TOWN HALL MEETING IN THE HIGH DESERT: A CIVIL DEBATE AMONG MURDEROUS RETARDS

Dispatch / September 10, 2009

By Yasha Levine

town-hall-victor-valley-1

This article was first published by Vice magazine.

It was a hot day, still 98 degrees at 6 PM, as I zoomed through gridlock on my freshly fixed 1979 Kawasaki KZ-400, squeezing between the monster trucks and lifted SUVs clogging one of Victorville’s main drags, pouring sweat into my helmet and leather jacket on my way to an anti-Obamacare “town hall” meeting at the local community college.

I thought I knew what to expect when I got there. Like everyone else in this country, I had been watching the packs of deranged tea bagger types and their astroturfing overlords dominate the healthcare reform debate like a pack of retarded howler monkeys in heat. But TV hadn’t quite prepared me for the reality of it. You can’t really appreciate how fucked this country really is until you see, as I did, hundreds of blue collar Americans sync up their primitive brains in a paranoid racist-hick seance, channeling White Power ideals through Reagan’s damned soul.

This Obama-bashing meeting was brought to the people of the High Desert courtesy of the Representative from California’s 41st District, Mr. Jerry Lewis. No, not the “Great Balls of Fire” guy. This one was a different type of performer: a great wads of cronyism political scam artist. In the two decades Lewis has served as this district’s rep, he’s made quite a name for himself as one of the most corrupt members of Congress, using his position as a ranking Republican member of the House Appropriations Committee (one of the most powerful committees out there) to “steer hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks to family and friends in direct exchange for contributions to his campaign committee and political action committee.” But as I was about to find out, Lewis’ constituency was so crazed they made him look less like an uber-successful used car salesmen and more like Mr. Mackey.

lewis_portrait_004_400

Mr. Lewis in front of Congress’ Corruption Hall of Fame portrait

My motorcycle didn’t help me get to the town hall any faster than my car would’ve—it was impossible to get around the lifted trucks with monster tires that barely fit into their own lanes—so I got there 30 minutes too late, and the auditorium had already filled up. “Sorry, sir. We have to wait until someone comes out to let you in. We’re at maximum fire safety capacity,” a college kid tasked with manning the doors told me and pointed me deeper into the lobby, where a TV and some chairs had been set up for the overflow crowd.

There were about 30 people assembled around the television set. Most of them were old, liver-spotted zombies. A few of them were in wheelchairs, others were sitting with canes between their knobby knees. Two vets had set themselves up on a bench right in front of the TV. One of them was wearing a brand-new “Don’t Tread On Me” T-shirt while his buddy had the words “Bubba Stick” etched into his wooden cane. Was this the front line of the anti-healthcare reform revolution?

I tried to make smalltalk with an old man wearing a blue “Korean War Veteran” hat, who was standing next to me. I tried to be chummy, saying something about the organizers not letting us in because we looked suspicious. But he would have none of it. Without saying a word, the vet gave me a slow cagey glance and hobbled away from me closer to the TV. I thought maybe gramps was hard of hearing. But there were mean vibes coming off the old man that couldn’t be ignored. Only later—when I finally made it into the auditorium and took a good look around—did I understand what it was all about.

Inside, the demographic was even more skewed towards the white and the old. Other than a couple of college students and one black guy, the 400-person auditorium was a sea of flabby, wrinkled white punctuated by handle bar mustaches and the occasional oxygen nose-tube glistening in the fluorescent light. But that oxygen had obviously come too late. People were queued up and down the aisles waiting for their turn to speak. And judging by what they were saying, brain damage had already taken its toll long ago.

A wheelchair-bound grandma with sunken in eyeballs and translucent skin the color of a sardine was so overtaken by Lewis’ generic Republican free market/invisible-hand-knows-best sermon that she was ready to leap out of her wheelchair. Her “amens” were getting louder every time Lewis uttered one of the many permutations of that night’s mantra—”government keep your hands off my healthcare”—that I half-expected her to start speaking in tongues.

