Evolving Democracy for All

Why?

It’s a sin to starve the poor

If you are middle class, stop reading now!

This book is for people who believe in equality.

Not for anyone who aspires to be middle class.

We have our own culture and it doesn’t include you.

I’m working class on workfare.

You are forbidden.

It’s not for you.

Fuck off!

Am I too rude? Uppity? Not respectful of my betters?

Sorry.

Dear middle class people,

Go fuck yourself!

Middle class aristocracy are destroying the world with their shit for brains.

Equality warriors will save it.

We will save the world.

God Damn the Middle Class!

Why?

It’s a sin to starve the poor

It’s a sin for middle class people to export the jobs of working class people.

It’s a sin for middle class people make us unemployed.

It’s a sin for middle class people to lend high interest payday loans to working class people who are desperate.

It’s a sin to foreclose our mortgages and make us homeless.

It’s a sin for middle class people to deny working class people unemployment insurance, welfare, workers compensation while they enjoy fat bonuses, great benefits and high wages.

It’s a sin to starve the poor, make us homeless, destroy our health, and destroy any possibility of our children having a decent life.

Well that’s a beginning of the middle class sins.

That’s crazy talk! That’s heresy!

I know what you are thinking,Middle class people are nice, good, the best and the brightest, our hope for the future. After all, those nice politicians praise middle class people way up to the sky and their ‘hard working middle class values.’ What is the reward for their morality? Politicians promise to reward the moral middle class and those deserving working class people who aspire to rise into the middle class with good jobs and low taxes.

Every speech is about Class! Class! Class!

What about the rest of us? Why do you believe we are morally inferior? Undeserving?

I have a very good reason for using words like ‘god damn’ and ‘sin.’

Them against us

If you don’t think a class war is being fought, just take a good look at America. Them against us is the underlying theme of the 2016 presidential election. Clinton and Trump both promise to urgently save the middle class.

Who’s the bad guy? Clinton is going to tax the upper class. Trump is going to reduce their taxes. Trump is going to bring working class jobs back to America. Clinton not so much.

Class ! Class ! Class !

Why is there all this talk about class? I thought America was the nation of equality that abolished class discrimination? It’s a good old fashioned class war!

It’s all about class, Mayor Al Gleeson said, when he introduced workfare in my city.

In my conversation with Mayor Gleeson you can see how Liberals and Conservatives, Republican and Democrat politicians use class to divide us against each other.

I think it will help you to understand Clinton vs. Trump in Election 2016. Gleeson’s comments in this book will help you understand the rest of the story.

Americans are forced to choose between two parties. Dividing one class against the other to conquer is the traditional strategy of them all. In other countries, we choose between Liberals or Conservatives. But both parties work for corporate masters. As Donald Trump said, the system is rigged.

Q: Who made this deal with the devil?

A: the middle class

When workfare was introduced, politicians called unemployed working class people ‘thieves.’ When working class people fought for good wages and benefits they were called immoral freeloaders and thieves. When working class people fought the export of their jobs overseas, middle class people were excited about paying less for Wal-Mart goods and cars and fought against us.

Some people accuse me of being overly sensitive about class. They say that People don’t care about class anymore. Class distinctions are obsolete. It’s a class free society.

Bullshit! Our society is deeply divided into a rigid class system like the England of Charles Dickens.

Really? Here’s a little test for the middle class. If I say God Damn lawyers are sleazy, I get snickers. If I say God Damn politicians are corrupt, I get knowing nods of agreement. If I try other middle class professions and get a similar response. Lawyers and politicians and other professions are middle class but they are fair game. But if I say God Damn the middle class, I get outrage.

So this righteous anger is all about class.

They care deeply about their class identity. Middle class people are convinced they are really ‘good.’

No wonder their children despise them.

