Gabbro B-Sides

I love the rhetoric of class warfare more than just about anything else in political discourse, except maybe pie. So I’m happy about John Edwards. What I’m not happy about is how such delightful righteous indignation of (or on behalf of) the proletariat keeps getting turned in to snarky asides about protectionism (see here, for one example; there are more but I’m too late in the news cycle and too lazy to find ‘em). Whatever happened to unemployment insurance, affordable education, and a long-term effort to establish acceptable labor rights (via unions!) in the countries to which our jobs are flowing, huh?

Trade policy has only been in the air for like a week, and already I’m sick and tired of feeling like a moderate all the time. If we’d only go back to talking about foreign policy and nationalized health care, I could be a pinko commie again! A free-tradin’ pinko commie who frequently resorts to talking about health care as a barrier to enterpreneurship in conversations with the bourgeoisie, to be sure, but nowadays one has to take whatever socialism one gets and be thankful for it.