My friends and I thought it
was a joke when Trump announced he was running for president. There’s nothing
presidential about him. Who would vote for this hot-tempered, braggadocios,
misogynistic, bad hair, reality television star. Incredulously I learned lots
of people. His messages, I’ll make
America great again … make Mexicans pay for a wall to keep out their illegals …
stop allowing Muslims into the country and monitor those that are here, resonated.
Trump hurled insults, his approval numbers soared. I’d thought we hit bottom
when we elected Bush, Jr., a “C” student who’d never been successful, but this
was much worse. Things that would have ruined campaigns in earlier years
energized his. Establishment candidates floundered. Trump supporters want radical
change.
I realized, as Bernier
Sanders’ pole numbers, lots of Democrats did too, A Jewish socialist started
nipping at Hillary’s heels, changing the dialogue, shifting the focus to income
inequality. Like the right, they want an outsider, are asking for radical
change, pissed off for more or less the same reason as the far right; the
American dream no longer seems possible. Manufacturing jobs, which made the
middle class, had been leaving the US for a couple of decades. Both Bernie and
Donald say bad trade deals had something to do with this. I don’t know enough
to evaluate but I’m sure a major contributor was capitalism—why pay Americans
when they can hire outside the US and pay workers less in a week than Americans
make in a day. The financial meltdown following the housing scandal brought
everything to a halt in 2008 and the recovery was one-sided—the rich got richer
and the middle class disappeared. If you peel past the rhetoric, the far left
and right want the same thing—a chance.
The possibility of a president
Trump horrifies me but neither Cruz nor Rubio want the kind of America I
want—the Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, American. And I hear Bernie
when he says American should provide what the rest of the civilized world
provides, free education and free health care. But European countries are
small, most no larger than Texas, and nothing’s free. Who pays for it is the
first question we want answered in capitalistic America. Will Democrats in
Congress support Bernie’s ideas? Raising taxes in America is always a fight.
We’ve been stalled. It’s
time for movement.
