Book Review: Dandelion Wine

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Bradbury doesn't quite offer a full fledged tale in "Dandelion Wine", but more of an episodic account of Summer, 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois, and its' inhabitants as seen through the eyes of two young boys, Douglas and Tom. Seldom, outside of Douglas and Tom, who always seem to know where the action is happening in town, is the reader offered more than a 10pg. snippet per character. And that is not to put that decision in a negative light. Bradbury offers us just enough to know these people, to care about them, to care about who they love or hate. And he does it incredibly well. We turn the page wanting more, only to discover he's shifted gears and it's now several weeks in the future, and the children are observing someone else, but the same meticulous introspection persists and again we find ourselves caring, yearning. And we might hypothesize Bradbury consciously did this, fore if anything persists throughout this book, it is death, and its' embodiment: The Lonely One. For the boys to experience so much fatality at such a young age might trouble some out there, but where darkness resides, light is ever near. As Douglas ecstatically proclaims at the onset, "I'm really alive!" He certainly does not fail to find any shortage of that in the Summer of 1928.




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Clinton Did It

Yesterday, Paul Ryan (R-WI), the GOP's next up-and-coming cretin released his Republican budget plan to reduce the deficit and reign in government, because government spending is out of control, or at least it has been since 2008 when George W. Bush left office (that's a strange coincidence). It'd be nice to think that Representative Ryan were sincere in his recommendations to reduce spending and balance the budget, but when he marks 2008 as a good point to return and then strictly stabilize spending, it's only political posturing. GWB increased the federal budget by 104%. In comparison, Pres. Bill Clinton increased the federal budget by only 11%. If Rep. Ryan were truly sincere about reducing the government, he might choose a better marker than the notoriously poor fiscal policies of George W. Bush. But besides this glaring omission from Ryan's reasoning, let's examine a few other interesting points, perhaps treating Rep. Ryan to a little history lesson in the meantime.

15 years ago, Pres. Bill Clinton balanced the budget and created a surplus. He did it with common sense fiscal austerity, not the extremely dangerous musings of the Tea Party-elected freshman in the House. Tthese people cry that cutting Planned Parenthood and NPR (just to name two examples) will magically fix our budget crisis it's almost laughable. But then you have polls released that show Americans think the government spends nearly $200B a year on such programs and you have to wonder how dumb this country actually is. But Clinton balanced the budget with those programs still wholly intact. Pres. Clinton did not make sweeping changes to Social Security or Medicare. He did raise taxes, but only 4.6% on the highest earners in the country. And in spite of Republicans' continued arguments that tax cuts lead to more jobs and tax increases lead to fewer ones, the economy boomed. Maybe Mr. Ryan should have just taken up a chair next to the former president to learn a thing or two.

Secondly, piggy-backing off the comment that Pres. Clinton created a surplus prior to leaving office, is that the current deficit was largely created by only two factors: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Bush Tax Cuts of 2001 and 2003. Yet Rep. Ryan likes to talk up that "entitlement" programs have been the main driving force behind our deficit problems, which just makes no sense mathematically.

And lastly, it should be noted that Pres. Obama has increased the federal budget. For a Democrat, that's not terribly surprising. But Rep. Ryan and all the other GOP windbags pout endlessly about some huge socialist agenda implemented by the President. Yet again there selectivist memory about history has quickly forgotten that the President increased spending so quickly because the country was on the verge of a depression and money needed to be poured into the economy or else it would have failed completely. And again, it should be said that George W. Bush watched idly as the housing bubble inflated and burst, without action- except of course to reward the companies that inflated the bubble. It would be nice to take Rep. Ryan's budget proposal seriously, but it'd just fill me with a lot of hot air.

