We're Living Longer. No, It Just Feels Like It...

Ever feel like we're the native Americans in America's class war?

Everything's being taken by the white rich man. We're cheated. We're massacred (economically). And too many of our own people get tempted into siding with the white rich man when he dangles Tea Party beads in front of us or gets us hooked on GOP rotgut.

But there was a time when we, the middle and working classes, owned this land. The white rich men were few in number and the forces of popular liberalism were strong. And when great chiefs like FDR and Bubba Clinton held sway, they sure as hell wouldn't have stood for cutting the white rich man's taxes and making us pay for it. But now Chief Two-Faces Obama seems happy enough to talk about raising the retirement age to offset Bush's fiscally-insane tax cuts. And we as a people are too defeated, too demoralized and/or too f*cking brainwashed to raise even a squeak of protest.

They argue that raising the retirement age to nearly seventy is fair because we're all living longer these days. Hell, when social security came in, people were lucky to hit 50 without dying of tuberculosis, botched abortions or 'pernicious humors'... so what's the big deal? It just ain't like that now. NBC's Andrea Mitchell argued that case with John Irons of the EPI on TV the other day:

AM: What about raising the retirement age eventually to 68? What would be wrong with that actuarially, we're all living longer. Eventually something is going to have to be done?

JI: Well I think a couple of things. One, we're not all living longer. People who are wealthy, who have higher incomes, are living much longer. People who have moderate incomes, low incomes, aren't living that much longer.

There's also another obvious point apologists for this socio-economic aberration fail to figure: It's one thing for fat-assed media nabobs like Andrea Mitchell to work thru 70. Because she doesn't work per se. All she does is sit in a chair and talk on cue. But what about construction workers? roofers? firemen? cops? warehouse workers..? etc., etc. At some point well before 70 you start being unable to carry 200lb guys over your shoulder or team-lift a refrigerator. What then? With no job, no social security, you're a freed slave allowed to wander off into the desert to die?

Man, through this, through exorbitant healthcare costs and McSoylent Green food for the masses, that white rich man is buying life itself and making it a privilege.