I know there are those on the Political Left who are still doing a happy dance after the latest Republican setback in their efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. That's all right, up to a point. But what my progressive friends must come to understand is that "repeal and replace" is merely the opening salvo in what will prove to be a long and bitter war. Think of this latest small triumph as the equivalent of the Battle of Bull Run in the Civil War. A thrilling victory? YES!! But hardly the harbinger of an ultimate triumph.

To call what the American voting public is facing war is no mere exaggeration. That's what we're in, a war. Obviously not the rifles, guns, tanks and grenades kind of war, but war just the same. It's a class war. Not North vs. South but Rich vs. Practically Everyone Else. The defeat of repeal and replace was a disappointment to the wealthy side, to be sure. They discovered, much to their shock and surprise, that they can't simply snap their fingers and get their way every time. Disappointing? Certainly! Devastating defeat? HARDLY!!

Yes, the wealthy will be discouraged for just about a minute. They may well shed a single tear of regret. And then they'll simply move on to the next battle. And make no mistake, there will be MANY battles ahead. There will be tax cuts for the rich in the name of tax reform, the destruction of the EPA, OSHA and the NLRB, the elimination of the Departments of Education and Energy, voter suppression, conservatizing the federal judiciary and a whole host of others.

What we of the great American underclass must come to understand is that we are up against an implacable foe, armed to the teeth with more resources than we can ever hope to muster. They can afford to play the long game, hoping to grind us poor folk down with the political equivalent of trench warfare. What's more, they already control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court. They can afford to sustain a strategic defeat like repeal and replace because they have the ability to launch other attacks, probing to find a weak spot in the defenses of the underclass, a weak spot they will mercilessly exploit until they achieve their goals

Of course, there are those who will deny the very existence of class warfare in the United States. Others will acknowledge its reality and lay the blame for it at the feet of the Political Left, as if Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were responsible for the whole thing. The cold, hard reality is that class warfare has been with us from the very beginning of human history. The top dog has been screwing with the underdog for as long as there's been a top and a bottom.

A brief review of American history will show that when the working class tried to establish unions to improve their way of life, the wealthy tried to crush them, often using violent and bloody means. American business leaders have exported good paying American jobs to foreign countries and utilized computerization to reduce the American workforce in order to weaken the power of Organized Labor. All this has been done in the name of profits and the defense of capitalism, and all ultimately at the expense of the American working class.

Sadly, all too often, American workers have allowed themselves to be divided one against the other. The upper classes have proved to be very adept at using race, ethnicity and even gender to divide American workers, distracting them with hate in order to satisfy their insatiable lust for riches and power.

I have nothing against wealth, per se. I don't have any myself, but I certainly don't begrudge it for others. But when the desire to get ahead and become wealthy causes people to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others and inspires them to destroy programs and policies that were designed to assist the less fortunate among us, then it's past time for the underdogs of this world to rise up and bite back!!