I confront them and they deny it. So I try another test. I ask middle class people to imagine they are driving around down town. Look at the people walking on the street. Look at the women. Picture the clothes they are wearing. Look at the men in the park. Picture where they sleep at night. Imagine you are walking around Wal-Mart. Look at the people strolling around the aisles, the mothers and children. Now imagine those young people downtown with their styles of clothes, tattoos and way of talking.

I ask who lives a life with higher moral standards: the middle class people in their own circle, their neighbourhood and where they work or those people downtown and in Wal-Mart and young people.

Don’t usually get that far. Soon as I mention the people on the street downtown, they are snickering. You mean those zombies, bums, slobs and hookers? They assume I am middle class like them.

This judging reflex is instantaneous like a snake striking. They are so absolutely certain of their verdict.

Then they admit their bias, Of course we have higher moral standards than THOSE people.

It’s a lie.

The middle class are despicable immoral creatures.

People who consider themselves middle class should go to hell. I mean it.

In my life, I have had a lot of money and I have had none. I have seen the world from the circumstances of a higher income and a very low income. I have sat beside the people on one side of the fence and peered over that fence at the strangers on the other side.

Those people downtown, sitting in the park, walking around Wal-Mart and young people hanging out, those zombies, slobs, bums and hookers are in very important ways vastly morally superior to people who identify with being middle class. But they admire the middle class and believe they are inferior. I tell them the opposite.

Middle class people are monsters. Tell them to go to hell.

Middle class people accuse me of being a traitor to their class. They have a strong sense of belonging and try to exert enormous peer pressure to conform.  Sorry. I don’t get it. I’m not middle class. Can’t learn the code. I can’t identify with their class or tribe. Maybe it’s a flaw, like being color blind. Maybe that’s why their pathological behavior is so glaringly obvious to me.

I’m not alone in this. Don’t kid yourself. Working class people can clearly see their hypocrisy. But that doesn’t stop us from internalizing the vicious things you say about us. We notice that and we talk about you. We just haven’t decided yet what to do about you. Give us time.

As I sit and walk and talk with people of all kinds, I can see so clearly that the middle class people are not superior in any way.

Yes, they have more money and the difference in lifestyle that money buys. That is how the middle class recognizes others of their own tribe. Add to that all the behaviors, rituals and adornments, possessions and ways of talking.

The most malignant defining feature of a middle class person is ‘ascendancy,’ the insatiable drive to rise to a position of power in order to earn the approval of an upper class person by doing something to lower class people. That is where middle class people shine. Middle class people hunger for power over others. To justify that lust for power and approval, they pick and chose a menu of moral justifications for exercising that power. Unfortunately, when working class people try to achieve their own personal goals according to our values, our hopes for a better life offend the middle class sense of superiority. We are being uppity. We don’t know our ‘place.’ Helping working class people achieve our goals doesn’t satisfy the middle class hunger for ascendancy. Harming our people does. Why do we persist in hiring them for the helping professions? If middle class people truly wanted to help others, they wouldn’t feel any need to be in a position of power over us.

Can I hear a God damn? Repeat after me, God damn the middle class.

And perversely, they do the same thing to their own children, making them a lower class to serve them.

God damn the middle class!

None of this is philosophy. But let’s try a few high sounding words for a minute.

The bias against the working class that is implicit in the middle class mindset may be satisfying for their vicious appetite but it’s killing the rest of us.

If that didn’t reach you, let’s try a different approach.

Middle class people make the decisions on behalf of upper class people, so let’s judge their decisions.

It’s a sin to make our jobs precarious.

God damn the middle class managers.

It’s a sin to export working class jobs.

God damn the middle class executives.

It’s a sin to create poverty

God damn the middle class politicians.

It’s a sin to foreclose on us

God damn the middle class bankers

It’s a sin to deny us the benefits we paid for

God damn the social workers at unemployment insurance and welfare and workmen’s compensation

It’s a sin to profit from our misery

God damn the middle class loan sharks.

It’s a sin to make us homeless

God damn the sadistic security guards and cops.

