaders?
Bible-thumping also highlights the evil in this particular letter-to-the-editor, since the author's language is more Hitler—esk than Christian-like.
I was stunned by this letter and the blunt and evil call to rid the city (the world), of not just "parasitic riders," but poor and lower-middle class citizens. There in print; bigotry, hatred and a call to exterminate the lower-class effortlessly flooded out of a heartless soul. And the mix of religion into the letter writer's personal affray makes the mouth-off all the more disturbing.
Something tells me that if the city council cut local transit in Lexington, Kentucky – as Petocchi suggests they should – a waiter may not get to work at his "less-than desirable" job. And Petocchi, eager to eat dinner, may need to wait for a table. Then Petocchi would be upset.
For every editor's letter in America's newspapers, similar to this, there are a dozen more anti-poor, deceptive, spiteful and anti-American people out there who believe the same as this guy or worse. It's the insurgence of a frightened rich, in small yet collective amounts, overly concerned that they might lose a minuscule amount of their wealth. If this keeps up, will we eliminate the country of poor children, just because the wealthy are tired of paying taxes to support public schools that their children don't attend?
There is a class war mounting (in the South and beyond) and the bravery boldness of the instigators is increasing.