Jack & Jill Politics

Actually, we probably do.

No, I’m not talking about the corporate raider part. And Romney, although he is likely to be his party’s 2012 Republican nominee to challenge President Barack Obama, will never be the Thrilla in Vanilla. Romney has about as much charisma as a piece of wet cardboard.

But Romney is rich, pal. Maybe not as rich as Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, but once you pass the $100 million mark, does it really even matter? The man’s personal life – at least the part of it we get to see on TV – is the embodiment of the American Dream. A good-looking guy with a good-looking wife and good-looking kids who is successful in business (whether you like his business or not) and who is filthy rich. So say what you want about Mittens – and there is plenty to say – but one of those things is that he definitely has what a lot of us want. Because I know a whole lot more people who would much prefer to have rich white folk problems than the problems endured by the rest of us.

So yeah, Mitt. As politically incorrect as your statement was that we criticize you because we envy you- and as incredibly stupid and poorly timed – there is, nevertheless, some truth in there. We might as well admit it. Here most of us are struggling from paycheck to paycheck, and that’s if we’re even lucky enough to have a damned paycheck, and then we look up and see someone like you who even in the imagination of your imagination couldn’t begin to conceive of what it’s like down here on the ground. Hell most of us wish we didn’t know, right?

But here’s where Mitt made a bit of a miscalculation, OK? Because even though it’s true that most of us would greatly prefer to experience the trials and tribulations of being fabulously wealthy to what we’re dealing with instead, the fact is that there are a hell of  a lot more of us in that condition than there are those with a quarter billion dollars trying to figure out how to make their mansions even bigger just for the hell of it. And although we do envy those like Mitt whose lives float in celestial bliss out of hearing distance from normal folk, it’s not just envy that’s got us pissed off. Because if we actually believed the lie so often told that if we just worked hard and put our noses to the grindstone that we could be Just Like Mitt then it wouldn’t be so bad. But, see, we’re not stupid. Because being broke and poor and being stupid are not synonymous.

Just as an example? We see things like the Countrywide scandal where a huge corporation ripped off thousands of African American and Hispanic homeowners (my guess is none of them were multi-millionaires), charging them more for mortgages than similarly qualified white folks, just because they could. Sure they got dinged $335 million as a penalty, and congrats to US Attorney Eric Holder for at least getting something out of the bastards, even it wasn’t near enough. But what about all those families whose lives are now ruined because of Countrywide? Who is going to put them back together and make them whole?

These are the kind of things that happen when the deck is stacked, which are the kind of things that gave rise to the Occupy movement and many more similar movements around the world that explode when people get fed up with inequity and injustice. But God knows if we could all just live the Life of Mitt?

All would be right with the world, wouldn’t it kids?

This is being cross-posted at Black Liberal Boomer