SULLIVAN'S SALVOS
January 12, 2017
Sullivan’s
Salvos 1/17/17
In this edition:
*Damn Yankees? Or Damn Cubs?
*Melissa in DC
*Cheese Factory!
*Hecate Demeter Article
*Did You Know?
*Damn Yankees? Or Damn Cubs?
You
are likely familiar with the musical Damn Yankees. A long-suffering Washington
Senators fan sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for the Senators’ finally
winning the pennant over the hated Yankees. It is a classic, but I never took
it too seriously.
Given
what has occurred since the Cubs won the World Series… are you wondering if
there isn’t some similar deal out there?
*Melissa in DC
My
wife Melissa is in Washington, DC for a few days, doing some protesting and
some sightseeing. Please keep her in your prayers!
*Cheese Factory!
The
Cheese Factory is coming back, better than ever! Now known as the Kalona
Creamery, I got a sneak peek, and it is gorgeous! Please join them for their
opening day on January 19th!
*Hecate Demeter Article
A
friend of mine passed along the following blog post from a site called “Hecate
Demeter”. I had never visited the site before, and know nothing about the author.
But she offers a bold and thought-provoking take on the recent elections. I am
not in total agreement with this, but it is a good read. It is reprinted below.
I want to talk
a little bit more about what I call, in our blissfully post-PC era, Red State
Stupid.
Red State
Stupid is also really Red State Mean.
It’s shoot-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face mean.
And I don’t
think that we can separate the two.
My friend J.
says that you can identify, with 100% accuracy, Democrats vs. Republicans with
one simple test. Democrats, he
says, don’t care if some “undeserving” folks cash in on, for example, a free
lunch program, as long as not one child goes out to recess hungry. While Republicans, according to J.,
don’t really care how many children starve as long as not one, single
“undeserving” child gets a free meal.
I think J. is
right. It’s pretty clear where I
come down.
And I’ve been
coming back to his test over and over as I ponder this article that I cited
earlier about a woman whose husband will die without Obamacare but who voted
for Trump in spite of Trump’s and the Republican Party’s explicitly-avowed
intent to destroy the very program keeping her husband alive.
But her
frustration [with Obamacare] isn’t just about the money she has to pay. She
sees other people signing up for Medicaid, the health program for the poor that
is arguably better coverage than she receives and almost free for enrollees.
She is not eligible for Medicaid because her husband works and they are above
the earnings threshold.
Medicaid is
reserved for people who earn less than 138 percent of the poverty line — about
$22,000 for a couple. This woman understood the Medicaid expansion is also part
of Obamacare, and she doesn’t think the system is fair.
“They can go
to the emergency room for a headache,” she says. “They’re going to the doctor
for pills, and that’s what they’re on.”
She felt like
this happened a lot to her: that she and her husband have worked most their
lives but don’t seem to get nearly as much help as the poorer people she knows.
She told a story about when she used to work as a school secretary: “They had a
Christmas program. Some of the area programs would talk to teachers, and ask
for a list of their poorest kids and get them clothes and toys and stuff. They’re
not the ones who need help. They’re the ones getting the welfare and food
stamps. I’m the one who is the working poor.”
Oller, the
enrollment worker, expressed similar ideas the day we met.
“I really
think Medicaid is good, but I’m really having a problem with the people that
don’t want to work,” she said. “Us middle-class people are really, really upset
about having to work constantly, and then these people are not responsible.”
Oller had told
me earlier that she had enrolled on Medicaid for a few months, right before she
started this job. She was taking some time off to care for her husband, who has
cancer and was in chemotherapy treatment. I asked how she felt about enrolling
in a program she sometimes criticizes.
“Oh, no,” she
said quickly. “I worked my whole life, so I know I paid into it. I just felt
like it was a time that I needed it. That’s what the system is set up for.”
Just to be
crystal clear, we’re talking about a woman who voted for the candidate who
promised to cut off the only thing that is keeping her husband alive because
she’s just that pissed at some poor elementary-school kid who got an Xmas
gift. (Be sure to tell her “Merry
Christmas” and not “Happy Holidays.”
She’s sent off more money than she can afford to some Elmer Gantry who
got her all hepped up on the War on Xmas.
Jebuz is the reason for the season. She’s a devout Xian but some poor kid getting an Xmas
present is JUST TOO GODDAMN MUCH FOR HER.) That damn kid got an Xmas gift even though his parents
received a few dollars of welfare and food stamps and she’s just NOT HAVING IT
anymore.
Here’s a
six-year old who got a Tonka truck and a stocking cap at Xmas and here’s her
husband getting the health care that keeps him alive. And she’s so damn mad at that six-year old that she’s
willing to risk her husband. Fuck
the love of her life. If he dies,
so be it, but at least Trump won’t be handing out hand-knit scarves and tea
sets to those undeserving brats. *
My friend J.
is right.
Look, can I
say something very un-PC to you?
Lean closer; I want to whisper.
Oh, wait. We don’t have to be politically correct
anymore. Back off. I can yell.
So let me say
this loud and clear: That woman is
evil, and venal, and stupid and she’s not going to stop voting out of hate even
if Democrats nominate another white man and even if he, what . . . ? What is it that the Democrat is
supposed to do to win her vote?
Wave the Confederate flag?
