Blue and Red Do Have Something in Common. They've Both Been Ripped Off, Repeatedly
Our "transitory" inflation disaster and looming market crash mimic past bubble disasters, which all had the same feature: a few insiders won, and everyone else got creamed
Good, honest, hardworking people, white collar, blue collar. Doesn't matter what color shirt you have on… People of modest means continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don't give a fuck about them. They don't give a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you… It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. — George Carlin
On June 14th, in Philadelphia, President Joe Biden gave a speech before leaders of the AFL-CIO. This is the role Joe Biden was hired to play, the hardscrabble “Scranton Joe” persona who gets the common working person. He addressed an issue very much on the minds of ordinary folk:
I’m doing everything in my power to blunt Putin’s gas price hike. Just since he invaded Ukraine, it’s gone up $1.74 a gallon — because of nothing else but that.
This followed remarks he’d made in Los Angeles a week before, at the 9th Summit of the Americas:
The COVID-19 pandemic hit our region particularly hard… Twenty-two million more people fell into poverty in just the first year of the pandemic. Inequity continues to rise. Global [inflationary] pressures… made worse by Putin’s brutal and unprovoked war against Ukraine… are making it harder for families to make ends meet.
Watching Biden on the stump these days is heartbreaking. He combines Ron Burgundy-style slapstick teleprompter-dependence (one half expects him to end a speech soon with “Go fuck yourself, San Diego”) with the terror of a man who can see the bright light coming. Both effects are worsened by the fact that he’s peddling an insane, indefensible lie, i.e. that America is suffering through “Putin price hikes,” and not the inevitable consequence of yet another transparent state-aided ripoff scheme to soak the middle and lower classes on behalf of the 1%.
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