I've had a hard and emotional day and tomorrow I have a meeting with an insurance adjuster with whom I forced a meeting by threatening things that should not be the subject of threats and going over her head with the threats. The particular company has a horrible reputation to which this case has lived down. I would have nothing to do with this crap except it's my elderly mother in law...and, anyway, I don't approve of ripping off elders because you can.
So, a bad day and a bad day coming. I don't think I can stay up for the State of the Union.
The rant below is what I have to say about it.
I do not contest that it's a rant but it flowed directly from my associations with the words "State of the Union." Call it a rant, honestly acquired, and don't bother to read it if rants offend you.
The State of the Union is pitiful because between a third and half of the country is crazy and ignorant, not necessarily in that order.
Henry Ford was one of the great American success stories, a hero of modern capitalism.
Henry Ford was not at all a nice man. An anti-Semite, a racist, and he believed he had the right to control his workers entirely, policing their off work conduct long before the days of peeing in the jar.
But even Henry Ford understood that his workers had to make enough money "to buy my cars."
Since the Reagan Revolution, the giant sucking sound, the popping in your ears from changes in pressure, has not been jobs moving to Mexico. It's been money moving from the middle class to the top .1%, which the Occupy Wall Street movement taught us to speak of as the One Percent even though it greatly understates the facts.
As that money is vacuumed upward, the puny social safety net is holding more and more human beings.
More people qualify for Section 8 housing, which the Republicans oppose.
More people qualify for food stamps, which the Republicans have cut and plan to cut more.
More kids qualify for free lunches, which the Republican have cut and plan to cut more.
More people qualify for MedicAid, but Republicans oppose what they call "putting more people into a broken system.'
The federal minimum wage has not been adjusted for inflation in so long that a full time worker can qualify for most of the social safety net....that is being ripped away as we speak.
State of the Union? The One Percent are in fat city, but, as their nasty anti-Semite hero taught, this is not going to work for anybody who can't afford a castle with a big wall and a wide moat.
Our economy is based on a prosperous middle class.
Kill the middle class and remove the net they are supposed to fall into when they get in a bind? Sounds to me like a recipe for revolution.
When I was young and stupid, I thought revolution was a splendid idea. Then I studied the history of revolutions and the bloom was quickly off the rose. Nothing good can come from having another civil war. We are still suffering from the first one. The GOP power base is the Confederacy.
When we complain, we are told that the One Percent are "the job creators" and we are engaging in "class warfare."
Businesses hire when they have more customers than they can serve with their current staff. It's not a decision based on benevolence. In a very real sense, we can look at the economy and say "they didn't build that." The 99% built that.
Jobs are not favors bestowed by a hereditary royalty when they are sufficiently coddled.
Hereditary? Absolutely. Barack and Michelle Obama's life story, Bill Clinton's life story---my own life story--are no longer probable and barely possible. The doors of opportunity are being slammed in the faces of our children and grandchildren.
Access to education is now more related to class than to ability or willingness to work. The most robust predictor of the economic class of an American child is the class of his or her parents and what slippage there is is more often down than up.
And the fuckers who have been the spear carriers in the Reagan Revolution have the gall to claim I don't love my country because I object? I served in the military, which few of them did, and I pay my taxes without complaint, while they pay kicking and screaming when they do pay.
Don't ask me about the State of the Union unless you have a couple of hours and a bottle of tequila.