The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Okay, the verdict is in, the election is over, it’s all over but the shouting. Or at least the celebration by the billionaires. All of you who voted for the winner, maybe you thought he would unleash capitalism, deregulate the poor hamstrung corporations and bring riches to your small towns and rural communities. Let the captains of industry loose, you figure, and they will pull all of us up on a rising tide that has nothing to do with fake global warming.

Trickle down economics will unleash a flood of wealth, lifting all our boats. Just let the tech boyz and the corporations have their way, unfettered by pesky rules and regulations, and the engines of capitalism will bring untold wealth and prosperity to our land. If government was the problem, the obstacle, the elephant in the boardroom, then by god, government has to be dismantled department by department. Or at the very least it has to be hobbled. Put in charge the most incompetent people possible, fire the deep state employees, drown the damn beast in the bathtub when its size is reduced. Drain the swamp and let the corporations run free. After all, isn’t that what it means to make America great again?

If the rich don’t know how to make money, who does? YOU? No, your job is to get out of the way, let the corporations do their job competently and no doubt whatsoever with your best interests in mind too. If competition was once thought the way to keep your prices down, be advised, it’s a brave new world now. Apple, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, Tesla, they’re all gobbling up the little companies. Banks are consolidating, grocery chains are buying up the losers, airlines are merging. The New Capitalists aren’t wasting time competing with the hangers-on, they got bottom lines to watch, stocks to tend, CEO salaries to pay. Don’t worry, you’ll get yours too. Eventually. Didn’t we just raise the federal minimum wage? Sure we did. Some states even raised it more than that. The red states didn’t but that’s because they understand the importance of letting business run business, not government run business. Just the way you voted.

Sit back and get ready for your votes to pay dividends. First to the wealthy, sure, but down the road, you’ll get yours. Truth is, you’ll get exactly what you deserve….

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I was following a Cadillac SUV with a bumper sticker that read: YOU’RE THE REASON YOU’RE SUFFERING. This is bad news indeed for most of us down here on the South End, but at least now we know who to blame for our misfortunes. Although … I don’t think I care for the Winners in the Game of Life telling us Losers we deserve what we got. Some of us sure do. And I’m one. But I don’t ask for favors … or sympathy … or welfare either. I’m not going to make it to the 1% and I’m not gonna work myself to death trying.

But there are folks like Janet down the road, two kids in preschool and daycare, a husband John back from the Oil Wars with one leg and a head bounced too many times in IED explosions who’s pretty much a permanent casualty. She’s trying to hold a job and hold things together too. She’s 24 going on 60 and I seriously doubt she thinks her suffering is on account of her.

Joe the Plumber — and no, not that Joe the Plumber — has meliosomethingorother, the cancer from breathing asbestos when he unknowingly worked with the stuff in his youth. I doubt he’s going to take kindly to a Cadillac bumper sticker that thinks his Attitude must be to blame for his disease.

The rich think the rest of us are lazy, I guess. The 1% think the losers are takers. The corporate boyz think they made it on their own, no help from the education system, no assistance from the government that built the infrastructure, no subsidies or tax credits or loopholes in the law. They got theirs and if it happens to suck up most of yours, well, tough. You coulda done it too. Course, you might have been born black or Hispanic, you might be autistic or handicapped, you might be a single mom or a laid-off worker, you might get sick, you might be discriminated against, you might have been born on the South End.

We all want to believe we’re the captains of our destiny. But the waters we sail are more treacherous for some. It doesn’t take much compassion to pick up survivors in the water from the lifeboat off your yacht. Course, when the time comes we take the yacht away from you, I hope you’ll understand, it’s going to be your fault.

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