OPINION:
Democrats are bending every effort to destroy the middle class. Without this vital center as a bulwark of democracy, America will fall into their hands.
In war and peace, America’s strength has always been in our broad middle class.
For over 200 years, millions of impoverished immigrants came here hoping to achieve the prosperity and security this nation has always afforded our middle class.
Its sons fought our wars, enforced the law at home, and fueled the greatest economic miracle in history.
Democrats want a nation of the super-rich and the Proles a la “1984” and nothing in between, and them as the Inner Party.
Three dramas that played out last week formed a Bermuda Triangle of middle-class doom.
In New York City, Manhattan District Attorney and People’s Commissar of Justice Alvin Bragg charged Marine Corps veteran Daniel Penny with second-degree manslaughter in the chokehold death of “homeless by choice” Jordan Neely. Mr. Bragg acted after protesters shut down subway stations howling for Mr. Penny’s blood.
Neely was a gentle soul with 44 prior arrests, including attempting to kidnap a 7-year-old girl and punching an old woman in the face, breaking her nose and fracturing her orbital bone.
Crime of all sorts flourished in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots. The FBI reported a 30% increase in violent crime in 2020. Black Lives Matter and antifa goon squads, leftist politicians and prosecutors have colluded to turn our streets into a war zone.
They want us cowering in our homes, terrified of the fate which will befall us if we venture into urban areas — a tragedy spilling over to the suburbs and small-town America. They want to undermine our confidence in the police and courts to keep us safe, so we’ll succumb to political blackmail.
At the same time as the Neely incident, a California commission urged the state to pay $200 billion in reparations to everyone with an enslaved person lurking somewhere in their family tree. It’s been noted that Michael Jackson’s children would qualify.
This racial plunder would further impoverish the state’s mostly White middle class. It would also be another attack on individual merit, the backbone of middle-class morality.
The border is the last point of the triangle. In April, there were 182,000 apprehensions at our southern border. Almost all were allowed to stay. So-called migrants now occupy half of the hotel rooms in New York City. Under President Biden’s welcome-mat immigration policy, we’ve let in nearly 2 million so far.
Hordes of mendicants and criminals are being imported, bringing the Third World to every doorstep in the land, resulting in more welfare spending, higher taxes, more racial tensions and an expanded Democratic base. The middle class is being murdered at our unguarded border.
Yet another drama is being played out in Washington. Mr. Biden wants Republicans to raise the debt ceiling without any conditions whatsoever. Congressional Republicans appear to be holding the line.
Does it even matter? The national debt is now close to $32 trillion. That’s more than $248,000 for every taxpayer. In his first two years in office, the president added $3.84 trillion, or more than 10% of the total debt.
It’s not a default that worries me, but the way deficit spending is driving up the cost of living.
The left is also using its Green New Deal to impoverish us — severe restrictions on domestic energy production, forcing us into electric cars (the horse and buggy would be more practical), coming “energy-efficiency” mandates on appliances, banning gas stoves and other measures driven by the cult of climate change.
This will raise the price of everything, including food, gas and utilities. Under Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the cost of electricity is up 24%, fuel oil up 69% and gas up 53%.
Soon we’ll be sitting in our homes, sweltering in the summer and shivering in the winter, riding bicycles to work, and eating Hamburger Helper or dog food – when we’re not chowing down on creepy, crawly things.
As vegan frosting on the cake, our children are being brainwashed in gender ideology and critical race theory in state schools. If you object, you’ll be branded an insurrectionist and “the government will crush you,” according to an FBI whistleblower.
If Mr. Biden serves a second term, by the time he leaves office, the middle class will be a bombed-out shell of its former self.
The left, however, should be warned: It’s not the elite or the masses that make revolutions, but an outraged middle class.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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