I spied an long-haired dude wearing a “Public Option is the Only Option for Health Care Reform” button. But while the rest of the living dead cheered their rep’s “health care reform is a slippery slope to Communism” argument, he sat quietly mumbling under his breath. And he was doing the right thing. Wearing that button was brave enough, and he was already getting bad looks from some of the surlier dudes in the audience. You don’t want to start a confrontation in a room filled with venomous redneck grandmas and Harley-ridin’, goatee-braidin’ Vietnam vets hanging out with their Korean War dads while they are soaring high on American Patriotism. These people were itching to lynch a liberal. Itching real bad.

Finally, Rep. Lewis opened the floor up to questions.

Some hag from Apple Valley started off with a long screed about how illegal immigration was ruining our country and how the government was going to force her to pay the medical fees of illegal immigrants, union members, ACORN, and the rest of the treasonous Commie/Muslim groups Obama brought in. Then she switched gears: “And on page 59 of HR 3200 it states, ‘The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic transfers,'” she said, convinced that the health care plan was a diabolical plan by Obama’s Commie masters to take money away from honest white people like herself and redistribute it to blacks, spics, chinks and of course those damn kikes. “The government will take our savings,” she said, her voice quivering. “I am not willing to give my savings to the government!” The whole place went wild in support, the applause kept on roaring and people gave her a standing ovation. It was like she just scored a touchdown.

There were a couple of 50-something blue collar workers and their wives sitting behind me. One of the men, who was sitting about a foot away from my left ear, kept saying “yeah,” “yeah,” “that’s right,” to every point the woman—and just about everyone else who took the mic—made. He sounded like Beavis at a super church.

A woman who was extremely worried about the sovereignty of America took the mic. She heard that China was going to be one of the half-dozen countries manufacturing the Swine Flu vaccine. And she was convinced that those Commie bastards were going to use the vaccine as a Trojan horse to destroy America from the inside. “I hope we are going to be protecting our sovereignty. I hope that America does not import the vaccine from China,” she screamed into the mic. “And I better damn hope we know what they are putting in these vaccines!”

The idiots in that room got to their feet and cheered her on, whooping, yelping and whistling. Some guy took it even farther. He was convinced the World Health Organization had fabricated the Swine Flu pandemic so that the UN could take over the whole world and start running that One World Government they had been planning for so long. Not only had these people not changed in half a century, it seems like they had regressed.

As long as we’re keeping score: The Enlightenment: 0, Rednecks: 1.

On and on it went. “I’m sick and tired of having people up there comparing us to other countries. If you don’t like it here, go back to Africa!” a stringy woman with a meth-head physique yelled into the mic, goading her own ten-year-old daughter into health care-related illegal immigrant bashing. “How come we who work have to pay for people who don’t pay any taxes?” the girl said, clearly not knowing what the hell she was talking about. Another guy went on a tear about how illegal immigrants are actually flush with cash, but don’t spend it. Instead, they use credit cards that they never bother to pay, forcing us to foot the bill. “Who’s gonna pay for that when they disappear? We are!”

“Yeah, I took an oath to protect and serve my country. Not piddle it away to immigrants and unions,” a vet chimed in.

Jesus Christ. These people really are the perfect slaves. Their brain structure isn’t equipped to handle the complicated ripoff schemes pushed on them by greedy corporations, corrupt politicians or perverted pastors. It was clear that for the majority, racism and violence were about the only concepts they could understand with any certitude.

It was a weird, scary thing to behold. And it was clearly making Rep. Jerry Lewis uncomfortable. He tried to play down some of the more paranoid and racist statements, but he knew he was walking a thin line. Any attempt at reason would be viewed as nothing less than outright betrayal of the American Way he was elected to preserve.

And some of it backfired. He tried to reassure the crowd that the UN was not going to take over America and that Obama was not going to get full access to their savings accounts, but the people didn’t like that one bit. One guy threatened Lewis straight up, saying that he better not see him support those union lovin’, ACORN-funding Dems. “You better not. Or… I’ll be watching you,” the said, his voice menacingly flat and terse. This wasn’t deadpan liberal comedy. The man meant it, and Jerry Lewis knew it, able to muster only a nervous laugh and attempting to redirect the bad vibes coming his way in the direction of a grotesquely obese heckler in the back, who was drunk and spewing out incomprehensibly slurred grievances for the better part of an hour.

