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Edward Low's avatar

Bringing Vonnegut into this, with a panache

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Armand Beede's avatar

Carol L. Clark: Here you state the nub of the issue:

"Reverting to the Meanness

"Grabby billionaires gonna be grabby billionaires and it makes no difference to them who pays the bill so long as it ain’t them. First suckers up: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Or some other shiny pot of “handout” gold. SNAP? HEAP? Vets’ healthcare? Eh, so what?

"Income after retirement? There’s no crying in baseball and there’s no such thing as retirement for the “little people.” It’s your fault that you’re not a billionaire like us. And no, you get sick? Suffer. Health care is a privilege, not a right."

And the little people vote for THIS?!

There has been a major disconnect in the American polity.

This 76-year-old grew up in admiration of Progressivism from Theodore Roosevelt through Eugene Debs, the great Labor movement, the New Deal, the Great Society, the War on Poverty.

What you describe in the billionaires is something I have understood for a long while, but I am in disbelief, when I compare the current pedestrian, nihilistic rich-man's club with the 19th Century greedy billionaires -- Vanderbilt, Rockefeller -- who at least formed great philanthropies, building the renowned Vanderbilt University and the Rockefeller philanthropies.

If we could have philanthropists at the top, the billionaire privileges would at least contribute something worthwhile to society.

Maybe it is symbolic: The once great Boeing has had aircraft hatches blown-off midair, and now on its Starliner the astronauts in perpetual rotation around the atmosphere . . .

And the wheels go round and round . . .

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