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When I was 15 years old, early one Saturday morning I went with my best friend to his Grandfather's farm in East Tennessee. He asked me to come and help him hang tobacco in his barn. It had rained the night before, an the field was a mud pit, but the staked tobacco had to be hung to cure before sending it to market. It was one of the hardest day's work I've ever spent. I waded in mud up to my ankles to pick up the tobacco and put it on the wagon, take it to the barn and then hang it. I was on the wagon handing the tobacco up the rafters to three others who were hanging it. I learned then, if you're going to hang tobacco, make sure you are the one standing in the top of the barn, for you only have to handle every 3rd or 4th stalk. If you're on the wagon, you handle every stalk, and you get rewarded by having tobacco juice drip all over you, sticking to your body as you work in a stuffy barn in 90 degree plus weather.
We repeated that process all day long. I was glad that I had not been around when all the tobacco had to be staked. This was hard work that my friend's grandfather did every single day--whether it was tobacco, or working with the cattle, or cutting hay---hard-ass work, not for the lazy.
After 12 hours of that, finally finished for the day, I got in the truck with my friend and his grandfather and we went to a butcher's shop. My friend's grandfather wanted to buy some sausages. As we were waiting for the order, a couple of other customers came in and asked for T-bone steaks.
I didn't know why, at first, but the farmer I had worked for that day became increasingly agitated in his demeanor. After getting and paying for the sausages, as we walked out the door, I asked him "what's wrong." With rising anger in his voice he asked, "Did you see those people come into the shop to get the T-bone steaks?" I answered, "yes." He then asked, "Did you see how they paid for them?" I answered, "no." He said, "they paid for them with food stamps. Here I am, busting my ass all day long every day trying to make ends meet on the farm, and come to buy sausages because it's all I can afford, and these people who don't work come in with food stamps, that my taxes earned from my hard work paid for, and they buy T-bone steaks. It burns my ass."
Are people of "the working class" bitter, today? Bitter is an understatement. Mad as hell is more like it, and YES they cling to antipathy of people who aren't like them. Here in Georgia, Thomaston Mills closed shop, putting thousands of people out of work. Brown & Williamson sold out, and operations were moved to North Carolina, putting thousands out of work. My parents both lost their jobs when the trucking company they worked for sold out. Jobs to replace theirs were difficult to find--many of them having been outsourced. People see illegal immigrants laying brick---jobs that could be done by American citizens---but, won't be hired to do, because the employers can't pay citizens shit wages.
Bitter? You bet your sweet bippy, people are bitter. They are pissed off.
Hillary criticized Obama for speaking the truth saying that "the working class" isn't bitter. These folk are resilient, and hard-working. Yes, Hillary, they are. But, one can be "resilient" and "bitter" at the same damned time.
I know a woman, a single parent, who works one full-time job at $10.00 an hour and two part-time jobs at minimum wage. She works 16 hours a day to put a roof over her children's heads, food on the table, pay for education and medical care for her kids (with no health insurance). She does this 6 days a week, with one day left to do all the other things she has to do as a mother and caregiver. Is she "resilient?" You bet your ass. Is she "hard-working?" No doubt. Is she bitter? DAMNED STRAIGHT she's bitter. She's bitter at a government that has forgotten her and her children.
And, she's not alone. People get slapped down, and they stand back up, only to have the government slap them down again. And, Hillary wants to get "outraged" that Obama would dare say that people like that are "bitter?" Give me a fucking break!
People today, when they get sick and don't have insurance use the emergency rooms at hospitals for their primary care. People with sore throats and need a simple strep-test and a prescription for drugs sit in the emergency room waiting areas for up to 12 hours hoping to finally see the ONE DAMNED doctor who is taking care of everybody there. Some get sick, self-diagnose, and self-medicate because they can't afford to go to the doctor. Deductibles and co-pays and premiums are through the roof, as are the prices of the procedures that are ordered. People are going bankrupt because they get sick. Are these people bitter? To say the LEAST.
Do sick people cling to their faith? How many TV "evangelists" are making a killing off those who are sick? "If you'll send in what little money you have to my ministry, God will bless you will health and wealth." Some of these people are so desperate for relief, they'll do anything...so they send the money in the hope that somehow GOD will make them well---and they stay sick, anyway.
Bitter? What in the hell do these people have to be bitter about?
And, let's not forget about the Iraq war. While "the working class" struggles to make ends meet we are spending our blood and treasure referring a civil war in a country we have no right or reason to be in. Gas prices are soaring, making things more difficult---and, every dollar spent is more money in the pockets of those who want to harm us. And, goddammit, Hillary--YOU VOTED TO AUTHORIZE THAT DAMNED WAR---and, YOU KNOW IT. If you really thought that Bush would use that vote as LEVERAGE for diplomacy, then you are just damned stupid. And, if you expect us to believe that line---that you were opposed to this war from the beginning---then you insult our intelligence.
Are people of "the working class" bitter because we are borrowing money from their children to fund an illegal immoral war while they struggle to keep their heads above water---while they see SCHIP fall to the wayside, and their jobs being outsourced, and their children's schools crumbling, and the infrastructure collapsing, and the cost of medicine and food and gasoline go through the roof?
If all you can say about their feelings is that they are "resilient," and have no reason to be "bitter" then YOU are the candidate who is woefully "out of touch" with people. What do you want people to do, Hillary? Eat cake when there is no bread?
And, I've got to tell you, I was glad to hear a presidential candidate say it like it is---as mildly put as it was. Bitter? Barack, you should have said that people are MAD AS HELL. WE ARE FED UP to the gills with broken promise after broken promise, and decisions being made by the Bush administration against which the Democratic leadership refuses to hold them accountable.
And, it pisses me off to no end to hear another candidate who is worth tens of millions of dollars, who has dined on the finest food paid for and prepared by "the working class," who seems to never wear the same outfit twice, who has traveled around the world at the expense of "the working class," hob-knobbing with world leaders, being treated like royalty everywhere she goes--call the one who dares to point out the bitterness the working-class feels an "elitist."
That takes gall, and a helluva lot of it. HILLARY? Calling BARACK an ELITIST? Good gawd almighty. That would be like Ann Coulter calling Angelina Jolie "ugly."
Hillary, get out of your fucking ivory tower, and get into the real world. It's ugly out here. People are bitter. And, refusing to own up to that truth just makes it harder for the rest of us to overcome.
Anyone, and I do mean ANYONE who believes that "the working class" isn't bitter about the economy is a fucking idiot. And, anyone who would take a remark like Obama's out of context to score political points should be ashamed of herself.
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