Cheer about black people who don’t vote? I keep hearing this assertion that Democrats have to find
the exact, magic, politically-correct words to “reach out” to people like this
woman, although no one will give me, and I’m a woman who would recognize it,
the magic incantation. Bernie
Sanders, who’s not even a Democrat, can hardly look in the mirror of the third
guest room of his lake house to shave every morning due to his shame that
Democrats can’t, according to him, “talk” to people from what Senator Sanders
calls the “white working class.”
He’s from
Queens and he would know.
Apparently, offering
assistance with the skyrocketing costs of childcare that plague white working
class families (not to mention working class families of color but, apparently,
those votes don’t count, plus, see above re: J.) isn’t PC enough.
Providing free college for working class families and debt-free college
for everyone isn’t PC enough.
Offering Medicare for everyone over over 55 isn’t PC enough. An entire, comprehensive plan to care
for current coal workers and to train a new generation to build clean energy
infrastructure doesn’t appropriately “reach out” to the “white working class,”
at least not in a PC-enough manner.
Talking almost exclusively about jobs, workers, and the economy more
than any other topic apparently wasn’t the way to reach out in an appropriately
PC manner to that all-important “white working class.” Tax credits for the working class do
not reach out, at least not in a PC enough manner, to the “white working
class,” either. **
Sadly,
according to Propane Jane, the Democratic party has not been able to “talk” in
some magically-PC manner to the
“white working class” ever since, oh, wait, I know: ever since Lyndon Johnson, who was a
better President because he was a good teacher, signed the Civil Rights Act and
may or may not have said that Democrats had lost the South for (he was
optimistic) a generation. Before
then, Democrats had this magical ability to “talk” to the “white working
class,” and then, suddenly, they lost it.
But keep trying, Dems. One
of these days, Lucy’s sure to hold that football in place.
I’m a clever
girl who sings for her supper by crafting messages geared to any specific
audience you can name. And I’m
flummoxed. What exactly did those
precious “white working class” snowflakes need to hear? Well apparently, they needed to hear
that Mexicans are rapists, that African Americans all live in urban hellholes
with nothing left to lose, that women should be grabbed by the pussy, that
women who seek power are “crooked” and that we should ”Trump that bitch,”
and “lock her up!” That’s the language that brought them
to the voting booth. Apparently,
they needed to be protected, in warm, safe, PC spaces, from those un-PC black
people talking about racism. Once
those black people open their yaps and complain (at least when they complain in
language that is not sufficiently PC) about getting shot walking home from 7-11
or in their churches, bam!, the white working class has to vote against their
own self-interest and there’s just nothing anyone can do.
So get on
that, will you, Dems? Make sure
black people stop talking about racism and triggering those delicate
snowflakes. Do it now.
Also, if you
could shut up those women who have to be punished for having abortions, that
would be good. Damn bitches aren’t
even 10s and they talk too much about things that give those “white working
class” voters the vapors and send them running for safe spaces where they can
vote for one of the two white men who are running. As they should be.
I have two
things to say: (1) Shunning,
shaming, and blaming are actually effective tactics of social control. See, e.g., Mothers v. Drunk
Driving. And pretending that
stupid people are really just simple farmers, people of the land, the common clay
of the new West who would suddenly vote in their own best interests if only a
Democrat would finally go hunting, or ride a motorcycle, or get in a tank
hasn’t worked for the last half century or so and I’m now ready to try shaming
them and focusing on how they’re not the cool kids who are in with the in
crowd; (2) If we’re not going to magically convince Ms. Red State Mean to vote
in her her own self interest (and we’re almost certainly not), then we’re going
to have to figure out how to get other voters to the polls with the needed
ID. And that effort needs to start
now. Waiting until a few weeks
before the election to get them IDs is too late.
*Let’s just
set aside that this woman and her husband certainly don’t get nearly the amount
of government largesse that, say, Lockheed Martin shareholders get, or that
Donald Trump gets, or that even the children of your basic millionaires
get. She’s not standing in the
doctor’s office behind, say, me and, even if she were, she doesn’t see the
advantages that I get on my capital gains. Since she can’t see those things, and since she’s too stupid
to inquire, she’s angrier at the poor man ahead of her in line who’s getting
his pain pills for free due to Medicaid while she, relegated to Obamacare, must
pay a few dollars for her pap smear, than she is at me for the thousands and
thousands of dollars of government assistance that I get on my sales of stock.
** I’ll
stipulate here that, as Atrios often notes, we should stop having (albeit that
we do this to make the Republicans happy) programs that make people jump
through hoops and fill out forms in order to get benefits. We’re just trying to placate the
Republicans who can’t stand for any child to go out to recess with a really
full stomach. The real solution, and one that we’re going to need to reach
sooner rather than later, is a basic economic income. Now that robots and computers can do all of our jobs, we
need: (1) far fewer people on the planet and (2) an income for all of the
people who are left. We can’t even
begin to have this conversation until we stop trying to placate Ms. Umbridge.
See how easy
that was? That was shaming and
blaming.
*DID YOU KNOW?
The Washington Senators won the 1924 World Series, but were pretty awful
for the rest of their time in Washington (through 1971), never again reaching
another World Series. Senators teams even moved twice, reorganizing as the
Minnesota Twins in 1960, and the Texas Rangers in 1972. In 2005, the Montreal
Expos moved to DC and became a new Washington team – the Nationals
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posted by Rod Sullivan @ 10:27 PM
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