The Quality People

by Jim Billiter - (c) 2018

We are the Quality in these United States.

We are the ones who matter:
Movers, shakers, job creators.
People with a capital "P",
The Constitution's uppercase People.

Our unearned income hides away in places like the Caymans.
Our maids pay our share of taxes.
The gardeners' kids fight our wars
While ours revel in safe golden cocoons.

Early on, we sold out to unenlightened self-interest.
Altruism? Compassion? Empathy?
Concepts only for the losers, people of the lowercase "p",
The parasitic proles who try to suck away our patrimony.

Our mantra is the Trickle-down,
Moist crumbs accidentally dislodged by our piggy snouts
From the largess we accord ourselves
At the government trough.

We sit on the boards of corporations
That gouge and cheat and squeeze
So we might pay our initiation fees
To the gated country clubs.

The unions are anathema, creations of the Devil
To take away our dividends to benefit the rabble,
Those [p]eople of the former middle class,
Now poor, whose labor we traduce.

We cloak ourselves in patriotism
In the style of Dictionary Johnson
To gather to ourselves forged respect
To intimidate the little [p]eople.

We need the votes of the proles
So we feed them crumbs and lies.
And those undiscriminating, credulous losers
Mistake our wealth for virtue.

We are the Quality. We are Republican.