S. Abbas Raza in The Wire:
The US really has become two countries: the rich and everyone else. The rich have their world-class private schools, the rest have their shoddy public ones; the rich have their gated communities, the rest have their ghettos and trailer parks; the rich have fancy private doctors, the rest can always just go to hospital emergency rooms that bankrupt them; the rich eat in restaurants where the kitchen help works 12-hour days, six days a week, doing back-breaking labour for less than minimum wage and without health insurance or job security of any kind. Where was the outrage of those who pen daily screeds now against half the country, when for years they calmly faced the massive obscenity of the growing ranks of disabled veterans and the mentally ill and the otherwise unfortunate who slept on our cold and rainy sidewalks as we hopped over them to get into our taxis after drinks in the bar of some chic and trendy hotel? The lack of safety nets for the unfortunate, the already shocking but still growing levels of inequality of wealth and income – as well as the inequality of opportunity – of American society is the real obscenity and sickness, worthy of ten times more shame for every American than the recent election of an unqualified retrograde to the highest office in the land. Where has the outrage about that been?
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