Ripoffreport.com (with which I am not in any way affiliated) is the Jerry Springer Show of publicly-swapped consumer horror stories. Here the cheated, enraged, despairing, sore and somewhat unhinged gather to gripe inarticulately and inchoately. Because griping is their last resort.
Take this page, for instance:
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff21474.htmWhat's quickly apparent is the extent to which the posters on Ripoffreport.com are desperate: money is tight, growing tighter, and yet they've been scammed and no one will help. Most of the stories concern sweaty consumer swindles. But in the above case (from 2002), we see howling over a macro scam: the burgeoning profit-taking of the parasitical insurance industry, its jaws tightening on those with poor credit ratings.
How bloody hard is it to explain to those thronging the Ripoffreport.coms of the world that their woes are due to deregulation, the unhindered rise of corporate power, the arrogation of nearly all wealth to a few, and the installation of heartless venal rich men as their leaders? That, in fact, compared to the sofa that was never delivered or the jinxed insurance policy, all rip-offs pale beside Bushism?
Democrats will lose elections -- and should do -- as long as the party neglects the economic facts on the ground. Neither the declining middle class nor the battered working class, and least of all the savaged underclass, can take practical comfort or hope from millionaires and even billionaires lecturing them on the need to outsource jobs or waste more money on a bloated, uncontrollable military.
They might listen, however, if reached with a populist message. As some here well know, this will require disentangling what remains of the party's roots from the weeds of corporatism and militarism, clearing arable land for passionate rededication to the needs of ordinary as opposed to incorporated Americans. And most painfully of all, it will require reaching out to those who now despise the party -- the very rednecks whom Howard Dean was castigated for addressing -- with a message that will be derided as "class war," "socialism," and worse. I have no illusions about this happening soon. But happen it must.
Meanwhile, those ripped off swell in number. Without leaders, representation, or hope. One can gripe about it -- but that's about all.