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I am a union tradesman. Our bread is buttered maintaining the coal-fired, gas-fired, and nuclear power plants that scatter this country and provide the only reliable sources of power to keep our iPhones and electric cars charged. Yet as a citizen who casts his ballot like everyone else, I keep asking myself, who represents our interest? To put it succinctly: No one.
In American politics today, money is power and power is influence. And my class, the Productive Class, is the Invisible Caste because we don't have any goddamn money. Which means that for us, the political landscape is barren.
The Democrats long ago turned their back on the working class. They abandoned Labor. They cheered as honest work was sent overseas. Yet they still take our union money and hope we don't notice when they side with the Sierra Club.
It is Democrats who now occupy every cultural, financial, political, and educational institution, yet somehow maintain the façade that they're still the underdog. Then they're repulsed upon facing the actual underdogs.
Democrats today are a truly fascinating mix of schizophrenic sanctimony and ruthless blood lust. They have no respect for anyone or anything, and in their savage climb to power, they have sowed the seeds that will tear this country apart.
The theatre involved in maintaining their grift is a true feat of shameless myopia. These are fundamentally unserious people. They make light of high gas prices, then spin it to make electric cars more attractive, as if we all have 50 grand lying around. As if we all can afford $150 an hour shop rate to maintain a car maliciously designed not to be fixed by its owner. As if our current power grid could support such a transition.
Yet the idea that nuclear power is most optimal solution for providing clean, cheap, sustainable power requires a level of prudence and sacrifice above their ability and beneath their dignity. Never will they risk losing the donor dollars from their Park Avenue cocktail party guests, or from the heir or heiress worth nine figures whose spirit animal is a North Face jacket. The silver spoons don't want it, so the axe is dropped, rates are hiked, and pork and beans become supper staples for most.
But do we have another option in the Republican Party? Only if we choose to ignore who they are and what they do. The Republicans, in a true show of insecurity and pusillanimous timidity, have shackled themselves to Donald Trump, who after four years doesn't seem to represent anyone other than Donald Trump.
We, and the world, can't plan a future around the whims of such a mercurial man, nor the capitulation of such cowardly ranks. And yet, some claim the Republicans are becoming the working class party.
Spoiler: They're not: Republicans are just Democrats with a five-year lag time, chasing the same pool of money and spreading a different set of lies. They do not believe themselves worthy to rule and do not posses the confidence in themselves to govern. What little authority they allow themselves to flex is happily deployed in service of pumping the brakes. Without the ability to steer the ship, they giddily become the tugboat of controlled opposition.
So where does that leave a tradesman like me?
Politically homeless and cast aside.
Our leaders will continue to serve the aristocratic caste of this country, continue to indulge their delusions of grandeur and beneficence. They'll continue to trade in prestige and launder the subsidization of elite production and standing under the guise of altruism and justice.
They'll continue the performance art, hoping to deceive the public from fully seeing that they have no vision for the future, no ability to help anyone but themselves, and to obscure their true position as middle managers for the power centers of America.
They will continue to tax, bleed and besmirch the people who actually keep the workings of the country working. They'll continue the abandonment of the Invisible Caste, keep us from ascending the social and economic ladder, and continue to exchange our votes for nothing, because in a one party state, who else can we vote for?
We aren't radicals. We aren't hateful. We don't want to watch the world burn and dance on the ashes. We don't wish anyone ill and we don't want to see anyone harmed. All we want is to see adults fill the seats of leadership, and have them possess the honor, dignity, loyalty, and courage to conduct themselves accordingly.
We The People confer a tremendous amount of power onto a chosen few, and in their avarice and plate spinning, they have abdicated the responsibility for too long. They are steadily undermining the authority granted to them, and without abatement, I fear we will soon have a nation that refuses to accept their rule.
Change—a real, total, absolute change—is required; for without it, the music will keep playing, the wealthy will keep dancing, and rubble and ruin will be all there is to bequeath.
Russell Dalton is a tradesman. He began his career as a union boilermaker and finished it as a union pipefitter. He now lives outside the trades in his home state of Montana. You can follow him on Twitter @westernthunder4.
The views in this article are the writer's own.
