Do you realize that because of the national election that's been taking place for the last two years, we're actually talking about some really important things that we rarely talk about?
Like rich people—or "the wealthy," as the wealthy say—and poor people, who are so poor they can't afford their own euphemsim.
I don't think I heard Candidate Obama utter the word "poor" throughout the 2008 campaign, just as the term was mostly avoided by Bush and Clinton and Bush and Reagan before him. (Notwithstanding Reagan's unbelievably rancid coining of the term "welfare queen.") The poorest people those guys ever referred to were the middle class, which I always think of as People Who Worry About Money Constantly, and For Good Reason, But Who Own a Lawnmower.
The status and size of the middle class is one fair measure of how well a country's doing. But the extremes matter too. You can't declare a climate mild upon hearing the average high temperature is 50 degrees—not until you make sure it's not 120 one day and minus-20 the next.
So how do you have national elections without talking about the nation's rich, and how rich they are, and its poor, and how poor they are?
That's not class warfare. Just class conversation. And one that's long overdue.
So thanks, Occupy and thanks, Mitt.
This is going to be interesting.
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