“You know, we’ve had a heckler like this at just every town hall meeting I’ve hosted. Last time, there was a man trying to ruin our civil discussion. I didn’t know it at the time, I read it in a newspaper, but it turned out this guy was working for the Democratic opponent that ran against me. He had been fired a little earlier because he was selling kiddie porn,” Lewis told the crowd, delivering the anecdote Jay Leno style. He knew how to work his audience back into a good mood. Even the heckler had a laugh. It seemed all had been forgiven.

As the meeting went on, it became clear that the crowd was composed of three distinct groups. The first, largest and dumbest was made up exclusively of racist hicks, who were convinced that any regulation was a secret attack on the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and the God-fearing Ways of White America. The second group, heavily overlapping with the first and probably just as big, was was made up of old people. They were pensioners and veterans who were opposed to government-run health care—the very health care plans they were on—because they feared their benefits would be cut. The third town haller type was stealthier and smarter. They didn’t ask questions or voice concerns, they made point-by-point policy demands lifted straight off the health insurance lobby, but wrapped in the bi-partisan rhetoric of astroturf organizations like FreedomWorks.

But the evil corporate shills didn’t bother me as much as the old people with their old-person smells. There they were, barely moving and ignorant as all hell. They are part of “sun revolves around the moon” demographic, but they are not stupid, survival instinct-wise. The joke of this is that they’re all living on government healthcare plans—the very thing they had been mobilized to this auditorium to fight! But they were not ignorant or hypocritical. They were fighting to protect a limited resource.

Consider these fun Baby Boomer facts: Right now, there are about 75 million of them. By 2020, there will be one baby boomer for every five Americans. As they age, they’ll siphon off more and more money from Medicare, spending more to keep themselves alive than they ever put into the system. You can be sure that when the Baby Boomers are done with it, Medicare will be sucked dry with nothing left for us youngin’s. And they know it. They want to maximize socialism for themselves while they can, and leave none for the next generation.

On some primitive level, the old people around me understood what I had not: the fight for healthcare reform is not just pitting the average American against giant health insurance vampires. It is also a fight between the young and the old, between the giant, aging Baby Boomer generation and the rest of us. They understand that we want to have some of what they have. But they are greedy, self-centered geriatric vampires and they do not want to share.

This article was first published by Vice magazine

Yasha Levine is a McMansion inhabitin’ editor of The eXiled. He is currently stationed in Victorville, CA. You can reach him at levine [at] exiledonline.com.

