Up Is Down | RAGING MODERATE

I'd advise you to sit down, pour yourself a beer and take a deep breath. You're about to hear something that will change your life. Forever. Are you relaxed?

I’d advise you to sit down, pour yourself a beer and take a deep breath. You’re about to hear something that will change your life. Forever. Are you relaxed?

Good, because everything you know is wrong.

Ain’t that always the way? Just when we think we have it all figured out, somebody comes along with information suggesting we’re so off the mark, we might have taken the neighbor’s car to work, slept with our cousin and brushed our teeth with kitchen cleanser.

You know who’s holding back the middle class? It’s those darn Democrats. Yes! And all this time we thought it was the Republicans. But, no! According to GOP leaders, they are the great defender of the common man, and the fact that they suck up to the rich like 1,000 giant squid on the body of a beached whale is simply to infiltrate the belly of the beast. Conducting surveillance. What’s the price of liberty? Eternal vigilance. That’s right.

You see, like the Vichy Government, the Party of Lincoln is only pretending to be sycophantic leeches. Actually, every member of their caucus is a brave resistance fighter. Whose sole mission is to siphon the wealth from the top 1 percent and spread it to the rest of us currently hunkered down in the 99 percent trenches.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently regaled his troops with the urgent need to refocus on “the stagnant middle class.” Prompting the paranoid to worry that he may be after those last scraps mistakenly left for us to fight over. Could be a diversion whose real goal is to suck the bones clean. Like that Twilight Zone episode where the aliens arrive with a sacred tome called “To Serve Man” which is later revealed to be a cookbook.

But this change is not just one or two stalwarts who decided their future lies in middle class hands; it seems to be a retooling of the whole party. You’d think a memo had been passed up and down the rank ranks meant to blunt the Democrats’ major upcoming campaign issue. One can assume the memo was printed on Koch (rhymes with sock) Brothers stationery.

Before pulling out of his unannounced presidential run, even Mormon gazillionaire Mitt Romney claimed he was determined to help the working class. And when he called 47 percent of Americans “moochers and malingerers” back in 2012, he meant that in a good way.

New dynastic hope Jeb Bush says the recession still rages on for 60 percent of America because Obama hasn’t done enough for the middle class. Totally neglecting to mention the very recession he’s referring to is the one created out of thin air by a close family member.

This whole “I know you are, but what am I” form of campaigning may prove to be the next big thing. Perhaps Scott Walker will morph into a friend of the unions. Mike Huckabee goes to the mat defending the rights of Muslims, and Chris Christie announces he’s on a quest to end the scourge of type 2 diabetes, forever.

And since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, nobody should be surprised when Joe Biden champions tort reform, Elizabeth Warren authors a revolutionary relaxation on banking regulations and Hillary Clinton refers to the National Organization of Women as a “scrum of harpies.”

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed political comic.