30 Comments
Aug 24Liked by Untrickled by Michelle Teheux

I have despaired for years over the Dems' lack of clear message to counter the GOP's lies. Reagan started it by breaking the unions and inventing the " welfare queen". Then Newt Gingrich convinced Clinton to "end welfare as we know it" , and to weaken the Glass/Steagall Act enough to allow the big banks to eventually cause the 2008 economic collapse. As you may recall the banks who caused all that chaos got bailed out, because they were "too big to fail", while millions of homeowners lost their houses, a large number of which have been gobbled up by hedge funds and other speculators. All these calamities only got a meek response from the democrats, so I agree with you, it finally looks like the dems are ready to play some hardball. Now I'm waiting with baited breath for them wean themselves of their dependence for funding on the AIPAC, so that they can out a stop to the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and ongoing landgrab in the Westbank!

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Youve ran things most of the last 20 years. Why didn't you fix it?

You think the Democrat leadership isn't onboard with transferring wealth upward. LOL. That's laughable. You're a Democrat and I'm a homeless arch conservative with no real representation from either party but our shared economic concerns should make us allies.

I think the issue we need to come together and demand action on is housing.

The next would be war. Let's spend less on that, like the original conservatives wanted.

Classically liberal Democrats and Classically conservative everyone else, Republicans included, should fight together to make housing affordable and war way less common.

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Aug 24Liked by Untrickled by Michelle Teheux

Unfortunately, the emotive memes that get posted and are geared toward working class uber conservatives are really effective. I see them reposted by my sister on a daily basis. So too, are the constant barrages of misinformation that many are listening to on Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax 😞. Really discourages any sense of critical thinking…

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OAN and Newsmax constantly run documentaries on Dr. Martin Luther King, I saw one on President Harry Truman, and these are often classically liberal personas.

Those networks won't carry your water, they decided to carry for Trump but they are a LOOOONG way from uber conservative. They are just not your employees is all.

Critical thinking is NOT thinking as do you or the DNC. It's critical thinking and anyone can do it but may reach a different conclusion than you.

Are there dumb, boomers who meme against the DNC media complex, yes. And they are very dumb. But smart enough to know you have insulted them for 30 years and Trump does not.

You may find out that people like ACTUAL inclusion, ACTUAL advocacy for everyone, and to arrive at their own conclusions.

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Aug 24Liked by Untrickled by Michelle Teheux

I too am a college educated, working-class person. Thank you for writing about us.

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As are most of us as we have massive grade and degree inflation that led to an overwhelming number of graduates who nobody needed.

Were headed to the situation in Europe where you make a consuting appointment 5 weeks ahead with PLUMBERS and ELECTRICIANS, because there are so few skilled tradesmen as we poo poohed trade school.

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Aug 24Liked by Untrickled by Michelle Teheux

Democrats are currently lying about the right things. Republicans are struggling to keep up. There's no longer any expectation of government to actually make anything happen. Unfortunately, that's where we are in this two-party system.

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Aug 24Liked by Untrickled by Michelle Teheux

I think more people need to realize that Democrats and Republicans at their core are the same. They:

- primarily serve the interests of the industrial complexes and big businesses.

- view politics as a way to enrich themselves, and lack the political will to truly uplift the common people.

- support the military-industrial complex and want to engage in forever wars as a way of war-profiteering.

- want to meddle in other countries' political affairs to install leaders subservient to them and steal those countries' natural resources.

- worst of all at this point in time, BOTH parties are actively enabling a genocide in Palestine that has brutally murdered over 40, 000 people!

That last point should be the biggest wake-up call to people that both parties are rotten and that they should support a 3rd party that truly cares for the people.

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author

I see many differences, and so does every woman who can no longer safely be pregnant.

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If there are states that have actually went so strict to no longer allow abortion to protect the survival of the mother, those will change.

Will you agree that all other abortion is horrible?

My very conservative parents raised 21 foster children for different lengths of time and I was only tough enough to raise one for a short time. So don't lecture me on the stupid pro birth stuff.

Safety is a legit issue if it's really not there anymore. But since the abortion industry has been so dishonest and not transparent I am not decided if the laws really say this, yet.

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author

I identified as pro-life basically all my life, until I finally saw that nearly no one else was actually concerned about babies — just about controlling women. I’m horrified by all the cases of women being unable to end a life-threatening pregnancy.

I don’t like abortion, but I finally came to realize these are complicated situations nobody else can navigate.

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Not to most pro-life people. We want babies to live.

