I recently saw a lady on a television news broadcast. This woman was screaming at a man of Hispanic heritage, whom I believe was a U.S. citizen. She was accusing him of being a drug dealer and a rapist and possibly of other dastardly deeds. He asked why she said that, and her reply was that President Trump said it was so.

What if you were on the receiving end of such an outburst? Luckily, about half our local population are of Norwegian heritage and President Trump has publicly said he wants folks from Norway to emigrate to this country. The rest of us are up for grabs, especially if we don’t appear to be of Nordic heritage. Seems like I heard of something like this in Germany, back in the 1930s.

In any case, one must wonder how we came back to this point, a point that generations of Americans worked to put in the past. About now, you think you know where I am going with this. Maybe you are wrong. You see, about 35 years ago, our average wage was divorced from the cost of living and over those 35 years, the gap has widened drastically. In the interest of brevity, I am purposely oversimplifying this. Right now, this country is close to what they call full employment. There are even employers asking the government to let people come in on work visas to fill jobs no American wants to fill. The jobs a great number of Americans do fill do not pay them enough to live. This means you might be fully employed with many people employed beyond the traditional 40 hours a week and you still are not making that living wage. Thank your Congress for this and thank yourself in some cases for not voting or voting single issue and thereby letting this situation occur.

Again, put that aside for now. Instead, think about what would be the case if everyone did make a living wage or more. If you had enough or even more than enough, would you even give a thought to what another person had, even if they were not like you? Only if you had a problem with your thinking process. Most people would be having such a good life on their own that they would not chose to look about for someone to hate. Why hate someone you have been told is taking things from you, when in actuality your have those things?

Think about what I am saying here. Someone has been telling you that another person or group of persons is causing you to have less then you need. And who is doing this? The very people you elected to make sure this did not happen. Those people did exactly make it happen. Why did they do this to you? Why not let you be happy? Why not let you have enough? After all, the economy worked just fine before this separation of wage and costs.

Maybe it is not simple to see, but what we have now does serve a purpose. If you are unhappy and someone tells you who to blame, it is easy to apply that blame. Not to those who really caused it, but to someone who is actually not the cause of your misery.

Again why? Have you listened to the political messages of those in power? Loaded with that old blame. So when they said they could fix it, you voted for them. But they are not fixing it, are they?

Don’t listen to them. Take out your wallet or your checkbook and see the reality in your life. Then remember in November we can fix this. Learn and vote.