I appreciate most of the points in your well-stated comment, but it misses the same point (for the same reason) that the TGOP misses: we must keep our rich in check. Clinton wouldn’t say it. Trump is the poster brat for why we must say it. But no one says what is obvious: Clinton was one attempt by the wealthy at marketing, to the people, rule by a tiny minority of wealthy thieves. Trump was another.
Financing of politics and media has been taken over by the worst thieves living now on the planet. Pointing this out as the primary problem isn’t a meme that’s allowed to thrive, so it doesn’t get repeated as much as it might. Imagine if SNL was allowed to say it. John Oliver gets closer, occasionally. On HBO. And not if Trump is dropping another public deuce about anything-but-wealth.
The social justice movement is vitally important but I’m not sure whether the backers of Breitbart and other bigot media care much about rolling it back. I think they just want to keep people divided. They’re rich thieves and rule through diversion of attention away from their thieving. So the stupid, murderous greed of the rich is overshadowed by fey and sarcastic fascists. No matter how ridiculous, the newly powerful bigot faction hired into the Administration is doing its job.
Talking about wealth was always the endpoint of social justice. MLK got there. Ta-Nehisi Coates laid it out when talking about reparations. Feminist labor issues come down to the same thing.
Slavery and rape is about theft of bodies. Colonization is about the same, adding theft of land, and rebranded. Neoliberal austerity is another rebranding of the theft of knowledge, experience, franchise, and resources of the people in every country it’s practiced in. We forget that these issues are connected at their heart.
Reactionary bigotry is weird and horrible (and deplorable) but at its core bigotry is a marketing strategy. Bigotry is a psychologically *crafted bait-and-switch. If we decry the evil of the bait, we must also talk about the underlying switch.
