Quis Custodiet Ipsos Slickee Boiz?

A person is wheeled into an emergency room with a blistering temperature of 103-degrees. They’re barely conscious, their skin is hot and red and dry. The fever is the result of an opportunistic infection to a compromised immune system. They will die if the fever is not treated. They will die if the opportunistic infection is not treated. They will die if the compromised immune system is not treated.

Which do you treat?

All of them, of course. Why wouldn’t you?

You douse them with cold water, you drive that temperature down so it doesn’t cook their brains and internal organs --

You clobber the opportunistic infection with medicine to kill it --

You beef up their immune system so they can fight these things off --

Why wouldn’t you do that?

It’s not an either / or proposition.

Welcome to Trump’s America.

We have just elected the single most unfit person ever to the office of president.

We elected him because for the last 40 years none of the people fit for the office have done enough to help the American people.

Yes, I know Congress is equally at fault; we’re talking about the presidency here, the big enchilada, the brass ring, the capo di tutti capo.

Both parties have failed to help the American people while lining their own pockets.

We’re cool with them lining their own pockets, we just want them to do something that benefits the country while lining their pockets.

The one common theme among Trump voters is that the GOP and Democratic mainstream never did enough for them.

They knew what the problems were and they didn’t address them.

They often made things worse, and quite deliberately so. (Looking at you, Reagan Republicans.)

So we now have a country with a highly pissed electorate.

Enough of them were so pissed they voted a gibbon with a ball peen hammer into office on the theory what whatever happens next, it sure as fnck won’t be the same as what happened before.

A lot of the rest of us are horrified by this.

We know what the gibbon is like and we know what the gibbon has said and the gibbon has validated and emboldened a lot of deplorable -- yeah, I’m using that word; if the shoe fits, lace that pup up and wear it proudly -- people and as a result a lot of innocent folks are going to suffer and more than a few will die.

But the bulk of the people who voted for Trump were not sheet wearing / cross burning bigots. They could afford to vote for a person spewing hate because by and large that hate was not directed at them.

Are they evil for having done so?

It’s tempting to slap a label on, but if we do, then we’re just playing the same game as the deplorables.

The majority of people who voted for Trump are not hate mongers.

They’re not greedy slickee boiz.

They’re not filed with rage.

They’re filled with anxiety.

They were brought up with the promise that if they worked hard they would find a place in America and they would lead good, comfortable, productive lives and they would eventually be able to retire with dignity and live out their lives securely.

The corporations and their shills have pretty much dynamited that idea.

Their wages and salaries stagnated.

A trillion dollars in cash, savings, and real estate was transferred from them to the 1%.

The 1% was protected and shielded by congress from having to pay their fair share of taxes or being held accountable for financial crimes and shenanigans or shipping jobs overseas.

The 1% don’t live here.

They’re not part of America.

They live in their own private universe, and while their physical forms may occupy the physical space of America, they don’t care about the country or its citizens one iota.

If they did they wouldn’t be decimating business by sending manufacturing and tech support jobs overseas, they wouldn’t be stonewalling unions and demanding workers take cuts in pay and benefits, they wouldn’t be turning to automation without regard for the impact it has on the people who live in this country.

They only care about making money.

For them.

And despite their claims to the contrary, the slickee boi 1% Is Not That Smart.

Henry Ford was as far from a bleeding heart liberal as you could hope to find, but Ford was smart enough to know he needed to pay his workers enough for them to be able to buy the products them made.

See, that’s how the engines of industry turn: Company pays workers to make something, workers buy something from company. The more they get paid, the more they spend; the more they spend, the more the company makes.

The slickee boiz don’t see it that way, which is why we keep having these problems.

The slickee boiz know if they cut costs they can make more profits.

At first they try doing things more efficiently, but at a certain point you’re just running things as efficiently as you can.

You’re making millions -- billions! -- but it’s Still Not Enough.

So you squeeze the work force.

You cut pay and benefits.

You give jobs to robots or send them overseas.

You make a shipload of money…

…this quarter.

But in the next quarter, you take a hit because your unemployed ex-workers can’t buy what you’re making.

So you lend them money through credit card companies, taking the money you stole from them and lending it out at usurious rates so you can make twice as much off it.

…and you advertise the crap outta your crap, telling people they are worthless and will be tragically unhip if they don’t buy your (now) substandard product (substandard because quality control is one of the many things you jettisoned to make that extra couple of billion).

Is anyone surprised this results in an anxious population, fearful for their own security, their own survival?

Is anyone surprised that this population keeps voting again and again and again for change, growing only more fretful and anxious as change does not arrive for them, but only for the slickee boi 1% who exploit them?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Bueller?

So we are now at a point where normally decent and compassionate people are willing to vote a probable rapist / known bigot / proven con-man into the White House because they just don’t have any hope for the two established parties to do anything to help them.

They will be fncked over seven ways from sundown anyway, so what have they got to lose? Might as well make it an entertaining spectacle, eh?

I am absolutely 100% in favor of applying the cold compress to the fevered brow of hatred and bigotry currently flaring up here in the United States, to cool it down, to stop it before it does irreparable damage. I don’t want women or African-Americans or Latinos or non-Christians or gays & lesbians or transgender or disabled people or anybody to be singled out for hate and violence.

I will stand up against that.

I will call out against it.

I expect you to do so as well.

But I can also see that cooling off the immediate fever doesn’t do us a lot of good if we don’t address the underlying cause.

And the underlying cause is found among a tiny handful of huge corporations that steal from us.

They steal from us because we built this country for all Americans to enjoy, and however imperfect we have been in seeing that to fruition in the past, that was at least the goal.

The slickee boiz want to rob us of our legal and social protections then bill us for the privilege.

I call that theft, and I say to hell with it.

© Buzz Dixon