It was sort of like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You knew it was going to happen, you just didn't know when. Trumpcare! Now it's here and a joyful noise can be heard throughout the land. Well, perhaps not if you're poor and on Medicaid. But I'm sure tax accountants and tax attorneys have broken out the cases of Dom Perignon they put into storage at the beginning of the Obama Administration. As I wrote the other day, Trumpcare will hurt. We just didn't appreciate how much.

I suppose I could steep myself in the minutiae of the new American Health Care Act in order to truly appreciate the extent of the suffering it will impose. But it seems to me in this particular instance that the WHAT is not nearly as important as the WHY. While it wasn't altogether successful, the intent of the Affordable Care Act was to extend the benefits of the American health care system to as many Americans as possible. The intent of the American Health Care Act, on the other hand, is to limit access to quality, affordable health care to the privileged few. It's as simple as that.

Lurking beneath the surface, however, is the question that should be gnawing away at America's soul. Why would anyone want to limit sick people's access to health care? Doesn't that seem unreasonably cruel? Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Republican Party believes, as a matter of principle, that if you cannot afford medical care, you don't deserve it. Simple. Straight forward. To the point. Health care is a privilege for those willing and able to pay. The indigent and the financially struggling are simply on their own. One way to express it is Social Darwinism.

At its core, this is the opening shot in the Republican version of class warfare. In times past, Republicans would pull out that old chestnut in order to oppose any type of legislation they deemed contrary to the best interests of the wealthy. Genuine tax reform and the elimination of arcane tax loopholes, a rise in the income tax rate on the very rich, means testing for Social Security. All these proposals were equated with the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution.

But ever since January 20, 2017, class warfare has taken on a much more insidious face. The assault on America's economic underclass has become more direct and much more destructive. Today it's health care. Tomorrow it will be an attack on America's system of public education with the rise of non-union charter schools and the spread of school vouchers to further undermine American public education. In time, America's labor unions will come into the cross hairs, limiting the right of American citizens to band together for the purpose of collective bargaining. Next perhaps will see the end of any and all environmental regulations, making asthma and other respiratory diseases much more prevalent, especially in poor, urban areas. Finally will come the piece de resistance, severe voter suppression laws, thus making even the exercise of our voter franchise a privilege rather than a right. In that way it will make getting a redress of grievances that much more difficult, if not altogether impossible.

This isn't about a philosophy of government or a a string of public policy decisions. It's about how some people in the American ruling class view human life. Charles Darwin noted that, in nature, it was called survival of the fittest, and that's pretty much what it boils down to. The "worthy" rise to the top, where they belong. The rest of us are there merely to serve our betters. Period. Oh, they may not express it quite so dramatically, but that's the gist of it just the same.

It's important to understand one thing about this sorry state of affairs. We of America's economic underclass GAVE our wealthy brethren carte blanche. Don't believe it? Well, a self-professed billionaire now sits in the White House, when he isn't traipsing about Mar A Lago playing golf. The minions of America's upper class now control the other two branches of government. Ordinary citizens have been consigned to standing room only on the outside of the seat of power.

That's bad enough. But what we must all come to understand is that America's economic elite didn't stage a coup in order to seize power. We poor folk naively handed that power over to them. So that when the last door is locked and we have all be exiled to a permanent position of subservience in President Trump's even greater America, we ordinary citizens will only have had ourselves to blame.

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From the Recesses of My Mind - ChicagoNow (blog)