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55 Comments

Add your own

1. A Goddamn Red | September 10th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
I think we of the revolutionary left in America must shift tactics. Our class must seize the means of production for the products that support these insidious parasitic Boomers.
First we nationalize Franzia and then Golden Corral. Once we control the production of box wine and their feed troughs we can poison them to death.
2. Nergol | September 10th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Ah, so nice to see the respect for the working class held by leftists on display.
I mean the actual working class, not the Tom Joad fantasy that most leftists seem to have developed after reading Steinbeck in a Freshman lit. course. The one that they’re eternally pissed off at the actual, flesh and blood working class for not being anything like.
3. A Goddamn Red | September 10th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Being a boomer that rode through life during the most prosperous decades in American life and coasting through health problems on the state’s dime ain’t exactly working-class Nergol.
Maybe you should take a look at the AFL-CIO report on the poverty of young workers today (http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/laborday/upload/laborday2009_report.pdf)
Or Maybe you could pull your head out of your ass and stop acting like a slave who only puppets the interests of his master.
4. Sin Fronteras | September 10th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
@2 I have heard rumors that there are still union men in Ohio who can seeing The International in French, by heart.
I wasn’t there myself.
5. Sin Fronteras | September 10th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
sing, seeing, sing. blah.
6. BD | September 11th, 2009 at 12:04 am
This is really disgusting. You must not be aware how your insane revulsion for these honest, working class white Americans appears to a neutral reader- it looks like tribal jealousy and hatred of ye Olde Testament type.
7. Palmer Eldritch | September 11th, 2009 at 12:20 am
Nergol, your syntax is drunk.
I bet you can’t even imitate your local working-class accent passably.
8. Sin Fronteras | September 11th, 2009 at 1:41 am
My favorite place on the internet to see leftist university students pretend to be what they imagine the typical working class joe to be is here:
http://libcom.org/forums/libcommunity?
9. Lucian Iscariot | September 11th, 2009 at 1:49 am
I live in Ohio and I sing old IWW fight songs nearly every day.
“They say in Harlin County, there are no neutrals there. You’ll either be a union man or a thug for J. H. Blaire. Tell me which side are you on boys? Which side are you on?”
10. coldequation | September 11th, 2009 at 4:15 am
You accuse these people of racism because they don’t want to subsidize the existence of spics and niggers. OK, sure. But why should they favor being taxed to pay for a bunch of “others”? You have failed to even attempt to make any sort of case that it’s in their interests to support Obamacare, and instead implied that it’s not.
And you say baby boomers want to suck the system dry so there’s nothing left for the rest of us. Probably true. But how is putting many million more people on the government tit going to help? Isn’t that going to make it worse?
11. Jay | September 11th, 2009 at 5:35 am
Your recently raised profile in Victorville may not be a blessing with this one. People don’t take kindly to being called murderous retards, especially if it’s true.
12. buzz | September 11th, 2009 at 6:03 am
hum! the US gov’t already buys 70% of the healthcare in the country.
yeap! free pills for everybody ! hurrah ! we’re saved…
13. Hoyt Kuku | September 11th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Ya nailed it, bro! Ya think Victorville is full of selfish geriatrics? You oughta take a trip to the corporate construction and living tomb of Sun City, Arizona! They’ve been voting against education for decades. Once they gained their own limited knowledge through the public school system, damned if they were gonna pay for the education of future generations.
14. CB | September 11th, 2009 at 7:24 am
@2 & @6: What you’re seeing is a lack of respect for *angry flagrant ignorance*.
You are the ones who so automatically associate the working class with abject ignorance that you can’t even tell the difference. Your version of “respect” is insulting and disgusting.
You really think there isn’t a single blue-collar worker in America who would see the irony of a room full of people on Medicare ranting against government-run health care? Please!
Maybe it’s because I come from a state with strong urban blue-collar roots, strong unions, and have had long associations with factory workers from a variety of political stripes that I don’t fall into the trap you do. Thank God for my blessings.
The question is, though, what’s your excuse?
You’re the geniuses who automatically assume Blue Collar equals Rural Conservative equals Ignoramus. That’s a ridiculously wrong and insulting stereotype. But you actually *defend* it as “honest”? Anyone who attacks the Ignoramus population is automatically insulting the Blue Collar population?
