Deplorable

By Mickey Friedman
December 1, 2016

Those who weren’t listening are forced to hear; those who wouldn’t see to see. And surprise, surprise they are not happy.

Blame the FBI. Or those racist, sexist, gay-bashing everybody-elses who are now everywhere. Because, of course, “I’m With Her” meant being better by far than the deplorables. And everything would have been great except for the Russians who wrested the future from Her hands and sent us back to the deplorable past. Blaming the Bernies.

Easy to be virtuous when you don’t see your own tax-funded immorality. As we tore apart a sovereign nation halfway across the globe. Iraq, irony of ironies, ruled by a bad crazed man obsessed with power. Yet home to universities and hospitals prized throughout the Arab world. Where until we bombed the civility out of it, Sunnis and Shiites and Christians shared neighborhoods and families.

Without a draft to imperil their own, the American wealthy thought nothing about sending the sons and daughters of rural America and the inner cities to fight and die for oil, prestige, or to enrich the war profiteers. Unwinnable as Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. But a nightmare for everyone else.

How long did it take Barack Obama to move from agent of change to salesman of the status quo? How many liberals protested the continued destruction of the middle class? The deportation of not only 2 million illegal immigrants but job after job from America.

The great bailout, saving the lenders who stole more in the blink of an eye than all those petty thieves doing time in our stuffed prison system. Thieves who never served a day.

As the Democrats again ignored the national cry for Medicare For All and let the drug and insurance cartel write the Affordable Care Act, She and the well-meaning assured the people of the progress we had made. Had they been listening to anybody besides their friends, they would have heard prescription drugs were unaffordable, deductibles so high many might as well have given up their insurance.

Bernie got $26 from the people; I’m With Her millions from the corporations who killed the middle class.

So maybe the Latinas who saw their hard-working, border-crossing relatives and neighbors sent packing might not have gone rushing to support President Obama’s Secretary of State … Trump certainly won a lot of those votes …

If you didn’t want to know, you wouldn’t have known that She and President Obama increased U.S. arms sales by 27%, weapons sent to the human rights loving nations of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. A Nobel Peace Prize while helping the world make war. Do we deserve thanks for helping the Saudis bomb civilian targets in Yemen with our weapons?

And, of course, none of the “I’m With Her” folks wanted to acknowledge what choosing her over Bernie might mean to those outside the bubble of success. Who yearned for change. How nasty they were when journalists offered evidence of the morally indefensible conflicts evident as The Clinton Foundation stuffed its pockets as She doled out favors to the contributors. Insisting She was just serving the public good. Insisting it meant nothing that she hid public emails from the public.

They bullied young feminists who flocked to Bernie with nary a nod that She had sold her feminist soul to the Saudis for several million pieces of gold. The Saudis who oppress their women in so many ways. And finance ISIS. Arguing that it was just Her turn to take $235,000 an hour to sing and dance before the corporate gatekeepers who profit off of illness, who poison our waters, who love money so much they will render the earth inhospitable to life. Yes, they said, isn’t it time She made what He made. No wonder so many wanted to make America great again rather than be with Her. Pick any liar other than the liar whose lies you’ve lived with too long.

Too broad for you, take a walk in Berkshire towns. Here in Great Barrington, I defy you to find an affordable burger. Let alone an affordable apartment. The once proud Pittsfield struggles to survive except for the newly fashionable short corridor of culture for those who can still afford diversion. Our small towns survive only to the extent they are interesting places for the wealthy to visit or purchase. While too many children go to bed hungry.

And now bad will get worse. As the new kings displace the old. As the smart deceivers are replaced by the crass. The silver-tongued replaced by those who speak in tongues. Of course, the banks and arms merchants and AT&T and Time-Warner or Charter or Spectrum, whatever it calls itself, Exxon-Mobil and all the conglomerating conglomerates will prosper. Capitalism wins, we all lose.

And that’s deplorable. So please don’t blame the wrong people. Don’t mourn, organize.

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For more information:

On blaming everybody else:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/us/politics/hillary-clinton-james-comey.html?

On the Saudis and Yemen and Us
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/world/middleeast/yemen-saudi-bombing-houthis-hunger.html?

On the Mad Max world that’s coming:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/14/2016-will-be-the-hottest-year-on-record-un-says

“Deplorable” first appeared in The Berkshire Record on November 23, 2016