Wait, Who Exactly Is Coming for You and All Your Stuff?
While the right fearmongers about immigrants, we know who’s really coming for us and all our stuff.
On a trip recently to help after the birth of a grandchild, my wife and I, out for a run, saw a yard sign saying EVERYBODY IS COMING TO GET YOU AND TAKE ALL YOUR STUFF.
For the rest of our stay, we tried to figure out whether the homeowner was being serious or satirical.
There was that pickup truck in the drive of the modest house, but a silly lobster flag had flown outside a year back (leading us to riff on starting a company producing what’s-for-dinner flags). Checking online, I saw an Onion report from 2018 about how members of other races were coming to take your stuff, “especially your really good stuff.” Maybe it was simply a take on that funny faux-news piece. And that “everybody” clearly pointed to humor.
But the sign got us thinking. While the right fearmongers about “open borders,” about the hoards of “others” with various levels of better natural sunblock than you coming to take your job and, somehow, all your “stuff,” the rest of us can see who is coming for you and your important stuff.
Because they’ve explicitly told you they are coming for a number of your fundamental personal rights, for your ability to purchase a first house, for your ability to have peace of mind about being safe in public places, for your ability to retire and live your life with some level of health and financial security.
Oh, and that small matter of your children’s and grandchildren’s ability to exist on this polluted, overheating planet.
It’s the Republicans, who are doing all they can to amplify the predatory capitalism practiced in this country, by undoing the basic social safety net provided to citizens by the New Deal, by calling everything that helps people “socialism,” and by fighting any attempt to protect consumers and the environment.
Republican leaders are at their happiest when they can stand back (and stand by) as corporations and their grinning frontmen take you for a ride, even when you are suffering.
Especially, it often seems, when you are suffering, because then you don’t have much fight in you. Grifters and con men naturally circle when you are living a precarious financial life when you are young and in debt, when you are ill, and when you haven’t managed to save enough for a secure old age.
You can gauge how bad things are for many older Americans by how often you see ads for expensive pharmaceuticals, reverse mortgages, and supplemental plans for Medicare. (Only two countries, New Zealand and the United States, allow television advertising by the pharmaceutical industry.)
Like loan sharks and sleazy car dealers who take advantage of the working poor, some aging celebrities make a good living preying on the elderly, those still working because they could never fully retire, and those who have semi-retired but are scraping by and live in fear of not being able to afford their medications.
An aging television actor makes profitable use of his famous mustache and still-potent charisma to encourage older Americans to borrow against their last asset, their home. “I trust them,” he says, with a twinkle in his eye. “I think you can, too.”
Other celebrities — an old character actor from films, a star quarterback from yesteryear — shill for some of the thousands of Medicare Advantage offerings because, in this country, healthcare coverage has to be as confusing as possible, allowing private companies and various advisors to swarm in on people reaching retirement age to grab a piece of the action.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, nearly half of all U.S. families have no retirement savings, and the median amounts saved by those who do is woefully small. As reported by Nerdwallet, in 2019 the average retirement savings for a couple 55–64 was about $408,000, but the median (a much more meaningful figure) was only $83,000. That’s it. (To put that in perspective, most investment experts say you should have amassed around 10 times your current annual income before retirement.) The Federal Reserve notes that fewer than half of people of all ages feel their retirement savings are on track and that most people do not feel comfortable about their ability to invest or about how much they can pull each month from what they have managed to save for retirement.
The pandemic took a toll not only on lives but on people’s savings. People live longer now (though in this country, life expectancy dropped during the Trump administration, because of COVID and that administration’s malign, politicized handling of it). Younger people, many weighed down by paying back college loans, cannot afford to buy a house and benefit from what is almost always a person’s greatest asset.
So, the purposefully cruel capitalism practiced in the United States is keeping many young people from getting a house in the first place and forcing older people, those in their “golden” years, to cough up their homes for some needed cash.
As the Trusted Mustache says, with that killer smile (like some friendly mobster): “It’s a loan, like any other. The big difference is how you pay it back.” Yeah. “Big difference is” you give up your home and your children see nothing from your estate.
