DEAR VICKY: I’m a recent college graduate who is struggling mightily to break into my chosen field. It seems every rich kid in my graduating class has found a great full-time job, even the ones who can’t spell their own names. What gives? —FRUSTRATED IN THE BIG APPLE
DEAR FRUSTRATED IN THE BIG APPLE: You’re not the only one who is vexed with our nation’s broken labor market and the dire straits you’re experiencing are not your imagination.
Poor and middle class Americans have been completely abandoned by business and political elites on both sides of the political aisle. The Trump Generation of toxic elites has off-shored tens of millions of U.S. jobs in the past 40 years in the worst case of institutionalized treason in U.S. history.
The true jobless rate for the 205 million Americans ages 15 to 64 is 40 percent. Not the official 4.3 percent unemployment rate published each month by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
There are 322 million Americans right now, but only about 205 million of us are ages 15 to 64. Of those, just 121 million or so have full-time jobs.
Why?
Because Wall Street is no longer American and “profits over people” is a real thing for the cloud of financial locusts who make their living there. It’s not just a slogan.
American executives at publicly traded companies are only American when it comes time to hit up our political hookers for handouts. Like the $218 million in tax breaks Iowa just gave to Apple for a data center which will only create 50 jobs.
The rest of the time people like Apple CEO Tim Cook are citizens of the world, which is why his company’s iPhones and iPads are made in China.
DEAR VICKY: I’m 25 and I live with my mom, who is 55. We both smoke weed, but she says I and I alone cannot smoke weed in the house. How is that fair —EDIBLE IN DENVER
DEAR EDIBLE IN DENVER: Your mom hates you.
Know why?
Because mom has needs too and the odds of her ever getting laid again are reduced by about 99 percent with you living in her basement.
Meanwhile, the chances of any working class kid finding a decent job that doesn’t involve arresting other working class kids is somewhere between slim and non-fucking-existent right now in the rising American police state.
So, try to take it easy on one another.
The good news is you’re living rent free in a state which has legalized marijuana. That means you can afford to walk outside to smoke your herb you lazy buttmunch. Or, even better, limit your ganga intake to edibles when you’re in the house.
Which is not really your house.
Bottom line, you’re not 5 years old any more. You’re an adult. Do your mom a favor and start acting like it.
DEAR VICKY: We’re all familiar with the rules for who pays for what in a wedding. However, my future son-in-law’s mother is a huge feminist who seems intent on bucking the rules. This single mother insists on paying for half of everything. —CONFUSED IN DALLAS
DEAR CONFUSED IN DALLAS: You must be a Trump supporter because no other Americans are as incapable of thinking for themselves as his reflexive rule followers.
I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with current events, but we’re living through a period of tremendous change. Everything from traditional gender roles, to sexual orientation, to national identity has been tossed into chaos by the rise of the Internet hive-mind.
This period of change has led to an in increase in opportunistic behavior by unprincipled hypocrites bent on grabbing the benefits of this new climate with both hands, while avoiding the burdens. You, on the other hand, are complaining about the principled behavior of a woman who is looking to shoulder both the benefits and burdens of gender equality.
I think you should get down on your knees and thank God for this woman, who is a far better in-law than your pointy Red State head deserves.
You’re so stupid you make Donald Trump look half-smart by comparison. Crawl back under your rock and never ever waste my time again with this kind of imbecile nonsense.
DEAR VICKY: I’m a Progressive white man who has been arrested at five pro-democracy and antiwar protests since 2011. I make about $35,000 as an over-the-road trucker, but am routinely accused of being “a member of the patriarchy” and a beneficiary of “white man’s privilege” by some Progressive women and blacks. How is that fair? —AT A LOSS IN BERKELEY
DEAR AT A LOSS IN BERKELEY: The people tossing around these toxic labels so cavalierly are not true Progressives. They’re posers. More often than not they’re also rich posers who are more interested in being right than doing right.
They’re playing a traditional limousine liberal game wit
h you, which entails enjoying the benefits of unearned wealth without shouldering the social burdens. In this case that means erroneously presenting their rich asses as fake victims and your working class ass as their victimizer.
The painful truth is that being a true progressive is about dismantling societal caste systems so that each of us can be judged by what The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called “the content of our character.” It’s not about replacing the dominant group with your own group.
That painful truth seems to have escaped many of the rich Hillbots on the far left and their rich Wingnut doppelgangers on the far right. Both of whom think political corruption is OK so long as it’s their side getting rich off it.
There are no socially acceptable scapegoats for true Progressives. Like abolitionist John Brown, journalists Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, musician John Lennon, political scientist Noam Chomsky, whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, and Freedom Rider James Zwerg.
All of them are white men or former white men who are far more interesting by virtue of their personal choices than the groups they were born into.
Dear Vicky is written by Victor Epstein. You can contact him via email at vepstein1212@gmail.com