It’s a sin to beat us and send us out into the cold

God damn the churchy shits who get off on making us beg at the food bank and soup kitchen

God damn the middle class

Why are all these decisions a sin?    We are equal!

All those sinful actions are motivated by this phrase, What’s in it for me?

I concede that some individuals cause their own problems.

But these punishments are being carried out on us on a massive scale and they are based on the middle class judging the working class.

Our encounters with middle class people always seem to involve judging, humiliation, and punishment and pain because in their eyes we are not equal.

Middle class people create our misery and they profit from it as surely as those middle class monsters in the time of Charles Dickens and still they smugly congratulate themselves that they are morally superior to us.

What can we do about it?

More than a decade ago, I travelled far and wide inviting working class people to share their stories of the pain they suffered and what they lost as a result of decisions by middle class people in business and government. They lost their jobs. They were treated unfairly. They endured sexual predation. They lost their homes. They suffered discrimination. They were wrongly denied unemployment insurance, mortgages, pensions and disability benefits. The stories appeared in newspapers and on television.

We hoped to reach the conscience and compassion of middle class people. What happened? Middle class people took the whole exercise as an invitation to exercise their sage wisdom and interrogate the people who lost their jobs and homes. People who lost everything had their lives audited right there in front of them on TV. The middle class pronounced judgement and decided that the people who lost everything were to blame for their own misery.

I learned that middle class people view the hard lives of other people as a perverse kind of tragic comedy entertainment: poverty porn. They enjoyed our suffering. Then they congratulated themselves. They praised their own moral virtue. Middle class people are sadistic. Sick!

So let’s not make that mistake again.

We demand equality.

This is not the first time a culture has had to deal with a pompous sadistic middle class that fancied themselves to be an enlightened intelligentsia. The Catholic Church burned dissenters at the stake during the Inquest and Inquisition. Robespierre cut their heads off by the hundreds. Stalin sent thousands to the gulags in Siberia. Cuba made them work in the fields with laborers. Cambodia slaughtered them in the killing fields. All these ‘solutions’ were based on abstract ideals.

It is obvious that middle class people consider us as the enemy. We are not. We just want equality. It’s sad that they see our equality as a threat to their status. We and our struggles are not real to them. They think of us abstractly as a ‘class.’  But we live in the real world. We are not sadistic like them.

We see middle class people as human beings with aberrant values. To us, people are not things to be used or thrown away in the trash.

Once you know the framework of how they think you can plan your attack more effectively. Middle class thinking and values are based on a lie, a story they tell themselves that they are superior BECAUSE they hunger for a position that is superior. Every society is designed to satisfy the needs of the people in power. This economy serves the needs of the middle class. It suits the purpose of the middle class that we spend our energy fighting this unfocussed war of words against a shadowy evil 1% in a faraway castle. But we missed the point. Most of the people who benefit from inequality and our misery are middle class people clearly visible in our communities. This rules of our economy are designed by the middle class for the middle class. The middle class use their force, workfare and austerity to deal with us daily on a local basis. The middle class created and run the whole game. For us, every issue is a matter of survival. For them, every decision is just playing the game to win. Once you understand how they think, you will see how pathetic they are. Even members of the working class have been deceived by the way the middle class has twisted the American dream against equality and Christianity against compassion. It’s sad to see working class people judge themselves as bad people, rejecting social programs as money stolen from good people and given to bad people while applauding billionaires who pay no taxes. It’s tragic to hear working class people voice resentment that they feel their privileges are endangered because women and blacks and gays are able to participate equally in society. They are angry and jealous because they feel that others are stepping in front of them in the lineup. It’s an abomination because these people who are working class in wage level have the same perverse hunger for status as the middle class. Where do you think the middle class came from? People who seek equality that I have been lumping together under the title ‘working class’ really need to understand that middle class people DO NOT think or feel the way we do and how pathetic they really are.

