James,
There are two reasons I read Reality Check religiously each week. For starters it is always hilariously on-point. I may not agree with the point but it is usually not far from the center of what is going on and it is always a very humorous slant on it that it leaves you thinking deeper about what you have already pre-determined. This is why Reality Check is absolutely the perfect title for this column. And second if not more important is what you accomplished this week (THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE CLASS – Issue: 2/11/15), a much needed summary of events that lead up to whatever news story you are covering.
I learned a great deal (and some of it was a reminder of what I already suspected) about the creation of the American Middle Class and how unique it is in recent human history. There was a huge hand of the federal government involved, some of it questionable, but there is no arguing with the results. And also more effectively there was a greater burden on the upper classes to chip in to create a consumer class that still exists in some form today.
However, where I disagree is your dire sense of the outcome. I think a return to these core American values to eradicate income inequality that I think both of our political parties have lent lip service to is so important to helping as many people as we can to realize the American Dream. I think once we abandon that we abandon the idea of a democratic society and one ruled only by the one to two percent. Growth then is impossible.
And while I do not believe in a nanny state or propping up a zero sum game, there has to be a strong effort to return our economic system to a fairer construct that can provide enough relief to those struggling to help us be a better nation through work and ingenuity. The government and the people can work together to achieve this. It did so after World War II that featured the Greatest Generation. Why not now?
—jennerpc14
Here’s another article I’m not reading passed the opening ignorant salvo. Too many people on the planet? Are you fucking serious?! For a guy who thinks the Tea Party is full of ignorant backwoods suckers I’m surprised and a little bit shocked by your absolute lack of embarrassment for thinking, no less putting in print, such dumb ass pseudoscience. Who did you get this bullshit from? Did any of these sources of colossal retardation tell you exactly how many people are just right for the planet? Really. I want to know. I would think a smart person would want that insanely simple follow-up question satisfied before jumping ass-first into the PT Barnum suckers line. And just because you live next to one of the most populated cities on the planet is not considered “evidence.” Without even looking I can bet whomever you got this ridiculous bullshit from are willfully ignorant of history and/or purposefully peddling Progressive propaganda for Government grants/paychecks.
The sky is made of pudding! Jon Stewart said so!
—Ken Eustace
Ooooooooohhhhh! I can see the religious crazy people getting all up in your grill about this opening line. I wonder how many Bible thumpers will misinterpret the “too many people on this planet” line as an apocalyptic call to arms. I can hear them now screaming about how you are advocating abortion. And the people on the left will assume you mean this as a racist statement, like too many immigrants, because everything is racist to them. So somewhere this one line will be a cross between right-wing fundamentalists accusing you of sweeping pro-government godless nonchalance and the lefties accusing you of genocide.
How do you sucker these idiots time and again to be pissed at this shit?
You are either a genius or a total asshole. Or maybe people are just stupid? Maybe it is a weird combination of these thing.
Either way, man you do get them going.
—Tucker
Who goes first, Himmler? My family? Your family? Why even have a middle class if there are too many people? Maybe we should just have more wars and welcome more diseases? What the hell is that? Can you get more nihilistic in this column? I am so insulted by this I cannot even believe I am wasting my time writing you other than to say, FUCK YOU!
—Caaaz17888
While it is undeniably true that the American middle class, the entire reason why this country triumphed in the Cold War and not some pie-in-the-sky bedtime story of an arms race and JFK and Ronald Reagan and all those stupid covert wars that cost us money and men and finally face in the world stage, was the manipulation of the American economy by the federal government, it important that we also come to grips with the fact that it is the ONLY way to create a false, consumer-based, debt-struggling, stuck-in-the-drudgery propping up of the rich scheme. Period. The sooner we understand this and not these American Exceptionalism speeches by obvious dunderheads completely unaware of recent history, then we will all be better for it.
Here’s the deal…this president for all of the attacks and/or praise he receives as some kind of liberal socialist food-stamper has done nothing to correct this glaring problem, this gaping hole in the American economic system that is controlled completely by a small number of Wall Street goons who use our future and our children’s future as a gambling chip. Lord knows you’ll get nothing from Congress, the mass of which was elected to take down the very government needed to keep us all fat and happy. All you need to do if you disagree with this assessment is look at the fallout from the worst financial crisis that anyone alive now has endured. None of these people or their giant banks (remember that corporations and banks are people too) went to jail for this. Not one. Believe me, people, if Obama was a socialist then someone if not everyone would have ended up on the wrong end of one of these drones he’s so proud of and has no compunction about killing Americans with.
The right and for that matter the left has to stop making this guy out to be a demon or a hero, he is neither. He is feeding the monster that is destroying any chance of a truly recovering this economy. I figure you are probably correct that in a generation or so he will be propped up by liberals as the savior Reagan is for the right, everyone conveniently forgetting the ulta-liberal maneuvers by Reagan to effect the U.S economy through his pen and that ridiculous deal he struck with Congress to “save” Social Security instead of fixing it.
Hey people it is time to wake up to the real reality check, we are the suckers and we are going to pay not for actions of our government but inaction, the kind that dooms nations.
Demand that your Congress and your president do something, not keep the other from doing it.
—Eric Kominski
Do yourself no favors and “like” this idiot at www.facebook.com/jc.author
James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of “Deep Tank Jersey,” “Fear No Art,” “Trailing Jesus,” “Midnight For Cinderella” and “Y.”
