This is not surprising, as there always has been a huge disconnect between "public" and "private" (backchannel) dialogues between the rich and the poor in this country.

In public (and luckily, now, at least for around 100 of the last 200 years, growing) dialogues, including many laws, we have a principle of equal rights.

However, in private dialogues between rich and poor-

 (these elections are a great example, but another big example is the erosion of past gains in the workplace, and in health care, expanding workplace and general surveillance, the fight against the newer 'crit ical legal theory' interpretation of laws and causation - that they should aid society's goals and not just settle disputes quickly and cheaply, this is a big one)

-the rich and powerful are clearly winning a devastating war against the poor that is profoundly cruel and vindictive, and against everything this country stands for.

Basically, again and again, they try to blame the victim for changes that are out of the victims control.

With the suppression of voters, with dishonest elections, they are trying to maintain the artificial (although they would dispute my saying that - as they feel that its natural) advantage that white, anglo-saxon protestant males with large inheritances have traditionally enjoyed here in the US. Of course, that ignores the dirty tricks and creates a false impression that we live in a meritocracy.. ('Of course, 'good people work hard to earn the right to become rich', and 'bad people naturally become poor' Its' not luck, or inherited wealth that breeds wealth - the facts frequently speak differently, though..not to say that work doesnt bring success, but one's class at birth is a more important predictor now than it has been since the 1920s - which means that hard work is less successful as a 'strategy' - less rewarding. If you don't have especially, the education and the accumulated equity, to plan and finance your dreams, the odds are against your ever realizing them.)

In order to incentivize people to contribute to society, many paths to success should be open to people who work hard and play by the rules, but increasingly, the paths that may have been open to them in the past, especially in those years between the end of WWII and the Reagan years, are closing, it seems. This may mean the end of America's middle class and the prosperity that it represents.  

(On the bright side, it will probably mean the continued creation of a middle class, at least temporarily, in many countries that previously did not have them, like India and China, and a outflow of money from nations like the US that are currently holding much more than their population would indicate, but those countries are so large that even with middle classes as large as the one in the US, they will still remain very stratified - and the new middle class there will probably be under a lot of wage pressure, just as we are here,  as more and more non-creative jobs become cheaper to automate than to do with people. So the newer a factory is, the more likely it will be to be automated, and employ just a small number of VERY highly skilled engineering and technical people  - in even low-wage countries.)

Goodbye, middle class.

It's the continuation of the job commodification process first described so well by Frederick Taylor 100 years ago. The revenge of management against the 'fake' white collar workers and the 'greedy' labor movement. A holy war, for them.

It's also a nasty spiteful war...

Its as if the powerful and rich in our society are addicts and in order to supply their habit, they reflexively are doing all they can to keep others down. Including lying about everything they are doing in order to cover up their real purpose. Just like any other addict.

People don't realize that now, a poor person who studies hard (notice how the avenues for access to higher education for the poor are increasingly more difficult?) and works hard has a better chance of becoming well to do by the time they reach middle age in almost any other of the OECD nations than here.

Also, the average health care status of poor people is falling. Like Third World nations, a sudden sickness is the most common reason a family will fall into poverty. Often this disaster breaks up families. The lives of the poor are very fragile. How come we can't recognize this and create some vehicle for effective intervention? Because that would sabotage the true purpose of the right's 'war on the poor' - SOWING FEAR.

Why, because fear usually is a huge distraction and it leads to profound disempowerment. Both directly, through physiological changes - for example, prolonged stress causes permanent changes in the prefontal cortex and the hippocampus, leading to loss of executive function and short term memory. It also causes hypertension, which left untreated, can cause cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and death. Many many other diseases are also caused by chronic stress. (For example, a study a few years ago discovered that all other factors being equal, simply being born black in America and living with being an outsider, and the cumulative insults to your health and financial stability that that implies - a hard thing for most of us to understand, as its very complex in the overall number of effects and their interactions - causes so many physiological changes and results of lost access to healthcare - that it ends up taking years off your life. Since this effect was not seen in blacks who had come to America later in life, and since it increased directly with skin color, it was clearly shown that living, day after day, with racism, was its cause. )

On the surface, the right may be fighting one war. But that war is just a cover story for the real war they see. That war is a war for a continuation of their special privileges. Notice how, in a classic example of pathological projection, they try to divert attention away from their greed-centered politics by repeatedly trying to place this label on their long-suffering victims, who are basically only asking for the American Dream to be truth, and not a lie by only asking for real equality - a place at the table.

In addition to restoring their past hegemony on the essential resources that act as the gatekeepers to financial stability (education, health, lack of fear)  The right feel that they have the 'right' to disenfranchise the poor and ethnically or politically 'impure'. (In other words, everyone who is not them.) This is a debate that goes back to the beginning of the US. The modern Whigs, the neo-Federalists, have always felt that political participation should only be open to the 'educated, propertied classes'. Not the 'mob'.

So, in this private backchannel of abuse, those who anger the right are often punished economically.

Political activists or even just those who speak out, coincidentally, often lose their jobs.. That doesn't happen so much anymore in Western Europe. But it does happen - consistently - in the Third World

Eventually, we will probably see 'anti-vagrancy' laws that make not having a job illegal. (Just as many jobs are drying up, never to return.)

The endgame historically, has not been pretty. In the last Industrial Revolution, millions upon millions were uprooted as the world changed to an economy based on manufacturing, Now as it shifts away from being based on labor and time - we will probably also see a return to poorhouses, or more probably, a modern, much more grisly alternative, organ trade. There is a powerful, growing financial incentive. A dead body can be worth a huge amount of money, when it is divided into its component parts. As in other third world nations, people may be killed and their body parts may be sold - perhaps bringing in money to pay their debts with their organs. What could be more of a reminder of the power of money than that? It would basically, be a modern form of indentured servitude. (How many of our ancestors came to the US, see

We are also seeing workplace surveillance expand dramatically. Now at least 60% of all workers, including 'white collar workers' are under some form of direct surveillance at work and that number is growing quickly.

Workers are also timed, often to the second, so that their emplyers can make the best use of every moment of the time they have paid for. With the decimation of overtime laws that the GOP is waging, the definition of when a worker's time is his or her own is under attack.

That transition from freedom to effective serfdom  - perhaps 24/7 is another form of psychological warfare...

All the better to show the 'parasitic' poor their place and worthlessness in a modern world where their labor, and their existence, their survival,  is increasingly less necessary or even desirable "for 'society'".

Perhaps, some will say, death may be a better alternative? Put them out of their misery. Cash them in for their parts, now...

After all, who wants to be poor? Those dirty, uneducated, diseased, bitter little morons have made their 'lifestyle choice'. "Why waste [tax money|education|time|water|air|space|thought] on THEM and their endless, hopeless unaddressable problems?"

Get the picture?

No more 'huddled masses yearning to breath free'.

Not now that we don't need them, (except perhaps for a few more years - this transition period- to keep wages down.)

(I don't really believe this, I'm using sarcasm to make a point here)

We are becoming a very stratified nation. More in line with the way things are in Third World nations than what most of us would hope for - here.

If I sound depressed and cynical, its because I am. I'm sorry.

Merry Christmas.

But in the mean time, we need to ensure that all the votes are counted in this particular election.  The Stewart-Cousins Campaign, and the DSCC (Democratic senate campaign committ) are fighting hard to get the ballots counted, and I am sure they could use all the help (financial) they can get.  You can make a donation at http://www.DSCC.net to the Legal Defense Fund