Until average Americans, and especially average Alabamians, stop falling for the goofy scare tactics and racism, the odds will never be in our favor.
By Josh Moon
Welcome to The Real Hunger Games—a new reality show starring you and the rest of America.
Only, instead of a televised competition in which people murder each other for sport, this show is far less dramatic and far more cruel. It involves essentially harassing and torturing poor people and minorities for political gain, driving up the costs of all goods and services beyond the means of average Americans, and then the billionaire elites simply watching everyone starve to death.
MAGA, indeed.
America’s despot in the White House announced that he was going to begin clearing Washington, D.C., of homeless people. Because they are an unsightly mess that apparently distracts from his enjoyment of being chauffeured about town by taxpayer-funded transport.
I suppose this means that his promises of lowering prices, driving up wages, creating more jobs, and making the country “so much greater,” as he said repeatedly during the campaign, can be written off as more utter bullsh*t from a guy who produces a metric ton of it every day.
The number of failed or disregarded promises and guarantees made by Donald Trump while campaigning is, when put in historical context, staggering. Things that he battered to death while on the campaign trail have been publicly disregarded, and sometimes laughed at, by Trump, who is no longer even pretending that he can do some of the things.
Like lower grocery prices, or end Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Or release the Epstein files. Or up America’s energy production (it’s at lower levels than the day Biden left office). Or lower fuel prices (which are higher than the day Trump took office, despite his blatant lies about fictional $2 gas).
And now, as his idiotic and bipolar implementation of tariffs wreaks havoc on the economy and starts to drive up prices, and as poor Americans start to lose jobs and healthcare, the pinch is starting to hit home for the working class. For many, that has not led to serious self-reflection over how they were so fooled—again—by this two-bit con man with a fake university and bankrupt casinos.
But it should.
In fact, it should lead a whole bunch of people to start examining exactly who it is they’re voting for and why they’re voting for them. It should lead a whole bunch of people to start paying more attention to the issues and less attention to the party or the talking heads on TV or the guys blabbering on the radio or podcasts.
I mean, what if I told you that the Democrats and Joe Biden overturned policies that would have capped bank overdraft fees at $5 and ended a program that prevented predatory credit card lending and outrageous credit card fees? What if I told you they also ended a program that would have made cancelling subscriptions easier—and guaranteed that they were as easy to get out of as they were to sign up for? What if I told you they planned to add a $200 million ballroom onto the White House while you can’t afford either balls or rooms?
You’d be spitting mad. You’d be on Facebook railing against those no-good, out-of-touch Democrats and their elitism. And you’d have a point.
Except, it wasn’t the Dems who did that. It was Republicans, and they did all of it in a matter of months after gaining control of the government.
They didn’t release the Epstein files. They didn’t give you a tax break.
They went right to work helping out their rich corporate pals. And giving you the shaft in the process.
In Alabama, this last legislative session, the Republicans here killed off a tax break on overtime pay, resulting in a 5-percent tax increase for the hardest-working folks in the state. They also pulled the rug out from under hundreds of small businesses by banning—without warning or decent public notice—the sale of hemp products and slapping felony criminal charges on anyone who possesses such products. They also failed to pass gambling legislation, once again leaving Alabama’s young folks without a viable college scholarship plan and leaving the state with one of the dumbest gambling setups in known history.
All of this while shoving through a tax break for Alabama’s highest earners and funneling (for now) at least $180 million annually to private schools from our public school tax dollars.
Remember that latter one the next time you get hit up for more supplies from your kid’s school. Or they cancel programs and field trips, or have broken down buses, or not enough books, or their classes are overcrowded because they can’t hire enough teachers. Take comfort in knowing that the rich families in town got a nice, big, $7,000-per-year tax break that they didn’t need to send their kids to a private school, and that’s where the funding for your kids’ schools went.
Y’all better wake up and start realizing that Hispanic people working construction jobs have never cost you a single penny—in fact, probably saved you several dollars—and transgender kids playing sports have never impacted your lives for a single second. But both of them have been used as a wedge to separate your vote from your common sense.
The only way this turns around is if you stop allowing this utter nonsense to dictate what you care about and instead start focusing on the things and people who truly matter to you. Stop being misled by fools and charlatans who, deep down, you know you wouldn’t trust to water your plants while you were on vacation, and start voting for your real interests.
Until you do, the odds will never be in your favor.
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