Please tell me you were being ironic.
15. aPeasant | September 11th, 2009 at 7:27 am
America has a working-class? Really, post a picture of him, but don’t Photoshop out the Chinese background.
16. Joe Blow | September 11th, 2009 at 7:31 am
“these honest, working class white ”
you mean “lying, self-centered, retired white..”
17. Lysander Spooner | September 11th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Yes, sure would be nice to see a liberal actually having some respect for the working class. They need your help, obviously. We’re all on the same team. Libertards and Conservatoids yapping at each other just makes the ruling class chuckle.
18. Homer Erotic | September 11th, 2009 at 7:53 am
Save your canned outrage for the gullible and the ignorant, BD and Nergol. If displays such as what you will see if you click the embedded link in my screen-name don’t make you weep for the future of this country, then you must be one of the fish from the shallow end of the gene pool shown in the video.
There are plenty of working-class people who want to see some kind of national health-care plan put into place. I know, because I am fallen child of the middle class who works with such people at the grocery store at which I am currently employed. You probably don’t hear from those folks as much because they’re too busy work, work, working their asses off for peanuts for the greater part of their waking hours trying to support their families.
That said, I am in favor of a single-payer system (in theory, because pretty soon the world will be unwilling to lend us any more money as we drown in our ocean of red ink). The current so-called reform makes me so glad I didn’t waste my vote on either wing of the ruling Plutocratic Party last fall. It will force people to pay into the private insurance system, and that will be a windfall those bastards don’t deserve at all, any more than the Wall Street kleptocrats deserved their bailout last year. Sure, the government will help people such as my co-workers (the part-timers have no insurance from work) who must subsist on nickels and dimes to afford private insurance, but will the government really be able to deliver on this promise?
Look for a Republican route ala 1994 to happen in the next two election cycles. As much as the Republicans and their supporters scare me, it will be well-deserved, IMHO.
19. KKKK is 4 kkknowledge | September 11th, 2009 at 9:09 am
“We of the revolutionary left in America…”
Ha ha, where’d you get the idea that anyone on this site is for that? Revolutionary! Ha ha joke’s on you.
20. tigre | September 11th, 2009 at 9:20 am
This story is definitely slanted and inflammatory, but I’ve been to these meetings too, and this story is an accurate description of the ugly that these things take.
Pull any one of these individuals out on a one on one basis, and you could have a good conversation with them. Perhaps these folks are your grandparents or your uncles, or neighbors who you know and love, but get room full of people fired up, and the hate flows.
You have to see it to understand it. It’s not a man yelling at the TV in the living room. It’s the ugliness and dangerous mob that our Founding Fathers were worried about when they decided against creating a pure democracy.
This is the mob that can lynch a man, or pour boiling tar a fellow human being, cover him with feathers, and cheer.
21. LIExpressway | September 11th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Hi Everyone. I’m from NYC and the “Spics & Niggers” here are the working class for the most part. In my experience Whites that actually physically work in the tri state are thieves and scoundrels to be avoided at all cost(Your awesome Mechanic,your honest Plumber,Union worker,Organized Crime member,scam business operator, longshoreman , roadwork repair crew, ect) I know cause I worked for many of them, and will hopefully soon document it.
White people complaining about illegal immigrants is the logical equivalent of being angry at the symptom not the cause. Like these people have ever worked “hard” in there lives. If they ever had too they would switch sides in a heartbeat.
The fabricated bullshit illusion of a middle class is what protects the oligarchy. When ever the shit hits the fan just call in the poor goons to rough up the opposition. Blame it on the Commies Niggers and Mexicans.
That’s fascism.
Sometimes they loose control of the goons, and the goons try to take over….
This should be fun.
I think I’ll miss clean running water the most.
22. Sin Fronteras | September 11th, 2009 at 11:00 am
@20 “Perhaps these folks are your grandparents or your uncles, or neighbors who you know and love.”
That is exactly who they are.
“Pull any one of these individuals out on a one on one basis, and you could have a good conversation with them.”
True, just not about socioeconomic issues.
23. Aaron | September 11th, 2009 at 11:23 am
“I think we of the revolutionary left in America must shift tactics.”
You mean you’re going to give up on getting mowed down en masse by the cops like so many bipedal cattle, and try something that might actually work instead?
Sure. I’ll believe it when I see it.
24. Tommy Jefferson | September 11th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
