Dreams Reoccurring

All of this has happened before.

That's what I think when I read the news. The protests, the executive orders, the apocalyptic rhetoric from every corner - all of it happened a decade ago, as the Bush II presidency charged into one military failure after another. And then the housing market dropped dead.

In between the Women's March and the Department of Homeland Security taking Muslims' side for a change, the Trump administration has been taking a slash and burn approach to Wall Street regulations. There's been about as much resistance from liberals as when Obama extended the bailouts, which is less surprising the more you think about it. These same liberals rallied around Hillary Clinton last year, the Senator from Goldman Sachs. More than eight years on and the loyal opposition still can't think in terms of wealth, labor, and real power because those concepts are alien to their experience.

I spend a lot of time in the sort of New York City neighborhoods that voted Clinton. Not just in November but in the primary that was closed off to churlish independents like me. None of them are hurting like the people I saw in Albermarle County in 2005 to 2007 - the good years of the Bush recovery. They're hurting in other ways, grandly affluent ways, but no one is losing their heart meds because an insurance company revised its fine print. Not even if Obamacare gets repealed - and increasingly unlikely prospect - as they were too well off to need it in the first place.

You see these urban liberals and you understand the disdain of the heartland rubes. Neurotic and overcaffeinated, but affecting a patrician concern for the "less fortunate" who don't do internships or grad school. If you've met enough people with masters degrees you know its no indication of intelligence. It is an indication, however, of social and economic status, something that grows more rigid and stratified with every passing year.

That's one thing you know Trump isn't going to change. The poor aren't real to him, except as adoring suckers at his campaign rallies. And they're not real to Democrats either, except for when they need a scapegoat for their own electoral failures. Something we all saw already when they rode to the rescue in the 2006 mid-terms on an anti-war ticket and proceeded to fund the Iraq War through Obama's first term.

All of this will happen again.