The Bitter Post

"The bitterest pill is mine to take/ If I took it for a hundred years, I couldn't feel any more ill" (The Jam "The Bitterest Pill").

 

Okay, Hillary McSame are no indignant, no, positively livid that the elitist Barack Obama would insult the salt of the earth in such a way as pointing out they are pretty pissed off about their economic situation and that they privilege single issues, such as "morals" issues, and guns.

It, as the Senator from Illinois pointed out, "laughable" that two millionaires would call someone who just got his student loans paid off "elitist", but, okay, since Butthead Scarborough (ever notice that he kind of does look like Beavis's "smarter" half?) and everybody else finds an enormous amount of hilarity in this, I guess it bears typing some on it.

As someone who was born in Cincinnati at Good Samaritan Hospital, and moved out to the sticks because of CPS (not that SE Indiana High Schools were an academic picnic, either) I can say, without equivocation: FUCKIN A people are bitter. And FUCKIN A, then cling to religion and guns. How do I know?

Easy. Everybody bitches about taxes, and if you are among the dinosaurs of the working class, those who are old enough to still have mortgages, old enough to put kids through school, old enough to have something of a pension (and certainly, their younger, and less secure, brethren) you are pissed about taxes. You pay them, and your roads suck. Your kid's High School football team has state of the art athletic facilities, and your kid's text book is old. Or Art Classes are cancelled. Property taxes go up yet your road has claimed a couple of tires this year. Yeah, people are fucking bitter.

The primary reason that so-called conservatives have held power for so long is that they were able to convince a lot of people whose best interests were not served by the conservative policy, but that said policy was bathed in the rhetoric of "Small Government". The Reagan joke "I've from the Federal Government, and I'm here to help" rings true for the Small Town, not because they do not need help, but that every time the government shows up, it costs them, and they get nothing in return. What they hate is waste, not taxes, and all we get is waste. The corporatist oligarchy gets our taxes, and we pick up the tab.

By appealing to this "anti-tax" rhetoric, you are, in fact, acknowledging that a vast number of Americans are, in fact, bitter about the role of government in their life. In fact, the patriots these folks pander to are bitter about the prospect of democracy in their lives. They are almost born knowing that taxes are theft and that the government never ever helps anything-only robs, and forces us to like it. If you pay taxes, and your roads are excellent, kids aren't going without coats, and so on, people tend to not feel robbed.

Like most unheard and impotent social groups, they tend to put more faith in the divine in an attempt to find purpose in their suffering, with all attended conditions of true believe, wishing it away, deferring their righteous anger to the next world, yet feel that the control of their destiny resides in weapons. I would argue that, in some ways, these things are so totemic to some of us as to constitute the last sembelance of personal control many people have in their lives: That the Gun and the Bible, like John Brown, are the instruments of liberation when, in the ideologically constructed 21 century, they are precisely the opposite. These are articles of oppression. People put so much stock the ostensible symbols of freedom that the underlying politics of their all powerful totem keep them enslaved. The Real Army of God, Blackwater, could give a hot fuck about your Glock. They got tanks. Might makes right. Shut up.

Both of these, like immigration, are distractions from the truth. Certainly, we don't really want the voice of working Americans heard, because even as they knee jerkedly cheer Hillary McSame for calling that Barack Obama an "elitist", we all know that both of the candidates, like Blackwater, couldn't give a hot fuck about working Americans. Indeed, at the end of the day, Hillary McSame is an end proposition: Might Makes Right, and the money is Might. At least the Republican from Arizona makes no bones about his allegiance. His mortgage plan is for Americans to "walk it off". We-you and me- will be helping Bears Stern make the house payment for a while. Bitter? FUCKIN A.

Understanding that all the "anti tax" rhetoric, the libertarian position, is all about the notion that Americans are bitter about government, is crucial, and, since Reagan, has to be considered absolutely doctrinaire. Rush and his callers are, in their particular brand of "small government" are bitter about government. Shit, some could argue that the Bush-Cheney doctrine of aggressive capitalism is an attempt to destroy the government due to this very bitterness.

If you repeat that government is ineffective and corrupt, a certain bitterness builds up about its continued existence. Bitterness, even.

Acknowledging this fact isn't unpatriotic: It's most people's lives.