A Little Bit of Arithmetic

As the ground swell of protests continues to build in favor of increased taxes on the millionaires and billionaires, some (most notably on the Right of the political spectrum) continue to blame the poor for so many of our problems in this country. The Right continues to argue that the poor game the system, take advantage of lax oversight laws and are the thieves taking so much of the hard-earned money from the middle class. In light of the Great Recession, one should be inclined to think such an argument ridiculous, but still some continue to shout angrily that it's all the fault of the poor, or even, the not so poor, but the folks in the middle class who bought houses with the encouragement of the deceitful lies of the mortgage companies. But how much farther can this argument go? How much wealth need be concentrated so heavily in the blood-soaked hands of the richest people and corporations of this country before it becomes unarguably their wrong-doing which has lead to such a disastrous state for this nation. Right now, 400 people in this country, four-zero-zero, hold the same amount of wealth as 50% of the rest of the population. This trend has spiraled beyond control over the last decade, made worse with the recession. How exactly can it be that with so much wealth concentrated at so few points that the poor of this country are the ones leeching the very blood of the middle class? There certainly are those welfare scum who do nothing, and have done nothing, to earn the government paycheck that comes to their subsidized home each month, but I'm not inclined to think that these few are the root of our economic woes when so much wealth is concentrated in the upper echelons of the rich. The numbers just are not there to support the claims that the few poor who actually cheat the system can control so much of the wealth being stripped from the middle class. To suppose otherwise is ridiculous beyond measure, and math.

Parasites

"We are all parisites[sic]..." read part of a post to Facebook in the aftermath of Japan's March 11, 2011's devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami. My friend went on to say, "God help us all." I was quite struck by the phrase. I attempted to discern what exactly my friend believed in based on this post (probably unwise to base an entire theological viewpoint on one post, but I'm just speculating here). Should God actually exist, wouldn't it be precisely Him who caused such devastation? The all-knowing, all-powerful being spurred such disaster, so why on earth would He be called on for assistance? And furthermore, to the former part of the post, humans are "parisites"? But we are made in God's image. If we are draining this world of all its resources then God must be equally complicit in draining the vast cosmos of its own.

What I find so disturbing is the bleak world view highlighted by such a statement. If God actually existed and caused such needless destruction, I would hope it would be to illustrate the point that we, humans, are all alike, coexist here together in this world and that when harm befalls a group of our people, we don't look to God for miracles, but create our own by helping one another, by helping the most needy of our people. Alan Moore's Watchmen culminated in this idea. Wars in all corners of the world, impending doom knocking on the door; it would take a disaster of worldly significance for humans to set aside their differences and come together.

But I don't believe that God exists and therefore do not attribute any particular meaning to the earthquake and the tsunami outside of the natural occurrences of the earth, the ever-changing planet that we inhabit. We are not malicious parasites attaching ourselves to the innards of the planet, but are the white blood cells flowing through the bloodstream to heal, to heighten our immunity to the very dangers that cut our skin and infect our wounds, i.e. the earthquakes and tsunamis. We are the only cure for what ails a planet in peril.

Religious Freedom Is What's At Stake

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." ~ First Amendment to the United States Constitution

Mounting opposition to the proposed Muslim cultural center has thrust the building into the limelight of an already hostile electoral season. Those opposed to the cultural center, more often referred to as the "Ground Zero Mosque," have cycled through a cadre of reasoning to be against construction of the center. The arguments have been made that the building will be a "terrorist training center;" others have drawn parallels of the cultural center's maiden name, "Cordoba House," to the takeover of a church in Spain in the 7th Century and its symbolism of hostile Islamic colonialism. And then there is the sensitivity argument, that for Muslims to build a mosque so near the worst terrorist attack on American soil is insincere to those who lost family members, friends, and loved ones. The focus has now shifted towards the funding of the cultural center, in whether the men and women funding it are terrorist sympathizers, or have dubious ties to any extremist group. Many proposing these reasons not to build the cultural center like to shy away from the "religious freedom" argument, the constitutional right provided by the First Amendment. But truly that is what this argument boils down to, as none of these other arguments stand up to any mindful scrutiny.

The argument over the cultural center's initial name has basically already been resolved. (I'll take this moment to say that I will not utter the continuance of "Ground Zero Mosque" from here on out because the term itself is laced with fear-mongering and jingoism. St. Paul's Chapel is not so uncharacteristically named the "Ground Zero Church." The proposed building is a place for all New Yorkers, and indeed for all people to visit. The inclusion of a prayer space on the top two floors should not advocate the use of the aforementioned name.) Initially, the cultural center was to be called "Cordoba House." But after the repetition of the origin of that name, a story meant only to ingrain fear into the minds of the population, the builders of the cultural center changed the name to Park51. I wonder if Adidas is next on Newt Gingrich's hit list?