Now, if states won’t write laws that allow it to save the life of the mother, those laws will be rewritten. We will demand it, because we are pro-life, and the moms are already just as valuable as the baby and caring for a family in many cases.

You don’t kill a baby for convenience, and you don’t let a mom die when the pregnancy will kill her. These things have been in place since abortion became possible.

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There you go.

Except, its ethnic cleansing and will continue until criminal gangs that sell drugs and traffic people no longer run Gaza and southern Lebanon. Ask a Lebanese person.

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Aug 24Liked by Untrickled by Michelle Teheux

Wow! I very much appreciate your understanding of the forgotten and neglected part of America.

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author

Thank you!

I’m in it.

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Aug 24Liked by Untrickled by Michelle Teheux

The male white working class is very different than the actual working class.

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author

How so? I’m genuinely interested to learn what you mean by this.

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Most working class jobs (as defined by wages, authority (e.g freedom to take bathroom breaks without asking permission) and even the attention that union-busters devote to them are not white men but people of color and white women). White men are sliding down to their status, with a response of aggrieved entitlement that the media feeds by commiserating about the loss of “men’s jobs” with “family supporting” wages. The R line has been to blame “competitors” rather than employers (whom they call “job creators” without any irony about the nature of the jobs or control over the workers being “created” so “generously”).

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Aug 24Liked by Untrickled by Michelle Teheux

The GOP are conning not courting. They have never seen the working class as anything but targets.

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author

Both things are true. Yes, they're courting us, but that doesn't mean their intentions are honorable.

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What do you think the incomes and occupations of 80 million who will vote Republican are? Do you think they make lots of money and live a life of luxury?

Just as the upper middle class has mostly disappeared for you, it has for everyone else.

Most R's are working class because most people are.

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Aug 24Liked by Untrickled by Michelle Teheux

There is NO bigger Michelle Teheux fan than me, but all the same, I would prefer people like you of influence to say, "The Working", "The Middle Incomes", "The Upper Incomes", "The Ultra Rich", and leave the word "class" out of it, as people who are prone to Narcissism will look for ANY excuse to assume a position of "superiority" over their fellow Americans. As long as we have words like "class" and "social structure", etc, that gives such people the perfect opportunity to exploit the connotations of such labels to diminish other people in their eyes. And if you've ever spent any length of time in that diminished category, it doesn't feel good at all!

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author

I'll be giving this some deep thought.

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Aug 24Liked by Untrickled by Michelle Teheux

<spoken like mc in the movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome> Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, election season is hereeeeee <as I crane my neck towards the camera>

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Oh, thanks for letting me comment.

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Well, you're being partly honest at least, about your party. But still completely dishonest about the other. Unless of course you mean the officeholders of the R's. They may all be evil big meanies. Idk.

But you are the party of Big. The party of Elite. The party of Money. The party of War.

Average Americans want almost zero war. They want little, local. They want common.

And you are no longer any of those things.

The cincher was your behavior over the shots because of the contagion.

And, these people always know, by their gut, who is on their side. They know who hasn't insulted them for the last 20 years.

Your party almost completely alone created and propelled Donald Trump.

Two things that always help you are 1. Lag - The time before the people catch on and 2. PR - You have a sympathetic media 90% of the time and they carry your water. Which makes the lag longer.

And I hope you don't win this particular election because there are people so distrustful that I am afraid they would assume it was cheating, aside from the regular cheating, and I even know a few knot heads who are "ready to go after the election." Idk what this means except that if they suspect the next one is announced as differently than how the ballots were cast, they are ready to fight, somehow.

I hope the numbers bear out something close to what seems to be reality.

But, hey, forces above and outside you and me are at work, maybe wanting Trump dead and Kamala in office or maybe wanting Kamala out of the picture and Trump in, I have no idea which.

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The working class is usually ignored until the rich look for a scapegoat.

BTW I really wish that the photographer had told this welder to put on ALL their gear, stick welding (SMAW) with no gloves is ridiculous. Retired fully certified journeyperson welder here! It is a great career.

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Got anything beyond unsupported assertions about your feeling about what republicans do and what democrats do? Anything beyond anecdotes and your feelings?

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author

That’s like asking if I have any proof for my assertion that the sky is blue and the grass is green.

I freely block all trolls before they can get off on sucking energy away from decent people.

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How about polite people who disagree with many of your assertions? Because of their lived experience of day-to-day Republicans?

If you mean the officeholders, that's a whole nuther thing.

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