RUTHFULLY YOURS

Bette Midler should wear a name tag that reads, “Hi, I’m a super-rich, Hollywood elitist who thinks Red Staters are sub-human.” But that would be superfluous.

After Sen. Joe Manchin announced that he could not support Biden’s $4.5 trillion Build Back Better/Socialism Forever Plan – which would have been gas on the raging fires inflation (now at almost a 40-year high) – Midler attacked his West Virginia constituents as “poor, illiterate and strung out.” I’m surprised she didn’t add something about their teeth and the marriage of first cousins.

Personally, I would rather live next-door to the average West Virginian than the typical denizen of Beverly Hills. (See, Bette, even though I voted for Trump twice, I can use big words.) Being called illiterate and strung out by a member of the entertainment conglomerate – who generally have the IQs of gnats and are only occasionally sober — is, to say the least, ironic.

This is not about the calorically-challenged, hideously unattractive, singer/ whatever, but the way “progressives” view us, and why the left is increasingly dangerous to life and liberty.

Bette’s tirade is only the latest chapter in the left’s war on normalcy. Back in 1993, the Washington Post described conservative Christians as “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”

I wrote at the time that I was a Jew who identified with the political agenda of the Christian right, owned several pairs of shoes, graduated from an East Coast university, was admitted to the practice of law in two states and considered myself an independent thinker, guided by reason.

Two decades later, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo (who believed in hands-on training for his female aides) said conservatives who are pro-life, pro-Second Amendment and opposed to the gay agenda, “have no place in the state of New York.” In other words, they shouldn’t be breathing — the air!

Actor Jim Carrey describes gun owners as losers with a sexual inferiority complex. (He’s being too hard on Alec Baldwin.) In one of his rants, he suggested that for what he called their depraved indifference to school shootings, NRA members had forfeited their right to live.

Speaking at a Planned Parenthood rally in 2013, then-Sen. Frank Lautenberg said pro-lifers “don’t deserve the freedoms in the Constitution” – just like unborn children.

Standing on the steps of the Supreme Court building in March, Sen. Charles Schumer told conservative justices, who could decide the fate of Roe, that they “have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price,” also that they “won’t know what hit them.”

I’ve spent most of my adult life disagreeing with SCOTUS on a broad range of issues. It’s one thing to say, “That’s not in the Constitution,” and another to issue thinly-veiled threats.

When it’s convenient, the left will condone just about anything. Recall the way they either ignored or rationalized the murder and mayhem of their favorite activists — Black Lives Matter and Antifa – in 2020.

Is it alarmist to say that we’re dealing with individuals who are increasingly unhinged? From sneering insults to you-don’t-have-right-to-live with decent folks, to threats of violence, the mainstream left is going to a dark and dangerous place.

They support cancelling conservatives on college campuses and in the social media They tell parents they have no right to oppose the indoctrination of their children.

Where is all of this headed – to a Ministry of Propaganda, imprisonment for crimes against the state (the January 6 Commission), martial law? No wonder they don’t want the rabble to own guns.

In November, actor Seth Rogen (best known for playing pot heads) got into a Twitter tiff with someone described as a YouTube personality, when the latter expressed frustration at having his car broken into when parked on the streets of Los Angeles, which he described as a “crime-riddled third world sh-thole.”

In a classic let-them-eat-cake moment, Rogen said he’d lived in LA for 20 years and had his car broken into 15 times. Dude, “It’s lovely here” and, if you don’t want your windows smashed, don’t leave valuable stuff in your car. It’s a small price to pay for living in our progressive paradise.

For Rogen, who’s worth an estimated $80 million and lives in a $2.1-million, 2,853-sq. foot bungalow, it’s easy to be blasé about how crime affects people who can’t hire private security.

This stark indifference to the suffering of others — from high crime rates to inflation to open borders, to empty shelves –is the stuff from which revolutions are forged. More than indifference, Hollywood aristocrats like Rogen have bankrolled the politicians who’ve turned so many once-thriving cities into cesspools of crime, homelessness and addiction.

They rarely miss an opportunity to express their contempt for gun-owners, Trump voters, Church-going Americans, and those who work in an industry that heats their mansions and fuels their limos.

Their favorite smears include “bigot,” “fascist,” “insurrectionist,” “enemy of democracy,” “fanatic,” “misogynist, “homophobe,” “transphobe,” “religious zealot” and (of course) “unvaccinated.”

But the revolution – or counter-revolution – is coming.

When the poor, illiterate and strung-out masses go to the polls next year, it’s the Bourbons who won’t know what hit them.