Day 305: Take Karl Marx Trick or Treating...

Joni's back has been giving her a bit of pain lately, so it was up to me to take the girls out trick or treating last night. To annoy Kylie and her ten year old sensibilities, I put on my farmer's overalls and wore a bandanna on my head.

"I have a reputation to uphold you know", Kylie pleading with me NOT to look like a Geek. Undeterred we headed out; letting my Geek Flag Fly!

Down to Oroville. We were accompanied by a couple of Jazzy and Kylie's friends. I've never been trick or treating in Oroville before. We spied a neighborhood consisting of those McMansions. You know, those absolutely huge ugly monster houses with a wooden front door, a small bit of yard and two or three garage doors that stare at the street and three or four thousand square feet to do your (totally) inside living. A cul de sac of the obnoxious domiciles.

Ding dong. No answer. Next house.

Ding dong. No answer. On to the next house.

Ding dong. No answer. On to the next house.

Evidently, this group of McMansions doesn't participate in giving candy to "off the grid" kids (or any kids for that matter).

And so we moved on down the hill to a neighborhood of simple, cottage type houses. And not nice cottages--but the kind that look more like fancy trailers. Shabby construction. The houses had, at most, 1,200 square feet.

But the neighborhood was alive!

Many of the residents sat in their garage-less driveways (most just had a roof over their cars with no walls)---having a fire in a fire pit or just sitting there shooting the crap with neighbors as they gave candy to hundreds (and I mean hundreds) of children. Some had turned their houses into makeshift "haunted houses" adults taking great delight in walking around with fake blood on their faces and knives sticking out of their backs; handing out candy that took money from them that might better have been spent on food for their own families.

This was an event! A time of sharing! A time of caring!

Juxtapose this barely lower middle-class neighborhood with the dead folks at the top of the hill and you can see just how much the class war of the last thirty years has left the rich vacuous, lifeless and soul-less. No wonder they argue so vehemently to not have the Government raise taxes on them by a mere three percent. Shame on them!

And so I drove to work thinking about this Marxian experience. And thinking about the election tomorrow. I took a walk with the clients today. Most poor; living on the handouts of SSI and living in drab board and cares that hand out peanut butter sandwiches for lunch while walking away with the majority of the client's social security checks.

If all goes as expected, the House of Representatives will be a Republican stronghold tomorrow. We will see an influx of Congressmen and women who think that climate change is a hoax. And most of this because Obama decided to attempt to get health insurance for the 15 percent who do not have such. That was the straw that broke the Middle Classes back: spending money on others less fortunate than them. Never mind that there wasn't any anger about spending trillions of dollars on war. No! We need the oil! We need the revenge! Money well spent.

No--it was spending money on the poor that pissed off the middle class and the upper classes to the point that (like those McMansions) they decided that the social contract does not include help for the poor, the depressed, the less fortunate, the mentally ill, those in despair, the ragged people, the immigrants, the uneducated, the drug addicted. Let them die. Lazy scum--they deserve their poverty. We can't even tell them to get a job anymore because the jobs have all been shipped overseas.

The poorest people I know are those who have all the money.