Once the builders were pressured into altering the name, the arguments continued to mount against the cultural center. Sensitivity became a staunch bulwark against allowing the project to move forward, and is probably the biggest reason that most New Yorkers are against the building of the cultural center. The argument is simply: extremist Muslims attacked us so other Muslims should be sensitive to Americans' grief and not build near ground zero. There are just oh so many things wrong with this argument.

First, it is a fallacy to parallel the extremists, the terrorists, who attacked us on 9/11 with the Islamic religion as a whole. It is well known that all religions have their extremists: Hitler, McVeigh, Cruise; 19 men who hijacked 4 planes. If you want to talk insensitivity, then please do not miss the insensitivity of those Americans who cast blame on all Muslims for 9/11. "We fear what we do not understand." A common phrase uttered in so many ways, yet poignant as always even in this debate. Muslims were killed too that day; peaceful Americans who lived and worked beside the Christians, Jews, Buddhists, atheists, etc. who also died in those towers.

Secondly, expounding on the above, do those who take their beliefs to the extremist level, or those who distort their beliefs to fit their own selfish worldview mirror an entire population? Are all Germans, Nazis? Hardly. Would we classify a Catholic man or woman we met on the street a pedophile? A certainly hope not. Have Americans been benevolently sensitive to Native Americans for the land we took from them by force? As our current sitting President pushed for Health Care Reform earlier this year, Rush Limbaugh compared the legislation to black reparations. In accordance with the logic that all Muslims must be "sensitive" to the placement of their cultural center then yes, white Americans must always be overly sensitive to the most inconsequential needs of black Americans, something I'm sure Mr. Limbaugh would wholeheartedly disagree with. Even this year, as the Catholic Church faced new swirling allegations of child molestation, Pope Benedict XVI barely raised a concern over the reports of a priest in Ireland found guilty of molestation and even his own involvement, as then a Cardinal of the church, in protecting a priest who molested over 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin in the 1970s. The Pope, and the Vatican itself, tried to spin the story into an attack on Catholicism, a "victimizer is the victim" rebuttal, instead of apologizing and making a strong push for increased punishments of the guilty. But clearly, since it is a christian institution, especially in this country and more especially from constituents on the political right, the same standards do not apply to a church, or a synagogue, as they would to a mosque.

Third, how far exactly would building a mosque in New York from Ground Zero no longer be "insensitive" to Americans, or Christians, or whoever? There is a Mosque currently in the Pentagon, just 80 feet from where that hijacked plane crashed, as well as an actual mosque just 4 blocks from Ground Zero.

While simultaneously questioning the sensitivity of Muslims to want to build a cultural center, that just so happens to contain a mosque, near ground zero, the opposition slid into the debate the question of who exactly was funding the mosque. If terrorists were found to be supplying the funds for the construction then surely it would seem the cultural center would be a breeding ground for extremists right under our own noses, right on the very soil of liberty for which we all stand. The argument, however, devolved quickly into a "guilt by association" game of finger-pointing and incredulity. But, as Jon Stewart pointed out, this is a dangerous game. (Seriously, watch this whole clip if you haven't seen it.) And now, Fox5 news in New York is running a story about a man, one of the projects funders, and a donation he made to what he thought was a charity, but turned out to be linked to Hamas, a known cell of extremists.

My mother was once duped into donating money to an unknown man or woman claiming to be a missionary stranded and in strife in some war-torn African nation. Turns out, the person was not displaced and through the naivety of my mother (she's new to the Internet), the person was able to get her social security number and ultimately her bank account information, extorting money from her. Luckily no long term damage was done, and my mom secured her accounts without loss. The point being, naivety or out-right trickery and deception by one party, does not apply guilt to the other. Because this person claimed to be a christian, should my mom apply mistrust to all Christians forever more? No. And what of those who make donations, or contributions to the Catholic Church? (Sorry Catholics. I do not mean to pick on you. I'm only drawing similarities to the church in order to shed light on the hypocrisy of opposing the cultural center.) If the man who made a contribution to what he thought was a Muslim charity, but in actuality was linked to terrorists is then labeled a terrorist, any contributor to the Catholic church is then linked to pedophilia, a pedophile themselves, or at least sympathetic to pedophiles. None of which is true, and the same over-reaching should not be applied to the cultural center. And should this man be found guilty of knowingly aiding a terrorist group, I presume the group trying to build this mosque would immediately sever ties with him and those associated with him, what the Catholic Church failed to do with the pedophile priest in Wisconsin.

