There’s a lot of simmering dissatisfaction in the minds and hearts of Americans these days.
The poor and middle class feel disenfranchised. Income is static and insufficient. Families can’t afford to buy a home or educate their children properly. Budgets are stretched to meet monthly bills, and insurance seems like a luxury item, not a necessity. Taxes of all sorts pick away at the bottom line.
Onto the political stage strides a wealthy man who begins most sentences with “I” and speaks of “others” as the source of your grievance: foreign people, foreign religions, foreign criminals, foreign anything. He rails against anything and anyone who is not useful to him. He personally denigrates anyone who has the audacity to challenge him.
This wealthy, privileged man wants to be president. He says he will destroy ISIS, he will destroy Obamacare, he will deport millions of non-Americans and bar any immigrants who don’t fit in religiously or politically with our way of thinking.
If you think about it, which of your ancestors would you have banned from America? The Irish? The British? The Italians? The Catholics? And then where would you be?
His strength is fear-mongering. He foments fear and anger because the adulation of an audience feeds his narcissistic appetite.
This man has no foreign-policy or governmental experience at all. He’s a wheeler-dealer who talks about himself and how great he is. The rest of the time he defames his detractors and feeds his fans with all kinds of nonsense about how he alone cares about them and will fix everything for them. He lives in an ivory tower to distance himself from the “others” who are you. He doesn’t want to be among you at all. He can’t fix anything. He’s Oz behind the curtain.
But there is this impulse to use your vote as a protest against all that is unfair or rigged against you. Much like if you were unhappy with the service you received at a hotel, you might choose to soil the bed as a protest. But then, alas, you realize you have to sleep in that bed.
– Sandra Gill
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