"If You're Not Angry and Bitter, You're Not Paying Attention" (Mary Lyon, aka: Calimary)

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

A one-sentence comment posted in the blogosphere really nails it. As the political hissy-fit over Barack Obama's 'bitter' remarks continues to heave itself on the floor like some three-year-old tantrum-thrower in the canned soup aisle at the grocery store, a blogger calling herself Lugnut spells it out:

'If you're not angry and bitter, you're not paying attention.'

The conditions in this country now, after the GOP has owned the White House for almost eight years, dominated the Senate for most of that time, and the House of Representatives since the mid-90's (except for the last year-and-a-half), have left America with a serious case of indigestion- at the very least. The bile from years of reckless Republican charging and spending, holding no one accountable for anything, and allowing Wall Street to run amok is indeed leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of Main Street by now.

I can't help but suspect that this is the bitter fruit harvested from years of social engineering, GOP-style: Reverse Robin Hood Reaganomics. Millions of Americans believed it with all their hearts. They were told that government with its pesky regulations and safety-net programs was the problem, not the solution. They were assured again and again that if they just were patient while the elites at the top of the economic food chain cut to the front of the line, their turn would surely come, too. Shower the benefits on the wealthy and then watch them share the wealth, creating jobs and spilling such large crumbs off their groaningly overloaded banquet-table that eventually those blessings would trickle down onto everyone else, too. The have-nots might not have a seat at that table, but the bounty falling off the sides onto the floor would still be plenty. It sounded so good, so sweet.

What's basically happened, instead, is human nature, and the drive by big business and its lobbyists to build bumpers around the edges of that table Ð the better to keep all the crumbs on the table and prevent any from falling off. We're supposedly all taught to share in pre-school. Some of the haves, grown-ups as they are, especially those who can most easily afford it, evidently still haven't learned this. It seems to me when the have-nots have been forced to swallow about 30 years of these fairy-tales and have watched the promised happy endings stay perpetually just beyond reach, it shouldn't come as a shocker that hard feelings start to set in. Maybe even bitter feelings. I think there IS bitterness all over the country, from heartland to coastline. This is how it feels when large numbers of Americans wake up and realize they've been had.

Much more:

http://www.worldnewstrust.com/commentary/angry-bitter-attention-lyon.html

Geekishly-inclined editor's note: I have come to learn that when it comes to "nailing it", Mary always packs a Hilti Nail Gun. Not that she needs it: she could probably drive a 18-penny spike with her writing fists.

On Edit: I might like to add that you guys whacking the site in the numbers that you are, are giving our bright and shiny new "virtual server" quite the workout and it is performing admirably. Which makes this web weenie very happy indeed.

[Hissyspit]

1. Did someone say 'hissy-fit!?'

[Skittles]

2. is there any way to put "bitter" threads on Ignore EN MASSE

ENOUGH ALREADY

[papau]

3. Nice column by Calimary - but point is the use of bitter to explain being religious or

a hunter or against illegal immigration or for that matter a Hillary voter.

But the Obama camps "change the subject" approach seems to be working as folks discussed why they should be bitter.

Meanwhile, I did not realize WNT was open for business - hope all is well with Tad.

Thanks for posting the column.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

4. I live in the country, Bill.

1.8 square mile town on the Delaware. 1200 people. 900 discrete housing units of varying sizes. A city budget going to hell in a bucket. A county with more per-capita welfare recipients than anywhere in the state. No jobs, and what few there are pay crap. Rents are sky-high, as much as Morris County. Foreclosures abound(I was checking on RealtyTrac tonight).

Fact is that from my vantage point, Obama got it almost exactly right, and in non-ambiguous language that the locals could readily understand. He would have gotten it exactly right, but he didn't mention a few things people turn to, at least around here:

Alcohol in abundance. Drugs, including meth and heroin. And suicide and attempted suicide. We are having a shitload of that around here, lately. Here in the bucolic countryside, where butterflies flit about and the wildflowers bloom.

[papau]

5. there is no disagreement about there being more tham enough reasons to be bitter -but

the implication was looking down one's nose to note the common man only does these "things" - go to Church, go hunting, object to illegal immigration- because he lets his bitterness get in the way of his better judgment.

I lived in rural Vermont for a time (not that rural - on the edge of Montpelier) and knew the teachers in the rural schools - and there were poor folks trying to forget they were poor in that location also. And they were bitter.

Indeed it is the lack of jobs and the inability to move to where there is a job that sucks the most I was told. But no one ever told me that they had started to go to Church because they had lost their job.

Obama made a mistake that will be used against him in the fall - McCain will not let him slide with a discussion of the reasons to be bitter.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. McCain is a one-man target-rich environment.

He is hardly Superman. All he offers is more of the same, and from where I sit, same=ongoing disaster. Nah, you give that old fool too much credit. I think McCain is just old enough, ambitious enough and doddering enough that the repukes snookered him into taking one for the team. I have long believed that McCain kept himself going as a POW by telling himself that if he just survived, he would be President someday. Now, that ambition that kept him going is leading him to what may be the most personally damaging period of his life.

But really, calling a black man an "elite"? In the US of A? Risable.