Without any of these arguments, the controversy over the proposed cultural center near ground zero boils down to one of our most basic rights of freedom and liberty in this country. Even with any of these arguments, our First Amendment right to freedom of religion should be at the base of any argument. This debate is not about sensitivity, nor the name of the building, nor even the matter of who is funding it (I'd love to see an Op-Ed somewhere drawing the parallels of funding political campaigns via the Citizens United v. FEC case to funding this cultural center; alas, I have not the time right now to launch into it.). This debate is about upholding the pinnacle that is this country and maintaining the very values for which people of all faiths, of all ethnicities, of all races and colors have sought to assimilate, stewing in the broth of liberty.

Military Socialism

The below comes in response to Sarah Palin's "foreign policy manifesto" she posted on her Facebook profile on July 4th. There may be a series of posts here in the near future in response to much of what she said, but I wanted to start with this one since a couple members of the House, as well as Keith Olbermann have brought up responses to her proposed policies. Much of what I discuss below can be seen on "Countdown" for July 6th, #3, for further elaboration of the Paul/Frank proposal and Secretary Gates defense cuts. But I take the argument farther into the history of foreign policy and the philosophy of maintaining our presence around the world.

With Congress currently mired in a political firestorm over the growing national deficit and unable to significantly enact any real legislation to curb the nation's costs, Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX) have begun a push for cutting the deficit by a "novel" idea: reducing military spending. I put novel in quotations because the defense budget has been, for the past five decades or so, untouchable, a perceived notion that any cuts to defense are an automatic sign of being weak in the world's eyes, or un-American. The calls for defense cuts come after Defense Secretary Robert Gates has made repeated calls for paring down the military budget, sighting an unnecessary abundance of nuclear carriers, submarines, and other malapropos weapons in our fight against terrorism. Of course, Sarah Palin decided to offer her 1/2 a cent thoughts, as her remarks on the subject are vague at best, and idiotic at worst.

Ron Paul, a libertarian Congressman, has repeatedly spoken out for the government's need to cut spending, in all aspects of discretionary spending, and to lower taxes. Paul is a bit extreme in his view of taxes though, as he would like to abolish the income tax, which would ostensibly abolish millions of policemen, firemen, and teachers from their jobs. A total halt of federal taxes would drastically increase local and state taxes, as someone would need to pay the police, the construction workers to keep up the roads, and the sanitation depts. to recycle waste and provide clean drinking water. Luckily, since Paul has gained abundant national attention, it seems he has lessened his calls for total abolition of all federal taxes, but he still petitions for large cuts to federal taxes.

Representative Frank is a liberal Congressman from Massachusetts, highly in favor of federal income taxes to provide proper education, federal programs such as Medicare, and police and security for his district and the entire state, for example. Liberals, generally perceived as the spending party, have needed to show strong focus on the national debt; one, because of the public's sudden interest in the matter; and two, it really is a problem brought on by the last administration's deep tax cuts and false war with Iraq. President Clinton had balanced the budget; Dubyah and a Republican Congress sent us into unparalleled debt.

Defense Secretary Gates has called into question the overall abundance of military weaponry this country manufactures every year unuseful to modern warfare. He sighted numerous programs to be halted, and increased spending in areas that are more appropriate for the sporadic battles we fight against terrorists. His questioning of having battle-ready 11 nuclear aircraft carriers, while no other country has even one, seems not only cognoscente, but years too late. To paraphrase him: Do we really need this stuff? Most would answer no, especially in light of the current state of our country's finances. Sarah Palin admonished Gates' critique of military spending, but failed to offer anything remotely salient. "Well, my answer is pretty simple... yes, we do, because we must." Indeed, Ms. Palin, your answer is simple.