It’s pathetic to watch people who’ve ripped off unborn taxpayers for decades via the military-industrial complex and medicare now cry about socialized medicine.
You leftists are a sad bunch.
When America can finally borrow no more, there will be a great cleansing. I look forward to it.
25. Anna | September 11th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
A Goddamn Red, that was hilarious. I could see the evil harridan who lived next door to me at one of these meetings. She spent her retirement shrieking at everyone, including me, who had the nerve to use the parking space in front of her house, even though she had no car. Unwilling to share even a public parking space with anyone. “I pay taxes! I vote!” she’d howl when I refused to move my car. Yeah, too bad you can’t vote yourself another two decades to live. I love it when “homeowners” think they’re better than the renters.
http://www.boomerdeathcounter.com
26. Nguyễn Ái Quốc | September 11th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
@24 “When America can finally borrow no more, there will be a great cleansing. I look forward to it.”
When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out.
27. Fissile | September 11th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
“The joke of this is that they’re all living on government healthcare plans—the very thing they had been mobilized to this auditorium to fight!”
An even bigger joke is that the granddaughters of these geriatric, racist, rednecks eventually make their way out to LA to do inter-racial porn videos.
28. Pádraig Ó Buth Chanian | September 12th, 2009 at 6:06 am
“and of course those damn kikes.”
Nice try, but no cigar. You know damned well that the Tea Party crowd are mostly also fanatical Zionists.
29. adolphhitler | September 12th, 2009 at 7:24 am
@27…boy, have you got that right….i’ve never met a nude dancer who wasn’t eather a former pentacostal or from oklahoma
30. Goshwin | September 12th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Hello Everyone,
“They” must be very pleased to see that their ongoing brainwashing still works so well. Separatism, separatism, separatism.
Condemning the so-called “white, old, wrinkled-skin, etc., etc., etc.” for their attempt, wrong or right, to stand up to “big-brother” and speak, while the “younguns” sit back and reap many things from the “oldsters” and sit on their collective asses and whine about being taken advantage of is pretty pathetic and pretty well what “big-brother” wants the younguns like many on this post, to do. Bravo for fitting the bill so nicely for the powers that be. You are playing your roles very well. Sad.
Better to stand up for something than fall for everything.
These oldsters know that many issues related to the new Obama healthplan seem scary, to say the least. Neither they nor you know what is in that neo plan. Nor do I. But trust big-brother, nope, no way.
As to intelligence, didn’t see much of that here.
Take care, wake up, God Bless.
31. Andrew | September 12th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Those jerks at the town hall aren’t blue collar, they’re middle class. I’m sick of anti-union Republicans identifying with the working class they’ve spent the last 30 years doing everything they could to eradicate. If you managed a hardware store you might get working class wages, or less, but you’re not a laborer.
You’re also missing the more important point in this article, this is a generational struggle against possibly the most selfish generation in human history.
32. Roxanne | September 12th, 2009 at 10:32 am
There’s no such thing as “middle class”. There could be working class with mid income level or very unsuccesful bourgeosie with low-low income. As there is no intelligentsia in US to speak of, most of you are either one (95 % chance) or another (keep dreamin’..)
It’s funny how stupid american white trash yobs fancy themselves as anything but..
33. mto3 | September 12th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Okay, except the geriatrics quoted in the article are not boomers. The baby boom didn’t begin until 1946, so the first of the boomers is just now 63. Medicare doesn’t begin until age 65, and although SSN might begin at 62, I’ll bet very few of the truly oldsters there are much older than that.
The Vietnam Vets are boomers, true enough, but the Korean War guys are not, as well.
34. badnewswade | September 12th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Thank you so much for outing this working-class slave mentality for what it is.
Meanwhile, round these parts we’ve got actual 1930’s style Fascists coming back- more of the same shit!
35. Tom Wetzel is a douche bag, but. . . | September 12th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/8052
Debating Economic Vision for a Society without Classes.
Two Classes or Three?
36. adolphhitler | September 12th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
@33…1930s style fascists…i dont believe it
37. KB | September 13th, 2009 at 4:53 am
LOVED the commentary. Best I’ve read in a long time.
“These people really are the perfect slaves. Their brain structure isn’t equipped to handle the complicated ripoff schemes pushed on them by greedy corporations, corrupt politicians or perverted pastors. It was clear that for the majority, racism and violence were about the only concepts they could understand with any certitude.”
