Scapegoats

I have felt very unsettled for a while now, but I look around at our country and I don't believe I am alone.  The good old United States of America has become an oligarchy and the values of those few do not have the best interests of our country, or us regular people at heart.

Honest, hard working people are working, not to support their families, or communities, or any of the mother, home, and apple pie, traditions of our country, but to feed the mouths of a greedy few who, instead of letting the profits trickle back down to us, send our jobs out to people more desperate than we are who will work for pennies.

The rift between "us" and "THEM" is so huge now that electioneering has become the theatre of the absurd.

Rich people like Trump don't even have to pretend to have manners or knowledge.  They simply say whatever pops into their mind and whatever they think will give them the response they want.  It doesn't have to be based on truth, or respect, or dignity, or anything at all.  It just has to be a good satisfying show.

Desperate people know they are working, or trying to find work, as hard as they can and they are getting nowhere. Worse, they are losing ground like no generations before them have done since our country began.

Politicians evade the real problems because it is to their advantage not to open a can of worms.  If they keep us focused on the touch words of the modern American election, we might forget the real issues and just vote for the guy who makes us feel empowered -- even if that guy is the very one who will strip the last vestige of power from the hands of the average men and women who voted for him.

Now, when our country is under siege from within, it is even more important than ever, not to vote willy nilly because Mom and Dad were always republican, or Trump stirs up our angry masculine, or Jeb comes from American aristocracy.

We need to take a deep breath and let go of the feel good glee that comes from getting in one good kick at the scapegoats, and think more about what we really need to reclaim the land of the free and the home of the brave.  (Clue:  it isn't open carry guns, or building fences around our borders, or worrying about who is marrying who.)