Oblivious to Irony

Pent-up fury beneath the Bernie and Trump phenomena
by Jim Hightower, Salon
Friday, May 27, 2016 05:58 AM EST

The political cognoscenti have not understood the massive public rage from today’s “unAmerica” of glaring inequality and mass downward mobility that is the direct product of their wrenching the system with such power tools as: “free” trade agreements, union busting, defunding public services, downsizing, offshoring, price gouging, Citizens United, privatization, the Wall Street bailout, student debt, tax dodging, criminalization of poverty, militarization of police … and so god-awful much more.

Instead of comprehending the public rage from the above injustices, the established powers have lashed out at these political riff-raff and intruders. Their conventional wisdom (endlessly parroted by the corporate media) is that hordes of blue-collar voters, young people, independents, and others surging into the two outsiders presidential campaigns have been naive, unrealistic, selfish, stupid, ignorant, racist, misogynistic, anti-immigrant, fascist or some combination of the above. Of course, such characteristics can be found among every campaign’s supporters, but smearing an insurgency of millions as nothing but airheads and haters only reveals the desperation of the smearers.
…
The real story, however, is not about the two maverick candidates, but about the waves of ordinary people who’ve created and lifted their campaigns. They embody and give voice to the millions wrecked by Wall Street greed in the 2008 crash, who were left out of the widely ballyhooed “recovery,” and who now realize that they’re not included in the elite’s laissez-faire schemes of future American prosperity. These voters are hurting today, distressed about tomorrow, and fed up with the two-party indifference to “people like us.”

They are the reason the Bernie and Donnie phenomena are not just 2016 flare-ups — but in the words of Sanders’ clarion call — “a political revolution.” The elite’s ploys to trivialize the impact of these campaigns will only stoke the fires of the newly politicized outsiders. No matter what happens this year to Sanders and Trump, the people are not going away. The rebellion is on. Sanders and Trump are only the current messengers. The message itself is that We, the Grassroots People, now see that we’re being sold out to giant corporations by our own leaders. Like the distant rumble of thunder, the boisterous uprising of outsiders in this year’s presidential election signals the approach of a historic storm.