Nob Hill, San Francisco – Helicopters circling like killer bees heralded the arrival of Madame Secretary/Senator/First Lady Hillary Clinton, presidential hopeful, who was headed for the home of a local venture capitalist for a $353,000 per plate fundraising dinner for fat cats.
Working people from throughout the Bay Area converged on the tony little Victorian Park on top of the bastion of nattering Nabobs, protesting income inequality, ethnic cleansing and the human right to health care.
Had anyone the nerve to have asked any of the Big Four, the ramrods of the Southern, Northern, Western and Union Pacific railroads who made this city the gold-plated mecca of robber barons. As the nation became a two-ocean force with which to be reckoned, they would probably have politely changed the subject while marking the interlocutor for a quiet demise in a dark alley.
After all, that’s what it was all about, ridding the west of Indians, making the land available to every sodbuster with the gumption to get here, and let God sort the rest out in His own time.
The park is flanked by the Grace Cathedral of the Episcopal faith on one side and the brownstone mausoleum of the all-male Pacific Union Club on the other. Downslope on Taylor Street is the city headquarters of the Bohemian Club.
They gathered with pizza and snacks, preparing to march on the tony blocks of Washington Street, where they would be expected to engage in peaceful protest, as requested by a young lady wearing a scarlet sweatshirt emblazoned with the words “Socialist Alternative,” to voice their discontent with wars of attrition and international intrigue in foreign lands over petroleum rights and pipeline routes, Wall Street trickery, and crony capitalism.
A man affiliated with Black Lives matter protested the Clinton’s “political positioning by triangulation” to remove all prospects of welfare, angrily mentioning they left his girlfriend with $600 per month in public assistance on which to support herself and her kids.
A practicing nurse said she would gladly give them dinner and a selfie for $3.53, much less $353K, calling her fantasy “Soccer Moms for Income Equality.”
She said the lack of universal health care as a human right is akin to ethnic cleansing, since “You’re half dead before you get to the hospital.” Then she accused police officers’ shooting to death 1,134 fellow Americans as the same as ethnic cleansing.
Suddenly, with a rousing rebel shout, they were off, and the news choppers followed them from the air as if they were buzzards circling to await their eminent demise, the San Francisco police in attendance, both of them, looked on in amused silence.
After everyone was gone, a motorcycle escort came bursting over the brow of Taylor Street, alterting cable cars and vehicles to scat so the Secretary’s limo could crest the hill non-stop on the way to her high-dollar dinner destination – and it was all over.
