I did everything right and all I got was…
Hillary supporters just don’t get it.
When I criticize the policies, practices and pandering of their candidate, I am doing so as a pissed off member of the 99 percent. This isn’t about ragging on Clinton, although there is plenty to criticize. And it goes way beyond Bernie vs. Hillary.
No, it’s about me being tired of people voting for another politician who doesn’t care a bean about the majority’s struggle to survive in this dead democracy that gives all the benefits to the laziest among us.
This election is about so much more. It’s about how decades ago we were sold the false concept of the American Dream. This construct was designed by the powerful to keep the rest of us content with our meager lot. It goes something like this: Do well in school, go to college, work hard, stay focused, don’t get in trouble and…BOOM! The American Dream can be yours, too.
I call bullshit.
I have done all of the above and more. Yet I can’t seem to find this elusive “American Dream” that others speak of in such glowing terms.
But what I do have is tens of thousands in student loan debt that I am scheduled to pay off at the ripe age of 57. And if I’m being totally honest, I will only continue to pay back those student loans if my health holds out, which is questionable since I can’t afford to go to the doctor on a regular basis due to prohibitively high deductibles and co-payments.
My story is the story of far too many in this country. And we’ve settled for far too long. That’s why the argument that Bernie supporters should somehow settle for a candidate who will only bring this country more of the same is maddening.
We’ve had enough of the status quo. No, thank you. We’re full.
What Hillary supporters can’t seem to grasp is Berners don’t want more of the same. We’re tired of politicians whose only allegiance is to their Wall Street masters, not the American people. We’re tired of the duplicity, lip service, dishonesty, greed and immorality of establishment politicians, both Republicans and Democrats.
And we’re really tired of being labeled pie-in-the-sky idealists who are unrealistic in wanting more for themselves and their fellow human beings.
I’d rather shoot for the stars than stay in the gutter, to paraphrase (and butcher) an Oscar Wilde quote.
Hillary is one of “them,” someone who has reaped massive financial rewards for relatively little effort. And she has done it off our backs.
All one need do is look at the $225,000 she got from Goldman Sachs for a one-hour speech. If Hillary supporters were honest with themselves, they would admit that such a large payout for so little work is ludicrous.
And then to turn around and have us bail out her Wall Street friends after they ran the economy in a ditch is just appalling. And those friends should be in jail. Instead, they got a verbal warning from Clinton when she told them to “cut it out.”
That’s like telling someone he should ease up on the gas as he veers toward the edge of a cliff.
But that’s exactly what happened and is likely to happen again if she is the Democratic Party’s nominee. And like last time, we won’t have a say in the matter. We will just have to fork over our wallets, pensions, savings accounts, and equity in our homes to the greedy do-nothings who sponge off the rest of us.
Now is the time to make a change — a sweeping, get-out-of-the-way transformation — to our political system. Bernie Sanders is the catalyst. But even without him, our movement to wrest democracy from the claws of the oligarchs will move forward.
We are not content with settling anymore.
