As children born in 1942 and 1943, in the darkest days of WWII, we have lived as America rose from the depths of the Great Depression to create a country with a Middle Class like no other the world has ever seen. One where factory workers had health care and pensions, could send their children to public colleges equal to the finest private schools and could own a home.
We also saw blacks, still all but enslaved, a hundred years after legal emancipation, able to attend white universities in the South beginning in the 1960s. For the first time, the Voting Act made it possible for them to vote.
The Republicans railed against the New Deal and the Roosevelt Democratic Party that made all this possible. They hated unions and have now crippled them. They opposed Medicare for the elderly and efforts to lift the poor out of poverty. They hated Obamacare and have now repealed it.
They have lowered taxes on the wealthy and raised sales taxes that hit the poor hardest. They have weakened anti-trust laws and promoted greed like nothing seen since before the Depression.
They are the all-white party; the party of private academies and churches who preach the gospel of hate for gays, subornation for women, and white male dominance.
With the help of the U.S. Supreme Court, and widespread voter suppression and gerrymandering, they have twice elected a President who received less votes than his opponent. George bush took us into a losing war in Iraq, lowered taxes, and raised the deficit. Under Bush, an orgy of greed left the auto industry and country on the brink of bankruptcy.
Now Congress and a clown of a President have succeeded in pounding the final nail in the coffin of the Middle Class. The recently enacted tax bill simultaneously overloads a ship sinking under the weight of too much debt and gives away so much federal money to the super wealthy that it will be impossible to maintain the America built after WWII.
We have seen it all in our lifetime. The rise and now the fall of the Middle Class in America.
Jerry Scribner December 19, 2017