She then tried offering broader elaboration of why military spending is so important with the dribble reported here. "If we lose wars... we risk losing all that makes America great." The problem with Ms. Palin's suggestion that losing wars would diminish the grandeur of America is it holds no logical bearing on history, especially in the context of the birth of this nation. George Washington in his farewell address warned of foreign influence of American affairs, and "permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." In fact, a large portion of his farewell address warns against foreign relations of any kind, and that the government should be interested in helping its own people. Of course, times have changed and America is one of the wealthiest nations in the world. It is a just cause in this growing global economy to extend aid to struggling nations, to spread our military wealth around the world, but it should not come at the expense of our own nation and people.  We have fallen behind in engineering, education, health care, and numerous other facets of modernity, pushing jobs overseas, widening the gap between upper class and the middle and lower classes (as I've written before). The appropriate thing to do when Americans begin to suffer is to pull back the olive branch from the world and extend it to our own citizens. Furthermore, Palin must hold a fairly favorable outcome, albeit against all standard viewpoints and general knowledge of the war, that we won in Vietnam. History shows that we by no means were outright victorious (but didn't necessarily lose either; a tie! everybody wins!) and that certainly did not "diminish" the country to any great extent.

While I applaud Secretary Gates for his reverent cuts to defense spending, I would like to see some of that money come back into rebuilding the American infrastructure. Sure, the money is being apportioned to other military endeavors, such as predator drones, which will help create some jobs in the States, but millions of Americans are out of work who do not have the special skills to build such aircraft, but are construction workers, teachers, policemen, social workers; all of which are needed to educate, to protect, to build right here at home, instead of fanning the flames of hatred in this "second Vietnam" we're hunkered-down in Afghanistan. We need to reinvest in education, to train the next generation of engineers to build smarter, more efficient weapons, not simply more of the outdated ones.

The longer we continue to increase the defense budget, to spread the military wealth around the world so other countries don't have to spend as much on their own defense, the longer we'll continue to short-change the American people. President Washington warned against mingling in the affairs of neighboring countries, especially at the expense of our own citizens. For Conservatives, for Sarah Palin (whatever she is), those who tout such a strong idolization of the Founding Fathers, have betrayed the very interests their champion politician preached. We have stretched our wealth and resources to "defend" other countries while our own is under attack, and rotting away from the inside, out. We are military socialists spreading the wealth and abundance of our military around the world to areas that do not need it to maintain an "empire" that might collapse momentarily.

Obama, Stop The Redistribution of Wealth

The election of Barack Obama to the White House sent a shivering jolt through the collective spine of not only the Republican Party, but any, it seemed, who leaned just a little to the political right. Almost immediately the election sent fear-mongering political "analysts," radio show hosts and commentators into a frenzy about the Administration's "socialist" agenda and how everything that America is and stands for will be brought to ruin under our first black president. It all rings of McCarthyism, this perceived ruination of the American way of life, and how Progressives are really just socialists aiming to distribute wealth equally among the citizens of the country. But for all their crying foul at the administration's supposed attempts to take money from the super rich and distribute to the poor, i.e. imposing higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, their criticism of wealth distribution never acknowledges the trend of wealth taken from the lower classes, and distributed more to the upper class over the past few decades. The widening gap between the poor and rich, the diminishing numbers of the middle class suggest this trend, yet why do none fight, let alone acknowledge, this extreme Anti-Socialist agenda, that bears little resemblance to true capitalism?

Just as the Great Depression hit, the wealthiest 1% of the population held nearly 50% of the total wealth of the country. Through the New Deal, Roosevelt looked to halt that imbalance by passing legislation which included such things as the Social Security Act, the FDIC, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938- the law which set maximum hours and minimum wages for most workers in the country to put an end to unfair, and unjust, workplace conditions. On the other side of the war, during the 50's and 60's, most middle class families were supported by one parent working a full-time job, while the other, most often the mother, stayed home with the children. Life was good; America prospered on the strength of the bourgeois. But steadily the gap has grown once again, starting in the 80's when Reagan drastically cut income taxes, a move which benefited the wealthiest Americans, purported by some as "trickle-down economics." And Reagan's term saw the only time where the federal minimum wage was not increased, inaction that hurt solely the middle and lower classes. Inflation remained low during the 1980s, but 8 years without a raise in the minimum wage left the lower class in the lurch. (To note: George W. Bush fails to make the list because a Democratic Congress managed to pass a minimum wage increase at the latter end of his second term.) Furthermore, the drastic cuts to income tax ballooned the national deficit during Reagan's two terms, and left unchecked until the fiscally conservative policies of President Clinton reigned it in- only to be undone yet again by upper class tax cuts and outlandish defense spending under the 2nd Bush. So today, the wealthiest 1% holds just under 40% of the nation's total wealth and that number is slowly creeping towards that magical 50% again. Could another full blow Depression await?

