Rich Clueless Liberal Lives Matter

Richie Rich is turning born-again populist in his old age.

From coast to coast, celebrities are gathering in solidarity with their fans and other regular folk to protest the unthinkable election of Donald Trump, and to stand united behind their exiled quarter-billionaire sister, Hillary Clinton. Thousands have turned out in even the hippest, most gentrified neighborhoods in New York City, Austin, Atlanta and Chicago to blast out their love for one another.

 Cher, hostess of a star-studded big ticket Clinton fund-raiser this summer on Martha's Vineyard, peeked out the front door of her New York townhouse and Tweeted out her support to those marching past.

A Yale economics professor has made the final exam optional out of sympathy for legatees who are too traumatized to get out of bed, let alone hold a pencil in their tender fingers in order to figure out the logistics of supply-side and trickle-down.

Aging Pop Queen Madonna -- who'd previously bravely protested Trump's disgusting lechery by promising a free blow job to anyone who voted against him  -- did Cher one better and physically joined the rabble in front of Trump Tower on Wednesday night to voice her own outrage against the outrageous blow to elite womanhood.

Let Us All Lift Up Our Faces and Our Voices

CNN pundit/Democratic operative Van Jones made admiring headlines when he blamed Hillary's defeat on racism, something he cleverly branded as "Whitelash."

The Makeup of Flyover Country

 Gloria Steinem boldly penned an editorial in The Guardian to drum up popular support for a new plutocratic social justice movement, to be led by (who else) the Clintons and the Obamas. "We will not mourn. We will organize!" vowed the corporate feminist who'd once castigated female Bernie Sanders supporters as shallow groupies only "wanting to go where the boys are."

Steinem, just like her candidate, ignores the day-to-day lives of the poor and downtrodden by creating her own false reality - the one where Hillary Clinton never became a quarter-billionaire by serving Wall Street, and never threw millions of mainly minority women off the welfare rolls and sent their mates to prison in record numbers back in the bubble-icious boom times of the 90s.

"That’s why she was, and always has been, supported more by women than by men, more by voters of color than by white voters, and more by scientists than creationists. It’s also why she is deeply and vehemently resented," Steinem hilariously pontificated.

Even though Barack Obama's own national popularity is now reaching a record 60 percent,  the trending liberal meme is that Hillary was defeated because of racism. It also matters not to Gloria Steinem that nearly as many women as men voted for Trump:

Add the fact that many men, especially powerful men, haven’t seen a female authority since childhood, and they felt unmanned, threatened, and regressed by the prospect of Hillary Clinton in the most powerful position in the world. Add those white Americans who are about to become a minority for the first time, and are opposed to everything from birth control (because it lowers the white birthrate disproportionately) to immigration (because it doesn’t have racial and religious restrictions). Of course, this is guilt talking: they fear being treated as they have treated others.

Steinem never once blames the establishment. or the ruling class, or whatever name you care to give to Power, Inc. for this nation's social ills. It's the divide and conquer meme all the way: if wages are suppressed and jobs are scarce, then it's all the fault of the poor white Trump voters who are guilty of bigotry against black and brown people. 

She ends her screed in a similarly tone-deaf fashion:

I think this country is in a time of danger because most of us are escaping control by some of us. Just as we would never tell a woman, man or child to stay in a violent household, we will never go back to the old hierarchy. Despite ongoing threats, at home and in other countries, including a very racialized and gendered terrorism, we have many leaders who inspire democracy, who model it, and who know we are linked, not ranked.

Luckily, real change, like a tree, grows from the bottom up, not the top down. We have Hillary, Barack and Michelle to guide us. We will not mourn, we will organize. Maybe we are about to be free.

Steinem should just have screamed Power to the Plutocrats! or Down With Democracy!

She actually seems to believe that the fabulously wealthy and war-mongering Clintons and Obamas are the best choices to lead a new bottom-up movement. She confuses the emotional rock-bottom of a group of defeated elites with the social and financial rock-bottoms of millions of evicted, powerless Americans -- who this week screamed out their own powerlessness and outrage in the only way that they were allowed.

They voted for Donald Trump.

 To paraphrase Thomas Frank, it's almost enough to make you pity the poor billionaire. 

It's so tempting. So we really will have to work hard to harden our hearts against the plight of these unfortunate fortunates. 

They should so do what poor pundit Paul Krugman did on the Day the Liberal Dream Music Died. Relax a lot in between those annoying, but totally necessary, bouts of elite populism. Give it the tired, stale, tried and untrue "balanced approach" that has always worked out so well for extreme centrists:

That said, does it make sense on a personal level to keep struggling after this kind of blow? Why not give up on trying to save the world, and just look out for yourself and those close to you? Quietism does have its appeal. Admission: I spent a lot of today listening to music, working out, reading a novel, basically taking a vacation in my head. You can’t help feeling tired and frustrated after this kind of setback.

But eventually one has to go back to standing for what you believe in. It’s going to be a much harder, longer road than I imagined, and maybe it ends in irreversible defeat, if nothing else from runaway climate change. But I couldn’t live with myself if I just gave up.

So I guess he'll keep writing his usual New York Times column about how wonderful Obamacare is for the retail clerk who has to fork over a $12,000 annual deductible and co-pay out of her $10,000 precarious annual paycheck. You probably know her very well. She is the woman who never gets to take a vacation anywhere, let alone a luxury vacation inside of her own frazzled head.

Live It Up With Yourself! Lift Your Glass As You Rest Your Weary Ass