Moving Day Short

IN LAST NIGHT'S batch of hate messages, one insults me as a "toothless moron." 

It was one of the most important lessons I learned from my time reading the unedited, mostly unmoderated thinking of self-defined lefties, almost all of them white-collar, college-credentialed, most of them conventional adherents of materialist-atheist-scientism, that snobbery was rampant among them.  Much of it was regional much of it was absurdly chauvinistic, VIRTUALLY ALL OF IT WAS SNOBBERY OF THE MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASSES AGAINST PEOPLE WHO WERE POOR AND DESTITUTE.   

One of the early class-based insults was derision about "trailer trash" living in a trailer being something that poor people of some but not many means have to do. "Toothless" is certainly even more of a disgusting insult against people too poor to even have the healthcare that dental care certainly is. 

In the United States, due to the efforts of the rich and otherwise affluent preventing universal healthcare for so long, we barely have some healthcare for tens and scores of millions of us and it doesn't include dental care. And Bernie Sanders has pointed out that the cost of dental care has risen drastically.  That's not the fault of the poor, it's the fault of people who in some cases are probably making fun of the "toothless". 

I'm hardly toothless, yet, but like many who had the misfortune of trying to make a life in music or other arts,  my ability to afford dental care has been spotty.  If it happens I'll probably have a hard time affording decent dentures.* That was a consequence of my decision to make my living in music, something the consequences of which I ALWAYS point out to my students, so I don't deserve any pity you should reserve for those who lose their teeth due to no decision they had any power to make.   Though you should hold the pity and struggle for full, universal healthcare including dental care.  

Don't trust anyone on the left who issues those kinds of insults, they're the ones who will either win the left enemies among the poor or turn on "the left" as soon as they think their bread is buttered on the right side. 

*  But I'll never have to resort to covering a bald spot by affecting a stupid looking Groucho beret.