During the Great Recession following the economic collapse in 2008, millions of middle class families saw their savings and investments wiped out, and many had to postpone retirement to make up for those lost savings. Outraged, the population called for action, which very little has been done. The TARP bailout financed the TBTF banks, but did absolutely nothing to restore an individual's investments, or a small-business owner who was forced to shutter their doors as credit seized. Once again, the wealth was distributed into the upper echelons, and the middle and lower classes were left footing the bill. But where is the response from Congress, and especially from the Right, whose prime talking-points seem to stem from a supposed redistribution of wealth, the socialist agenda? It's currently underpinning the recently passed Health Care Reform because they fear that wealth will be redistributed unevenly, away from major corporations. And in this case with the Wall Street Bailout and Financial Reform, many will argue that these men and their companies deserved the record profits they garnered because they worked hard to get those positions. But it wasn't their own money invested that they hedged risky bets (and lost) without the capital to support those bets should they fail; it was investors' money, the ones who lost all due to carelessness and greed of the corporations, who got off scotfree with conservatives at their backs the entire time.

The middle class today is made up of families where both parents need to work full-time positions to be classified as such, and often that's still not enough. The US minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. A full-time worker in one year then makes only $15,080. Before this, the minimum wage was set at $5.15 per hour, comprising an average yearly income of $10,712. In 2008, before the rate increase, the US poverty level was $10,400. Based on our own standards, the minimum wage barely kept full-time workers out of poverty, and certainly did not classify them as middle class. Had the Democrats not passed the minimum wage increase (which Republicans fought tooth and nail), a full-time employee at minimum wage would today be below the US poverty level. A Republican controlled Congress did nothing for 8 years but cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, letting the middle class dissipate further into nonexistence.

And hope was supposed to come carried on the shoulders of our current President, who, backed by that Democratic Congress, would "change" the direction of the country and lead us down a brighter road and future. But Congress (with little or no support from the White House) has stalled and balked on all financial fixes that would stop the redistribution of wealth into the upper classes (Brown-Kaufman Amendment, the Merkley-Levin Amendment, the Volcker Rules) to create a more secure financial sector. And the President has managed to be simultaneously angry and offering encomium on these large institutions and the men who run them, which suggests to me that he's little worried of making any real change.

But, while Liberals have failed to act, this is mostly a consequence of Conservatives' unfailing support for large corporations and the upper class, and their obstruction of Congress, particularly in the Senate. Their deep-rooted philosophy of less government has been the primary reason why financial reform has been so watered-down, and even with our most recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, they side with the corporations (BP), not the individual fisherman, or other "small people" as BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, disingenuously referred to those affected by the oil spill. Rep. Joe Barton of Texas(R) even apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward at a Congressional hearing because he feels the company should not be liable to pay for the damage the spill has caused, that a private company should not be at the whim of government. As the President analogously pointed out in his address to the nation last week, this spill is an attack, not cold and calculated as the 9/11 terror, but a result of negligence, corner-cutting, lack of oversight and minimal accountability. Just as the previous president retaliated after 9/11, so too must the current administration. The government exists to protect the innocent, precisely what it is doing, Mr. Barton. As expected, Mr. Barton was forced to backpedal his statement, saying that he somehow misspoke and believes BP should be held accountable. But what his testimony in that hearing truly revealed was the underlying philosophy of the GOP's unwavering support for the upper class and big corporations, as Rahm Emanuel pointed out this morning on ABC's This Week. For so wholeheartedly believing in the Capitalist system, where a strong middle class is the sole backbone of a strong economy, the Right either willfully is in disregard of the middle class, or plainly blind to its slow, cancerous demise. Either outlook is truly scary.