Here’s the thing. These people preach about Democracy and freedom. The #1 thing a successful Democracy needs is an EDUCATED public. In this regard, we’ve got one foot in the grave. The rest will be 6 feet under and the soil will start falling when Medicare crowds out spending on everything else, including education. It’s amazing to me that they can’t see that they are being taken for a ride. You hear these people deride France. My husband’s French. He loves it here, but the one thing that bothers him is the special interests. He has asked me so many times, “Why do people here allow corporations to overtake the government?” He actually gets angry about it saying that the government is supposed to protect the people, not their employer…Government and business should work together on one level, but on another level, government should protect its people from abuses. Here, he says, government and business seem to be working together with a mission of maximizing share price at any expense to people! In France, the influence of special interests is very, very limited…because business is not given preferential access to govt leaders. Education in the one thing that allows people to think independently/critically and it has failed.
“But the evil corporate shills didn’t bother me as much as the old people with their old-person smells. There they were, barely moving and ignorant as all hell. They are part of “sun revolves around the moon” demographic, but they are not stupid, survival instinct-wise. The joke of this is that they’re all living on government healthcare plans—the very thing they had been mobilized to this auditorium to fight! But they were not ignorant or hypocritical. They were fighting to protect a limited resource.”
I particularly LOVE the oldsters who say that their kids and grandkids can’t afford it. OK…they can afford/go into debt to pay for you, but not for themselves?!?! Personally, given the growing awareness of intergenerational in-equity and the anger surrounding it, if I were old, I would do everything I could to be thrown in the same pot as everyone else…as a stand-alone program Medicare is a target, esp with the older gen’s dying off and the larger younger generations starting to vote – the Obama cohort!
38. nosuchthingasshould | September 13th, 2009 at 10:56 am
@ 37 KB, the french have a government that does it’s job, because they are not afraid to take to the streets.
@ 1 and 23 Aaron is right. since the general population is too corrupted by the plutocracy to be willing to join in the mass protest, and the plutocracy has the upper hand in the direct physical clashes in the streets, the ‘revolutionaries’ will be unsuccesfull unless they resort to more underhand tactics of assassination and sabotage. They will eventually gain recognition from the masses trained to root for and suck up to the bully only when they become one.
But what is the point in fighting for such people? Better join the abusers.
39. dogbane | September 14th, 2009 at 6:50 am
“You know damned well that the Tea Party crowd are mostly also fanatical Zionists.”
Not because they love Jews but because they think Israel is a sign of the Second Coming.
40. T. Hallman | September 14th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Well, you got it right about baby boomers. The fix is in. The senior demographic isn’t going to be taking any prisoners. Boomers have the numbers to rule.
We’re going to be needing some organs, too. Death panels? That’s the slickest scam so far. Sure, there’ll be no death panels for seniors. Those are for the younger crowd. Gotcha! While there was all this noise of death panels for seniors, hardly anybody thought about guarding the flanks: death panels for juniors!
We’ll be needing just enough of you to pay for our health care, then the rest of the juniors are, well, spare parts. I’ve already got my sights set on a 1990-vintage liver and heart-lungs set for starters.
41. Russ | September 15th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Excellent article Yasha. I truly enjoy your perspective in your writing.
You got me debating now if everyone is being pitted against one another
42. Byron in Wahroonga | September 16th, 2009 at 6:02 am
***hundreds of blue collar Americans sync up their primitive brains in a paranoid racist-hick seance, channeling White Power ideals through Reagan’s damned soul***
He! Thanks. Contrived elitist lies and faux outrage from Borat wannabees are why I visit ‘The Exile.’ Enjoying your downward spiral and loooking forward to hoisting a glass of expensive – trust me, you couldn’t even afford to look at it – wine, upon this zine’s demise.
43. ohok | September 18th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
SOYLENT GREEN THESE OLD FUCKS
44. T. Hallman | September 19th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Soylent Green sounds good to me. Before I go, here’s a diagram of the universe and how it all works:
—-CENSORED—-
45. angela | September 23rd, 2009 at 11:55 am
Yasha, you are so sexy!
**EXILED CENSOR: eXiled comment rules require anonymous come-ons to include jpeg of snapper and daytime contact information. Send immediately to: levine@exiledonline.com.**
46. Bransby | October 13th, 2009 at 7:58 am
