#the good thing about living in this bitch city is that no one gaf and i can have my little breakdown in peace

[mxwhore]

crying on da streets oh yes

[quakerjoe]

Cuppa Joe for Sun., 7 Jan 2019

I was sitting in my living room with my best mate watching “Parts Unknown” with the late Anthony Bourdain and the episode we were watching was in Welch, West Virginia. Watch it. Seriously, watch it. Listen carefully. You may just get more woke. I know I did. You see, people from regions like this are typified as hicks, hillbillies and rednecks. Well, to be fair, they are. Good ol’ coal country folk bent on guns and Jesus with a deep love of football. It’s never been my cuppa tea, honestly, but having been through places like this, I’ve experienced a couple of things. If I shut up and just listen, these folks, for the most part, are just like anyone anywhere else. They have pride in their homes, their families, their traditions, and they certainly don’t love, more or less, as frequently, or deeply as we do. Their pleasures are simple. Their tastes plain and direct. Their pains every bit as real as yours or mine.

Looking at them strictly through a political scope of late, especially since 2016 where my vision narrowed a bit, I’ve come to remember something; something that’s a bit embarrassing and certainly bears the burden of a dose of shame, now that I’ve watched this episode of “Parts Unknown”. Bourdain visited a coal mine and fired machine guns and ate the local delicacies of the area and talked to the folk, even being so brave as to broach the topic of politics in this once deeply blue, now deeply red and pro-trump part of our nation. “I’d lost my way,” I realized as I did something I haven’t done in a long time. I listened.

Now don’t get me wrong here; I’m not about to defend these poor bastards for voting for trump. Not in a million years. They didn’t do their research or homework and they’re guilty for putting that fuckwit in the White House. However, taking the time to listen to the “why” made me look a little deeper. It made me realize something. These simple folk, not overly educated but hard working, kind-hearted people, despite not being on the short path for a Pulitzer Prize for anything intelligent… might just be the geniuses we need. Sounds crazy? I’ll explain.

One of the big reasons they went trump is because HRC gave them all the impression that she was going to kill the coal industry but didn’t make the case well enough about retraining and repurposing their workforce. She ran a campaign against an industry steeped in their traditions now, generations having worked in the mines. Simply, she was an uppity city gal without a clue and she lost them. The problem here, for those unfamiliar with places like this, is that uppity city folk have ALWAYS found some way to come into their small, quiet towns, fool them into buying or investing in shit they don’t need nor want (which goes all the way back to the Carpetbaggers. Look that up if you don’t know what that is). While it brought them good paying jobs sometimes, like Big Coal did, they’re all too aware that their crops, resources and so forth are bought on the cheap there and sold by middle men for small fortunes in the big cities. They know full well they’re getting screwed, but they also don’t really have the means to exploit the market directly, eliminate the middlemen, and see that small fortune themselves. Generations have experienced making a little money while their efforts went on to make city folk pretty rich.

So why trump? In short, many feel he’s going to bring change and they like him because he “talks like they talk” and says how he feels and what he means. By now I do hope that’s changed a bit. Still, the orange fuckwit did ring a chord with these people, even though he’s a rich twat from NY. They’re confident that trump will bring change, and you know what? I just caught on that they’re right, just not in the way they’re thinking.

We’re at a strange stage of existence where the well educated are flustered at having to deal with the less educated, including that gap in religious beliefs or lack thereof. Both sides now look down their noses at one another and the chasm of contempt is obviously growing bigger and bigger. It’s no secret that we’re all getting more and more poor regardless of our level of education or faith, and because of that, the rich fuckers at the top utilize that ongoing divide to keep us from actually remembering what makes us all alike for fear we, the actual people, may rise up and literally get rid of them one way or another.

I used to think that the GOP only had eyes for corporations and their cash. It’s why I dropped my GOP leanings years and years ago. It’s one thing to want smaller federal government and fiscal responsibility, but when they’re always doing the opposite and the Democrats actually DID what the GOP’s platform was saying it was for, well, actions speak louder than words. However, I think we can all agree to some measure of other, that today’s Dems are acting like moderate GOPers of the 80’s to 90’s. As the Democrats have demonstrated in this new House, diversity is clearly something that keeps them at a respectable level on the Left, but wait… Watch this episode of “Parts Unknown”. It’s on NetFlix. Watch it and then read the rest of this. I’ll wait.

No I won’t. You know it. Still, watch it. It gave me the following epiphany here, and I’d like you to consider it. The people Bourdain talked to about trump, and we’ve heard it before too, and we mostly gaffed it off, but here’s the genius of it all- They’re right in that trump will bring change. He’s so terrible, so fucking stupid, so damaging to the country, that our only hope as a nation is to REMEMBER what makes us all Americans, not bitch about too many of the things that really don’t matter (yeah, I’ll lighten up on the religious folks, even if I think it’s all a load of bollocks) and look at things from a different angle. Here it is. This change NEEDS to happen, but not in the GOP; they’ll never change. No, seriously, they won’t. They’re loving the cash more than country. No, I mean CHANGE needs to come from the Democrats! For too long they've made dumb choices, their politicians are spineless, and their policies framed in ways that seem to look down at most of rural America (what I call #Murica). Democrats need to shut up and listen. They need to HEAR what troubles there are out there and not just wink and nod and say they’ll try to handle it, but to bloody well DO it. They need to be CLEAR what their message is.

Sanders lost a lot of support because he and his staff never actually spent the time to school the people out here on what DEMOCRATIC socialism (actually this term is incorrect if you want to split hairs- what Sanders is shooting for is Social Democracy; something we already have to a degree and it’s being stripped away and replaced with an oligarchy more and more. Also see Plutocracy) is, and the McCarthy-flashbacks kept people hearing “socialist” only and the association we were taught in school to that word relating to tyrannical countries like the USSR, China and so on and it put too many voters off. Still, Sanders creamed trump in loads of polls while HRC was sketchy; a gamble at best. She didn’t connect with the ‘simple folk’ out in the sticks and in blue territory while Sanders did. The Dems need to own their defeat, admit their part in helping trump get elected, and then move on from there. Americans are all for Progressive ideas; they just don’t trust the Dems to either have the spine to try, the balls to fight, or the strength to carry it through. Again, those people in Welch WV are right- trump will bring change, one way or another. Either we’re going to get rid of Corporate Democrats who ignore their constituents and suck corporate dicks for cash (as the GOP is famed for) and actually CHANGE by getting money out of politics and start working for “We the People”, OR they won’t, and change will still happen, only not in the way these rural folk think. It’ll be the collapse and end of the US as we know it, a division so bad that nobody will come and help because we’ve pissed off and alienated out allies and bowed down, on a global scope, to our former enemies like Russia and China and N. Korea.

So, while city mouse and country mouse may both enjoy time with their families, decent wages, decent jobs, good food, clean air and water, good education, healthcare, and the pride of being an American citizen, we need to remember that these are the important things that bind us together, not only with our fellow Americans, but our fellow human beings all across the planet. There are some things that just WON’T go away, and somewhere in here we need to agree to disagree. Abortion. Guns. It’s too late on these issues. We either respect the separation of  church and state and keep abortion legal for the safety and lives of women or we don’t and admit that we’re all up for Sharia Law, #Murican style. As for guns? We’ll never fix this one EVER. Again, watch the show I mentioned earlier. The problem is that we’re so saturated with guns that it won’t matter if there are any gun laws or not. They won’t do a damned thing no matter how much I wish they would. Still, trump will bring change, like they said. The question is, will Democrats make the changes in their party that are needed to literally save the United States and possibly the world, or not change and cement in our history that they ARE the scourge that those on the right think they are?