I was going to write a lighthearted piece about the Deplorables, but Hillary Clinton’s 9/11 collapse makes that inoperable. Somehow, her “basket of deplorables” just isn’t a laughing matter anymore.

But then I started thinking more deeply about the deplorable issue.

Let us be generous to Clinton. When she talked about a basket of deplorables she was just serving up to her LGBT audience what it wanted to hear. That’s what politicians do for a living.

And the whole racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia name-shaming crock is necessary, both to keep the Democratic Coalition of the Fringes properly grateful to their ruling class masters, and to keep the rubes, the deplorables, in fear of their jobs for saying the wrong thing at work, or in church. It is the glue that keeps the Democrats together.

But really. Let’s have a reality check about the -isms and the -phobias.

Racism is a problem? You mean in the country that went to war to free the slaves, that passed the civil rights acts? That elected a black president? Sexism? You mean the country that gave women the vote, that has encouraged women, indeed, has mandated that women get preference at the university and the workplace? Homophobia? You mean the country that doesn’t riot in indignation when elite gays get to harass the little people for not wanting to bake a gay wedding cake? Islamophobia? You mean the country in which a supermarket checker gets to wear the hijab, a defiant statement of separation and act of segregation in my book, and gets to live to tell the tale?

You know what I think? I think that the ordinary white middle class has shown the most amazing patience and sturdiness as they have marked time for the last 50 years while liberals deployed government force to help blacks, women, gays, Hispanics, Muslims at their expense.

This weekend experienced this first hand as I ventured out from the liberal world of north Seattle down to Tacoma. And as I walked around the Point Defiant Zoo in Tacoma I looked at all the ordinary white middle-class folks there. I thought to myself that these ordinary people don’t look too healthy: not like the rich-bitch liberals that you see around north Seattle. They looked pretty hard-driven, as though life was hard and unforgiving for them. Not like the healthy, wealthy folks in Seattle tooling around in their Priuses and Subaru Outbacks.

And I thought: what’s this nonsense about “white privilege” that we keep getting rammed down our throats? If you want to talk about white privilege, let’s talk about well-connected white liberals in Seattle, not the folks down in Tacoma for whom there are no do-overs and no special privileges.

You want to talk about deplorable, then how about the lower half of white America that has been paying for the liberal agenda for the last half century not in taxes, but in diminished lives, so that liberals could pat themselves on the back for their compassion and their passionate activism.

And another thing. Sure it’s deplorable what liberals have done to the white working class and the unorganized white middle class that just follows the rules, goes to work, and obeys the law.

But the rise of Trump really shows us that Republicans and conservatives are not much better. We weren’t looking hard enough to see the sufferings of the ordinary white middle class, and we didn’t have the courage to break out of the Cringe, the cowardly fear of being called a racist -- or a sexist, or a homophobe -- and stand for justice for the ordinary white middle class. The rise of Trump took us completely by surprise. That’s deplorable.

Newt Gingrich has a piece today on 15 years of elite “strategic defeat, dishonesty and humiliation.” He’s right, and it’s deplorable.

Has the white middle class reacted to injustice by descent into riot and mayhem? No, they just quietly go to the nearest Trump rally and hope that he really will Make America Great Again.

Has the white middle class rallied to a racist White Lives Matter movement? No, and no billionaires have been offering money like the way George Soros has ponied up cash for the racist Black Lives Matter.

No doubt in the coming days the ruling class will stitch up a deal to replace the ailing Hillary Clinton with a replacement candidate for President of the United States. No doubt we will all be taught that some totally unconstitutional arrangement to substitute another candidate is all proper and legal and copacetic.

But I think that it is past time for our ruling class to get its act together. Because the clown show of the last decade or so is deplorable.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also see his American Manifesto and get his Road to the Middle Class.