And, sure, you can say that some people outspend their earnings and live too high on the hog if that makes you feel better about how you’ve made out in your little corner of America. But the truth is, tens of millions of people live paycheck to paycheck, working one or more low-paying service jobs, with little or no ability to save for the future.
As my brilliant friend Keith, now laboring as an underpaid, overworked adjunct professor, recently remarked, “I feel the invisible hand of the marketplace touching me, inappropriately.”
The Democrats need to turn this ceaseless Republican narrative about the “dreaded others” on its head and point out just who is coming for you.
It’s those traitorous, fist-raising coup-plotters; those admirers of war-criminal Vladimir Putin and Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán; those “patriots” more or less openly appealing to white supremacists and antisemites; those politicians and pundits gaslighting the public about political violence; those elites who want more than anything to gut Medicare, limit or take away Social Security, and Orbánize your democracy to stay in power forever.
And your personal rights — you know, your really good stuff — your choice to bear children and control your own reproductive system, your ability to marry who you choose, your own and your children’s right to being safe from gun violence in schools and public places, your right to live in a reasonably clean environment, your right to place a meaningful (non-gerrymandered) vote easily and without intimidation — all of this is on the line right now.
Their desire to change a pluralistic democracy into a theocratic autocracy will also take away more really good stuff: our dynamic, creative economy. The party with so-called expertise in business apparently prefers the limited economy of Russia or Hungary (or, say, Alabama or Mississippi). Historically, Republicans run an economy as well as Donald Trump runs a business. Do they have a plan to address inflation? Absolutely not. Just more tax breaks for the wealthy and fewer regulations for their corporate cronies. Are they strong on law and order? Why are the top five states with the highest murder rates red?
But are those demonic, cannibalistic, pedophile, un-American, libtard Democrats really any better? While the mainstream media works itself into its usual dither about inflation and gas prices (which are global concerns and connected to the pandemic), as historian Heather Cox Richardson notes, it’s been only Republicans in the modern era who have left America with massive deficits.
The Biden Administration cut the deficit by $1.4 trillion this year while adding 700,000 manufacturing jobs. Unemployment is at record levels in many states. America’s infrastructure embarrassments are being addressed. Student loans are being forgiven. Prescription drug costs for people on Medicare are now capped and prices will be negotiated by the government. Student loans are being forgiven, helping younger people to afford a first home. Unions are getting vocal support from the president: “When unions win, workers across the board win.”
We have competence again in the White House. Our NATO alliances have been re-established and strengthened. No conspiracies are being spun. No porn stars are being paid off. No furious, incoherent, weirdly capitalized messages are spinning out from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the middle of the night — or at any time. No one is flushing documents down White House toilets. No one is grifting taxpayers by using Air Force One for golf outings or charging exorbitant hotel rates for Secret Service agents.
The Republican recipe for making America “great again”? Pretending to be patriots while disputing reality, badmouthing science, banning books, calling the free press enemies, colluding with dictators, using mob-speak to encourage violence, ignoring the rule of law, and using government solely to reward themselves and punish their enemies.
Democrats are branded “socialists” because they have empathy. President Biden knows loss. He has a fully functioning heart. He is deeply religious. He is the most Lincoln-like politician of the modern era. His fellow Democrats in Congress are largely cut from the same cloth.
Republicans say they care about workers, but they simply couldn’t care less, so long as they have your vote. To get that vote, they don’t plan to make your life better at all; they just plan to feed your sense of grievance toward others. That’s how they put in their hours. The former president has less than zero empathy. He feels no loyalty. He even cheats at golf. And his minions in Congress are just as self-serving.
When did Americans decide they wanted lying, disloyal, cheating sore losers for leaders? When did Christians determine they would fervently back people like the former president or Herschel Walker instead of experienced, socially conscious, truly religious men like Joe Biden and Raphael Warnock?
Republicans want you to believe that immigrants and Democrats are trying to destroy America. But they are the ones who are taking away personal rights and forcing others to abide by their religious beliefs. They promise to shut down social services and everything that binds us as a nation, from providing our children with good public schools to taking care of our elderly citizens and protecting them from corporate predations (and those smarmy aging celebrities).
That particular yard sign must be a joke because anyone with a lick of sense knows all too well who is coming to get you and all your stuff.
