Via Undercover Blue at Hullabaloo, Rep. Ilhan Omar:
I started attending political caucuses with my grandfather, who cherished democracy as only someone who has experienced its absence could.Go on, just try to read that out loud without choking up. I dare ya.
Republicans believe that wrecking the fabric of the country is their only hope of staying in power, and they’re right. If working-class whites abandon them even a little bit, they’re toast.So all we can do is try to crush them. What other options are there? Reactionary American whites, as always, won’t give up their power unless it’s taken from them by either a literal or figurative war.Liberals need to be as Lincolnesque as possible¹ in this endeavor—we don’t have to win the votes of unrepentent bigots, just the fretful fence-sitters—but we also need to be Lincolnesque in our commitment to winning America’s latest race war.²¹That is, with malice toward none and charity for all.²That is, with an iron determination to win.
Yeah, it's an isolated anecdote, although it explains and confirms a lot of things we've been seeing over the past year, so anyway:
I was in Kroger this morning, in a white, well-off section of Louisville, where I noticed that there were no baggers.
The poor cashiers were struggling to handle long lines of shoppers, backed up because the cashiers had to do the bagging, too. And because on the busiest grocery shopping day of the week, there were only four checkout lines open.
Recently this Kroger had closed four checkout lines and replaced them with self-checkout, thus eliminating at least four cashier jobs, not including the departed baggers. There was no waiting at the self-checkout, because everybody hates them.
And even though everyone in line whom I could see and hear was being patient and polite, the stress on the cashiers was evident.
Just as I reached the cashier, an elderly woman in her 70s, her phone buzzed. She said, apologetically, "may I beg your indulgence? I have to take this call. My mother just fell and broke her arm."
I'm a liberal Democrat, not a child-caging repug, so of course I said "please, go ahead." It was the hospital, just texting to let her know her 94-year-old mother had broken her shoulder plus her arm in three places and they were prepping her for surgery.
She kept working. And she kept thanking me. And I kept reassuring her that we must support everyone caring for elderly or disabled loved ones.
What the FUCK kind of economy requires a woman in her 70s, with a 94-year-old mother undergoing emergency surgery, to KEEP WORKING instead of going to the hospital to be with her mother.
The kind of economy Mitch McConnell and the Pumpkin Traitor are working to create: Lords and Serfs.
Also, fuck Kroger for trying to force us all into self checkout by eliminating jobs.
Wonkette Commenter Kooolest G:
as a 48 year old white non college straight man, I can tell you, DON'T TRY TO CATER TO ME!!!!!!!!!! every time you try to reach out to 1 moderate old white man, you tell 3 college kids that their issues don't matter to the democratic party and there's no sense in voting cause both parties are the same old shit. also as a middle aged uneducated white man I can tell you WE NEVER ADMIT WE'RE WRONG!!!!!!! so even if there's a shadow of doubt that trump might have conned us, we'll admit and vote against him right after we stop and ask somebody for directions. which means never.
Black Americans did not abandon liberal democracy because of slavery, Jim Crow, and the systematic destruction of whatever wealth they managed to accumulate; instead they took up arms in two world wars to defend it.
Japanese Americans did not reject liberal democracy because of internment or the racist humiliation of Asian exclusion; they risked life and limb to preserve it.
Latinos did not abandon liberal democracy because of “Operation Wetback,” or Proposition 187, or because of a man who won a presidential election on the strength of his hostility toward Latino immigrants.
Gay, lesbian, and trans Americans did not abandon liberal democracy over decades of discrimination and abandonment in the face of an epidemic.
This is, in part, because doing so would be tantamount to giving the state permission to destroy them, a thought so foreign to these defenders of the supposedly endangered religious right that the possibility has not even occurred to them.
As Molly Ivins wrote, the history of America is one long struggle to bestow the rights the Constitution gave to only rich white men to all those the Constitution left out: black people and female people and brown people and poor people and asian people disabled people and LGBTQ people.But it is also because of a peculiar irony of American history: The American creed has no more devoted adherents than those who have been historically denied its promises, and no more fair-weather friends than those who have taken them for granted.
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