Up in north central Minnesota the other day, I saw a "For Sale" sign in the ditch in front of a small patch of blue collar recreational land. A working class family had set up a travel trailer as a weekend getaway home -- the Hamptons with wheels, poison ivy -- and without running water.
Immediately below the "For Sale" sign was one of those "Liberate Iraq" signs that were so much in vogue in the redder parts of the country early in the war. The whole thing read: "For Sale Liberate Iraq."
The "For Sale" part was easy to figure. The economy isn't good for working class people. Gasoline prices have doubled since Bush took office. Wages are stagnant. Working people are paying a bigger share of their health care costs. That's money that comes right out of the family's recreational budget. So lots of working class people are selling their recreational land.
A bit harder to parse was "Liberate Iraq." Liberate from whom? Saddamm is dead. Liberate how? Make the surge even surgier?
And how did the two messages relate to one another? I was one more moron looking at one more oxymoron, but I think I've figured it out.
I was looking at political plate tectonics. The Bush economy, grinding hard against blue collar patriotism, has built up pressure on a fault line. It's coming down to "my country right or wrong vs my wallet full or empty," and it's going to blow. Soon.
"They're mad about the way the war is going," reports a man with a seat in a lunchroom full of working stiffs. "They're worried about the price of gas and making their mortgage payments."
Who do they blame for the way the war is going?
"Bush."
These are not effete, college-educated liberals with soft office jobs. These are no bullshit people who spend their days on heavy equipment or down in manholes, maintaining a small piece of the American infrastructure. They end every shift washing to their elbows and beyond with heaping handfuls of pumice.
They don't care about global warming, globalization, or the balance of trade. It's the price of gas, making the mortgage payment, and the mess George W. Bush has made of the war.
It's For Sale. Liberate Iraq, for the time being. But just barely. The pressure is building. And God help the Republicans when the the fault line lets go.
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