Are retired union workers living under a rock? I have often wondered why union retirees, with a union pension, move to Shasta County and become a GOP nut job and vote for people who oppose unions and the working class. These same people collect all sorts of government sponsored programs, such as Medicare, social security and possibly veteran services.
Do they just want to belong? Are they conformists? Are they ashamed to have their GOP neighbors know they are Democrats or retired union workers? Or are they coldhearted, bloodsucking gnats who got theirs so to hell with everyone else?
I just don’t understand. I, for one, am proud of my union pension, my medical coverage, and my social security. I worked very hard for all three and I will fight hard to keep them. If other retired union members, social security and Medicare recipients don’t think the GOP are trying to take these benefits away, you’ve had to have been living under a rock.
I think all of us with these union and government benefits had better get over being afraid of our GOP/Tea Party nuts and cowboy up and start paying attention to who is for us and who is against us. In the infamous words of George Bush, “You’re either with us or against us.” I can live with a few less supposed friends who I want to believe care about me, but I would find it very difficult to live without my pensions and healthcare. I bet it would be very hard for all the rest of you union retirees to live without your pension benefits, especially those who have turned their backs on the Democratic party who helped get those pensions. The party may not be perfect, but they are the best fit at this time for us.
There’s a large group of Democrats in Shasta County, but for the most part they stay in the closet. Most are afraid to even put a bumper sticker on their vehicle in fear of retribution against them or their vehicle, but not so with the GOP, their bumper stickers are everywhere creating eye pollution. Remember, no guts no glory so at least put your union affiliation stickers on your vehicles to support union members still working or to support the unions that send you your pension checks every month. Get your bumper stickers at our Labor Day picnic. Be proud, fight back and organize. As Hannibal once said, “We will either find a way or make one.”
The class distinction between the GOP and the union/working class may best be summed up in Machiavelli’s book “The Prince,” written for the ‘Haves’ on how to hold onto power, and Saul D. Alinsky’s “Radicals,” defining mankind as having been and continues to be “divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores.”
Perhaps the union retirees who move to Shasta County and the party of the bullies to fit in are part of what Alinsky calls the “Have-a-Little, Want Mores,” he describes this group as having split personalities. “They could be described as social, economic, and political schzoids. Generally, they seek the safe way, where they can profit by change and yet not risk losing the little they have.”
So rather than be angry with those who have lost sight of how they gained the little they have, we should treat them as if they suffer from “Stockholm Syndrome.”
