Romney gives voice to plutocratic contempt

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.... These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. So he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that's what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." --Mitt Romney

That, friends, is called "Telling it like it is."

Those words, uttered by Mitt Romney at a silver spoon fund-raiser earlier this year, express perfectly the sentiments he and the people he deems to be in his social stratum have toward the rest of us.  All of us.  Not just liberals or black people or immigrants, but also senior citizens, laborers, and small business owners.

We're parasites.  Leeches.  Mooches.  We can never be convinced to take responsibility for our own lives.  By insisting on a social safety net, public education, safe working conditions, living wages, and other such frivolities, we're muting the light of humanity's flame.

You see, Mitt and the people at his fund-raiser (multimillionaires all) are the very best of humanity.  They mustn't be constrained by worrying about the plight of lesser men.

Leave aside the reality that it is people like him --like Mitt and his plutocrat buddies --who rely on government to protect their plunder and maintain the corrupt structure that ensures they continue to wield inordinate power regardless of their ineptitude or criminality.  (Take Dick Cheney, for instance...)

We're the problem.  It's not their job to worry about us.  Mitt said it himself.  He knows he can never convince us that we're responsible for the disasters and mischances and corporate malfeasance that have brought nearly 50 million Americans into poverty.  We spend our lives whining and complaining and trying to dick people like him out of their car elevators and dressage horses.

The sad part of it all is this:  there are people out there --people who are not filthy rich, people who belong to the 47% that Romney disparages --that will vote for him anyway.

Why?  Because they, too, believe that those of us who are not filthy rich are somehow less worthy than are Romney and his ilk.

There's no contempt like self-contempt.