“hundreds of blue collar Americans sync up their primitive brains in a paranoid racist-hick seance, channeling White Power ideals through Reagan’s damned soul”
That could be my favourite sentence of all time – genius!!
47. jack | October 13th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
@42 calling someone elitist, while bragging about how expensive your wine is, is entirely hypocritical. you have that much money? it’s you that needs to pay more taxes. dont take money from the people that dont have it, take it from the people that have too much. the ones that think they’re everything in this world because they have more slips of green paper that were either ill-gotten or handed down to them from previous generations. if you earned it the hard way then you’ll have no problem humbly helping your fellow man, because you know how hard it actually is. in short, if you’re too rich, you must pay!
48. Dale | October 14th, 2009 at 9:36 am
You hit the nail on the head brother. These people are old, ignorant, and honestly, I’m just waiting for them to die out. Most of them are under educated, and proof that lack of education is a dangerous thing. They rant about Obama, and pretend that his change in policy justifies the racism they’ve held in their hearts all of their lives. Immigrants are good enough to pick our fruit, mow our lawns, check us out at Wal-Mart, but not good enough to receive even one iota of respect. The working class have no idea how good they have it. Hell they look like Donald fucking Trump compared to the immigrant worker population. So here’s a message to old, stupid, easily led Limbaugh fans… shut the hell up!
49. Bob | October 14th, 2009 at 11:20 am
As I read this article, I couldn’t help but think:
“Here is another unAmerican piece of crap supporting another unAmerican piece of crap.”
And then I got to the bottom of the article and saw the name of the writer, “Yasha Levine”.
Yup. Go back where you came from please. Real Americans are tired of the internationalists and their lies and bribery of BOTH political parties. Go back where you came from.
50. tigerGUY | October 18th, 2009 at 6:04 am
LMFAO. I cannot figure out when it was that the apathetic and ignorant with their hands out decided that they were “entitled”. My question has always been who will pay for your entitlements? Certainly not the Socialist shits in power now. History is continuously rewritten by the leftists so that a young American has no real clue today where they come from. Parents have done such a great job of giving to their children but somehow forgot to explain where it came from and how hard you have to work to give it. The “teabaggers” are tired of your shit. Unlike most that agree with socialist dogma, we are prepared to fight for our rights and for less government and for Americans to be made to be held accountable for their freedoms in America. It’s coming and WE are ready. See you when all hell breaks loose!! LMFAO!!
51. Necronomic Justice | October 18th, 2009 at 11:48 am
@ 50. tigerGUY
Bring it motherfucker, bring it.
52. DPirate | November 4th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
To Nergal, comment #2:
The working class, by which we mean blue-collar wage labor, used to be just as Steinbeck represented. The demographic has changed. The GIBill, student loans, expansive scholarship programs and the rise of the middle class following ww2 in America made university education available to to the offspring of the working class, and the more intelligent among them have been able to avail themselves of education to qualify for better jobs.
So, where the intelligent poor were basically stuck economically according to how they were born in Steinbeck’s (and previous) times, they have been able to promote themselves more recently. Not, of course, on an egalitarian basis, but on a basis of merit which, if we discount the few that rise according to beauty and athletics, means by way of intelligence.
The working class is more stupid now (than at any other time in the history of mankind, probably).
53. jesus | May 7th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Your writing is too complex for my retarded teabagger brain. You’re right, I’m the retard.
54. Cal Gravatt | February 14th, 2012 at 11:30 am
Wow, as I find myself on the political left I can’t help but notice the seething stereotyping in your writing. You would reach a wider audience if you were not so prejudice and so bigoted about elderly Americans.
G
55. Song in F#min | December 30th, 2012 at 2:01 am
Ok so as far as I can tell this article is about your total contempt for the elderly, the white, and the working class. You may not be old enough to worry about what the monetary costs of things are, but perhaps you should have considered listening to the content of the meeting. But you couldn’t even make it to the meeting on time with your wee little two-wheeler. I suggest your next article be about the merits of waking up early and working for a living. You may feel contempt for the old government-employed retirees for wanting to keep government off their medicare, but consider the fact that they have worked for what they get, whereas you simply feel entitled, as you should be.