I’m optimistic that we can win the class war against the middle class. Don’t expect empathy. They don’t have it. If they were capable of caring, they would have created an equal society each time the economy was doing well. They didn’t. The middle class live very close to us. They work in the same cities and villages. They are very vulnerable but they are not our enemy. The problem is solvable. We can win equality, not by killing the middle class in our community or overseas but by shoving them back, shaming them, shunning them, changing their values by confronting their hypocrisy, changing their values. As we move toward equality, the design of society and our economy will meet the needs of all people. Equality is achievable. A new public morality of equality will be built.

How can we do it? I move among the middle class and I can tell you that they live in fear. The politicians have heightened their fear for their own purposes. We can use that fear. How? By using the same strategy as them: reframing. If we reframe their behaviour as corrupt, we can prosecute them. Since they have a perverse vision of liberty: take that away, imprison them. Since they have a perverse version of Christianity, label them as sinners. Shame and shun them as they have done to us but for real crimes, not for being poor.

Clearly the old ways of running our society don’t work. One class of people has enslaved another. We have allowed middle class people to deceive us into thinking that they are superior and should run things. We allowed them to convince us that we are lazy and unproductive and morally inferior so we should swallow the ‘bitter medicine’ of austerity, allow our jobs to be exported and give up good wages, pensions, steady jobs, unemployment benefits and unions.

They exported our jobs, foreclosed on our homes, poisoned our water, made us poor and convinced us that it is our own fault. They even turned the American dream, Liberty and Christianity into weapons against us.

The purpose of this book is to cut through their bullshit, demand equality and take back our share of the world.

We need a new public morality. A public morality based on real equality.

The wartime generation was moving toward equality. The ruling baby boomer middle class shoved our equality aside in favor of a system that profits them:  capitalism. I learned a lot from an evil man. I was astonished when Mayor Gleeson told me that capitalism is the male economic system that allows males to rule based on male morality for the classification of people. Capitalism is a system run by male bull shitters. He described capitalism as a class war.

I’m inviting you to shove the middle class aside. We can do it. We can neutralize ascendancy and create equality. We will have a gender neutral economy and society. Let’s consider the approaches of the greens, the socialists, communists and anarchists and all others but reject abstract ideas that turn people into objects to be used. I want a conversation with a purpose that starts right now. I want a new public morality that creates real equality for real human beings.

This book is part of the conversation. In my book, Mayor Al Gleeson explains his reasoning for introducing workfare. You heard me say this before. It may surprise you that there is a sick moral framework for workfare and all the sadistic things that middle class people do to us. And that it is financed by some of the wealthiest Americans. Gleeson introduced me to the middle class value system that I called Americanity, the perverse marriage of a twisted American dream of liberty and a sick version of Christianity. Americanity contains the middle class values that justify the persecution of the working class, promotion of free trade and the introduction of workfare.

This book is an amateurish lengthy disorganized mess written by a man on workfare who can only sit a half hour at a time with a back injury and a shoulder injury and living with severe depression. If you enjoy judging, I invite you to reject and ridicule my book. I learn from conversation. You can dismiss my efforts as a person who wants to fight back as an elder and warrior for social justice. Clearly younger clearer minds will carry the battle more effectively. If you have suggestions on how to shorten the book, edit it or translate, please contact me. 

Are you ready?

requiem for the working class

In Election 2016 all the politicians have been praising ‘hard working middle class values.’ They want to save middle class jobs. But what about the working class? Millions of working class jobs have been exported. Working class Americans have gone through hell for decades because of business and government decisions:

Lay offs! Bankruptcies! Foreclosures!

Why do bad things happen to good people?

It’s intentional.

It’s government policy.

Corporations profit from our misery.

Someone sits in judgement.

Someone gets pleasure from our suffering.

Someone feels powerful.

No one speaks up.

No one stands up.

They don’t care.

They are the winners

They say that we are the sinners

Blast from the Past

If the political slogans in Election 2016, sound a little old fashioned, you are