There you were back in 2008, freshly bailed out after almost totaling the economy with your criminal greed, with not a single one of you headed to prison for it.
While working class incomes stagnated, health costs soared, and the young staggered under the weight of student loans, you and your fellow plutocrats sat smugly atop a mountain of accumulated wealth, courtesy of an economy structured for your benefit by legislators beholden to your largesse.
Yes, you were sitting pretty. And all you had to do to keep it that way was to not wage a racist, scorched-earth war against the first Black President of the United States. That’s all! That is the only thing you dumb, stupid idiots had to do: swallow your pride, smile, shake hands, and play nice with one of the most charismatic, inspiring, intelligent and genuinely moral politicians in American history.
Barack Obama didn’t want to ruin you, you dumbasses! He wasn’t out to confiscate your estates, kill your grandmas, and force you into re-education camps! All he wanted was a more humane, less cruel, less racist version of the system that made you rich. You should have wanted that too! Not because you care about other people -- for your own good! But you were too stupid.
What would it have cost you? A moderate tax hike? More oversight from nosy bureaucrats? Some limits on your environmental depredations and exploitation of workers? Maybe a few more women and people of color showing up at the Executive Retreat? And in return, millions of your fellow citizens would have health coverage, a living wage, affordable education and child care, clean air and water, some disposable income and free time – in short, a stake in the system.
You should have seen how providing these things served your interests, you imbeciles! How a more economically secure working and middle class would be less likely to question the legitimacy of the system! How living in a society where people are happier because they aren’t beset on all sides by financial and physical insecurity would be more pleasant for you, too! But most of all, how unbelievably, brain-meltingly stupid it would be to actually burn down a system constructed by rich white guys for rich white guys – just because you can’t stand being told what’s good for you by a confident, competent, superior Black man.
But you couldn’t see that, because you were too greedy, too racist, and – most of all – too stupid. So instead, you declared open war. You obstructed. You “investigated.” You lied – about his policies, about your intentions, about his religion and national origin. You vilified the man who came to save you from yourselves, thwarted his reasonable agenda, blocked his qualified judicial picks, mocked and slandered him for actualizing the very promise of America: that anyone can rise to the top based on talent, initiative, and the content of their character.
Then, just to drive the point home, you replaced him with the most grotesque caricature of rich white entitled male supremacy imaginable, a man you knew to be an idiot, an incompetent, a degenerate, a xenophobe, a racist, a con man and a criminal. That’s who you made Barack Obama shake hands with as he departed the White House -- and he still managed to do it with dignity.
You elevated this grotesquery to the Presidency, cynically stoking the racist, sexist, xenophobic resentments of the white working as you proceeded to loot the treasury, stack the courts, disenfranchise voters and eviscerate the civil service.
Nothing was off limits to your idiotic greed. You even looted the pandemic relief fund! Money that was supposed to go to struggling people and small businesses!
You dolts! You seriously didn’t think people were ever gonna get sick of your bullshit? Denying systemic racism! Denying economic inequality! Denying police brutality! Denying climate change, for fuck’s sake?! You know your mansions, your companies, your real estate holdings are located on planet Earth, right? You dumb fucking morons!
And now, the people are in the streets demanding fundamental, systemic change. And, like a bunch of mental defectives, instead of being terrified, you are indignant!
You’re shocked at their behavior. Castigating hard-working police officers! Pulling down perfectly good statues! Demanding the resignation of New York Times editors for the “crime” of publishing the words of a sitting U.S. Senator! Where can fascism get a fair hearing, if not the pages of the Newspaper of Record?! You idiots still have absolutely no idea what’s going on – do you?
You should be grateful they’re only coming for the statues. Maybe you should have thought a little more about how the system protected you before you started hacking away the foundations: denying the possibility of an impartial judiciary, a fair press, an unrigged election, a well-intentioned law, an unbiased civil servant, a non-partisan scientist, an honest meteorologist, for God’s sake! Maybe, just maybe, before you noodleheads decided on all-out, us-versus-them, Game of Thrones style partisan warfare, you should have considered that there are more of “them” than there are of you. A lot more! And that you liked it that way!
But you were just too stupid.
So here you are. Your last, dumb stand. Your castle gates defended by a rabble of red-hatted brownshirts, maskless mouth-breathers, and their Dear Leader, Ramp Boy. And across the moat, hundreds of millions of angry Americans with torches and pitchforks demanding justice, civil rights, economic fairness, environmental sanity. If you weren’t so colossally ignorant, you’d see that this is the end of the line for your dumb dream of perpetual white supremacy and dynastic wealth.
Because this movement will not be stopped – not by Donald Trump, not by MAGA nation, not even by Joe Biden should he fail to rise to the occasion, until it returns America to the people who truly make it great. You should hope to God that will happen peacefully, through the miraculously durable and adaptable/amendable structures of American democracy that our Founding Fathers put in place all those years ago to protect the rights and privileges of white guys like you -- and that you’ve done so much to undermine.
If it happens like that, you might even come out OK. Not as rich, and not in charge, but OK. And if not – well, good luck to you, dumbasses. You had a good run, and you probably could have kept it going – but you were too impossibly, unbelievably, unfathomably stupid.
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