Bitter, Economically Hard-pressed Americans

What's wrong with what Obama said? Hillary says he is elitist and out-of-touch. Bull! If anything, what he is did was speak the truth, by pointing out the social stratification that exists in the U.S., and that those who are not blessed with the largess of the information economy are not happy campers. But, to say that is taboo. The approved line is that America consists of a big pool of middle class citizens who are successfully reaching through hard-work and perseverance for the American dream of a better life for themselves and their off-spring. Dissatisfied people don't exist in the preferred version of our culture, only upward-bound, hard-working folks are allowed.

Well, Barack didn't lay on the B.S. He told it like it is. Hillary needs to realize that there are people who are bitter, people whose jobs have been sent to India, people who live where job opportunities no longer exist by out-sourcing our economy to foreign shores, where hopes for economic development in the form of new base industries is dashed by this same corporate practice, where what jobs do exist often require a distant commute, using ever more costly fuel, from a hometown where their investment in housing is locked in, while decent housing is hard to find because of an aging housing stock and spiraling home construction costs, where age discrimination derails plans for a comfortable retirement and helping children with the mounting cost of higher education, where racial discrimination prevents the realization of the promised results of an education, where health care options are not readily available or terribly expensive, and where a war in Iraq forces a disproportionately small number of families to bear the brunt of death and hardship caused by this ill-conceived and ill-managed war.

Somehow, the fiction that the folks who have experienced the calamities I have described should suffer in silence, keep a stiff upper lip, be proud and faithful in the American system, etc. trumps the truth. If all Hillary and others can do is fault Obama for telling the truth, then they are pathetic. Is change needed? Yes. Is Obama talking about the reasons change is needed? Yes. How ridiculous!