Well, the blue dog Democrats deserted their constituents and gave away our country to the very people that put us in this mess in the first place. Why the news media calls them “blue dogs” beats me. Blue used to mean Democratic, and dogs are loyal animals who follow their leader. These guys ran like rats deserting a sinking ship, and sold out their leader to try to keep their personal welfare positions.
And, folks, we are fast going down with the new leadership. Affordable health care will disappear if the Republican Supreme Court has its way. The new national anthem, “No Climate Change on the Blue, Cloudless Horizon” sung by the anti-scientists will get second and third verses. (“Oh, say can you see, any snowflakes on me?” and so on)
Parks and national forests will be privatized. (Put a $5 bill in that telescope and see smog banks as far away as Los Angeles!) No more free entry onto vast swaths of public lands, no more trails open to all. Instead of “This land is my land, this land is your land,” the song will be changed to “This land is their land – this land belongs to LLC’s.” The corporations will do with it as they please and only the wealthiest will be allowed to access it.
Food stamps will be given out only to those who already have minimum-wage jobs. No matter if you’re looking and can’t find one, if you don’t have a job you’ll be told to tighten your belt.
No more unions, no voice for labor, and no regulations on anything that will hamper business. If your air bag explodes, just duck and cover your face! We don’t want to interfere with the bottom line.
And what’s a little e. coli among friends? The price of Clorox will go up as we are forced to wash our meat, fish, and produce before cooking. (Assuming, of course, one can afford such luxuries as meat and Clorox!) Fast-food chains will be able to use insects, worms, and grubs to supplement the beef in those hamburgers – why should regulators try to stop them, they’re all digestible protein, after all?
But don’t let that bug you. It could be worse. All food from corn, potatoes, parsley and cabbage will be grown with GMO seeds and our food sources will be controlled by giant ag conglomerates subsidized by the taxpayers.
We will need to purchase expensive water filters for our homes, as the Clean Water Act will be a thing of the past. Water from small rural rivers and desert areas will be claimed by those with the most money and piped to giant cities, whose population will explode as small towns become ghost towns.
Health insurance will be only for those with top-dollar corporate jobs (and if they have a bad accident or expensive illness their policies may be cancelled – sorry). Everyone else will have to go to the emergency room once they get sick enough. Dying quickly will soon become the cheapest heath insurance.
Only landowners will be allowed to vote. Suspicious folks caught walking around without papers to identify their citizenship could be fined or sentenced to pick up trash from our deteriorating highways.
The bright side is we may get some beautiful sunsets due to smog from the coal-fired power plants that will flourish under Republican control. Like the Chinese, we’ll go around with paper filters over our mouths whenever we’re outdoors.
Endangered species? Ha! There will be no more endangered species, because they’ll all have gone extinct.
No more laws mandating 40-hour weeks with vacations and overtime pay. After all, people working 16 hours a day make good citizens, because they’re too tired to cause mischief. No more minimum wage, let the free market decide. No more pensions and Social Security – that’s socialism, after all. A penny saved is a penny earned, so invest it in a corporate bank and if your savings disappear when it goes bankrupt because of fraud, sorry, your fault, investor beware.
Don’t worry about housing – your employer will be your landlord as well as the owner of the stores where you purchase food and clothing. Be on time, work hard, don’t talk back, and you will be able to keep your 15-foot-by-15-foot home with a bed in the wall. No pets, but you may feed the mice. And if you marry, you get a slightly bigger domicile.
Your children will be taught from a uniform set of textbooks that reinforce the doctrines that America is perfect and can do no wrong, corporations are wonderful, Jesus was a free-enterprise capitalist, slavery was a myth, and anyone who happens to be poor is wholly to blame because of their sloth.
At 18 your kids will automatically do a stint in the military to protect the oligarchy’s holdings around the world.
That’s the vision the Republicans have for us. Thank you, gutless Democrats, for helping to bring this to pass. Instead of touting Obama’s genuine accomplishments, you ran from him as well as your own principles, trying to sound like Republicans. No wonder so few people voted – they couldn’t tell the difference between the candidates.
This election shows that racism is not dead and even after 145 years we haven’t freed the slaves. No matter what your color, if you can’t house and feed your family on your wages, you are not free.
Galen Larson writes freely (so far) from Montezuma County, Colo.
