The fundamental problem with America is the two-party system. The unnatural human perspective each one engenders, comes out of. This is no surprise, but I wonder why there has not been a concerted push for a third party: Christian Democrats! (Something like that.) The left is good with the poor, the right with personal responsibility. Common sense would dictate that we need to fuse those two aspects. You can't kill your young, nor can you defecate on the poor (in a trickle or otherwise).
One of the great reads I got to spend time with when I covered for a colleague in MEDIEVAL LIT was PIERS PLOWMAN. Not only did it offer a great example of effective allegory, something I thought beyond possible, but it also served up a nice portrait of the bitter poor: people who didn't have, who wouldn't work for anything, but who would also bitterly threaten those who had stuff if they didn't feel like sharing. The wayward section of welfare--that mentality. Once when I lived on Ridge Ave. in Steubenville I tried to put in an outdoor French drain system, hired a local guy to help. I didn't have much dough, but it was a bog job, and the guy needed money. I was shocked at how bitter he became. He felt like I should pay him more, that there was a basic injustice over the fact that I had more than he did. The guy calmed a little after I explained that I lived in his neighborhood because I didn't have much either. But that was my first experience with the bitter poor--those who will surely take to the streets if Obama loses. (We'll be threatened with that if comrade O is in dire straights as we near the election--just as we were before Clinton got in.)
Obama won't lose. The white-wall tire guy, Romney, has no chance. Throwing him up there is just a sign of how confused the Republicans are--pathetic. (I always vote Republican for president because I have no choice. Abortion is not just another issue. That would be like telling a Jew in '45 that the camps were nothing, really. On a par with German food stamps. . . . And I know that offends people, but think of it from the Devil's POV. His whole gig is to wound God. So he goes after the Chosen, the then after the most innocent, those who have not yet had a chance to offend Him.)
So my question is, will Nancy Pelosi go to hell? Joe Biden? How about Oprah (my money's on her)? The fat, little Catholic who's a liberal on the editorial page? And what about Glen Beck? Anybody with a billion dollars who doesn't give half of it to the poor?
Outrageous? Maybe.
Will the left eventually line us up? Can't see the right doing it, unless they all grow Mohawks or something. But both are sorry excuses for parties. People will be held responsible for what they do; they should be held so now. Nothing will save us from death, comrade. And the poor matter, a lot. They are called "the other." They are who we are here for.
