Years ago, my sister C-Money taught me an extremely painful lesson. We were excited about a visit to the candy shop, and started going over how much we could score with the money we had. Crystal showed me her nickel and then I held up my dime. She offered a trade, hinting that her nickel was bigger and better, and acting like she was doing me a favor by even entertaining the idea of a trade.
I fell for it, damn it. And then had to watch as my sister went forth and purchased twice as many yummy sour sticks as I could! When I fussed about it to my father, he told me that my dumb ass needed to learn about money.
Tough love, but Lawd has that lesson paid off in life.
Fast forward to now and the tough lesson millions are fixin to learn through the GOP tax gut. A bunch of millionaire Congresspeople are offering folk a nickel in exchange for our dimes.
There will not be a trickle down bounty. No significant job creation will come from tax cuts for the rich and corporations. The time limited scraps folk will get in their refunds will not offset the massive cuts to services and programs triggered by loss of revenue.
I grew up in the 1980s. It sucked, and I was blessed to live in a middle class 'hood...still sucked. Voodoo Economics ushered in extreme poverty, unemployment, a farming crisis that literally destroyed entire communities, rampant corporate and bank fraud, and a cultural bitterness that gave Gen X our attitude problem.
I watched the best minds of my generation produce some of the most amazing music and art inspired by despair, anger, the exhaustion of endless hustling, crime, violence, depression, and a well earned hatred of the rich. And I watch Donald Trump exploit every single precious loophole to emerge unscathed despite a solid decade of failure, corruption, predatory sexual behavior, and gaudy home decorating.
So, here we are...
...fixin to repeat the mistakes of the not so distant past.
All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
2 comments:
Yeah, there are a lot of attempted repeat atrocities in the works just now. We ought to know better by now.
And some of us do.
But what can we do?
Well, most of the worst legislative and regulatory malfeasance can be undone when we get our turn at the controls again, although not all.
Meanwhile we gotta keep pushing back on these legislative crimes and stop the ones we can. We're actually doing well at that, and as of this morning I still have health insurance.
A blogger I read who calls himself Driftglass has been on a tear about not letting the Republican voters run away from this crime scene like they did after the Bush administration when they all donned funny hats and picked up Gadsden flags made in China and claimed to be "constitutional conservative independents" who had never even heard of George W. Bush, and therefore weren't responsible for the damage the guy they voted for twice had done.
He says that this time we need to burn the lifeboats and make them own this for a long, long, time.
And as the youngest child myself, I'm right there with you on getting had by my older siblings. The upside of that was that it made me want to learn to read when I was four, which may be the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. I mean besides being born healthy, white, and male in California in 1960.
At least I try to tell the truth about that.
Thanks for posting again, I always enjoy reading what you write.
-Doug in Oakland
I know it doesn't feel like it, but we're making progress.
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