Well, it was bound to happen -- sooner or later I would find myself agreeing with the Republicans. As much as I hate to admit it, when it comes to the idea that what is going on in this country is class warfare, I agree with them. Yes. It's true. I actually agree with the republicans. They're right. This is class warfare.
Now you might be thinking 'oh no, what happened to Adam? Did he go to the Dark Side? Did he have a bad acid trip? Is he losing his mind?' Well, I can never be turned to the dark side, I haven't dropped acid in thirty years, but yes, I am losing my mind. Because quite frankly, I can't believe that these thieving republican shills who have been systematically gutting the middle class, ignoring the poor, and servicing the wealthiest on their knees for the past thirty years, have the gall to say that asking the most fortunate people in our country to pay a tax commensurate with a secretary makes them the victims.
It is beyond outrageous, beyond ridiculous, beyond "projection", beyond...words! Because while the Republicans tuck their billionaire buddies in at night, 1 in 4 five children go to bed hungry. While they play golf with their corporate cronies, 55 million Americans live at or below the poverty line. And while these millionaire Congressman are making $160,000 a year with the best health insurance plan in the country, over ten million family wage jobs have been systematically extracted from our economy and 47,000 people die each year because they don't have any health insurance.
This is beyond Mad as Hell! It is the oligarchs and billionaires and the multinationals and the Koch Brothers and money-addicted, power junky lunatics on Wall Street against everyone else in America. Because what we all must remember is that there is no such thing as "bottom up" class warfare. It's like when white people call African Americans "racists." It just doesn't flow that way. And that's because racism only flows in one direction - from power, to the less powerful; from privilege toward the less privileged; from the exploiter, toward the exploited.
Now I'm not saying that a Person of Color can't be prejudiced. Of course they can. But being prejudiced is not racist, unless you are on the privileged side of the power equation. It is the flow of power that dictates who suffers and who does not. It is the flow of power that establishes privilege, and it is location of wealth and distribution of that wealth which distinguishes class.
So the truth is that the bottom 99 percent of this country are merely defending themselves! That's right, we are defending ourselves from the class warfare that has been raging in this country since Ronald Reagan took power in 1981. "Reaganomics," "trickle down," and "supply side" economics are nothing more than class warfare codified into tax law. And if you doubt what I am saying, just take a look at where we are today. This economy, the state of our broken political system, the corrosive influx of money into our election system, is all about a war that the pornographically wealthy launched against the twentieth century thirty years ago. Just look at the targets: Social Security, Medicare, Unions, Taxes, The New Deal, The Great Society. We call it economic justice. We call it a fair society. But they call it class warfare because, and here is the really scary part...they experience it that way!
I've been around rich, entitled republicans, (and yes, they are the ones who feel truly entitled), and they think they deserve all that money, every dollar of it, because they worked hard to get it. Forget about the single mother of three who works two jobs just to keep food on the table and still lives at the poverty line. I guess she doesn't work hard. To hell with her food stamps and health care for her kids, because like they said in the republican debate... let 'em die.
But whatever happened to there but for the Grace of God go I? When did caring about the poor and less fortunate go out of fashion? And why? And most importantly, how is it that everyone forgot what James Baldwin pointed out forty years ago - that we are ether building a compassionate society or a doomed one. Our compassion, our commitment to economic and social justice, and our prosperity are all irrevocably intertwined. It is impossible to be truly prosperous and morally bankrupt at the same time - at least for very long.
But even that is off the point. Because I keep waiting for our Marie Antionette moment, you know? When will we, as Americans, as human citizens of a shredding democracy, shove that cake we've been eating for thirty years back in their face? Because when John Boehner tells us that asking for a small tax increase for the 400 families and corporations who own more wealth than one hundred and fifty-million of their fellow citizens isn't our moment of truth, then please, God, someone tell what is! Because there is class warfare going on right now, but it wasn't started by us.
So here's my question for us all: How long are we going to take this? What is it going take for us to reclaim social and economic justice in this country? How far should we go? How far are you willing to go to send the message that you are mad as hell and you're not gonna take it anymore? Because one thing is for damn sure - no one is on their way to rescue this country. It's up to us. And every time I look over at the clock, it keeps telling me the same thing: it's later than you think.