The underlying theme of this post is about how the Republicans have unsuccessfully tried to take away things from people. David Brooks who is a conservative reporter for the New York Times and a Friday night regular on the PBS Newshour had these words to say about that;
Think of all the ways the Republicans have tried to trim entitlements like Medicaid or cut government. Name a signal victory. There’s not a victory. They haven’t been able to trim one agency, cut back one entitlement. They failed every single time.
And that suggests it isn’t an electoral failure. It’s not a failure of whether Mitch McConnell had the right strategy or not, though that was lamentable. It’s a failure of trying to take things away from people.
People are under assault from technology. They’re under assault from a breakdown in social fabric, breakdown in families. They have got wage stagnations. They just don’t want a party to come in and say, we’re going to take more away from you.
And so Republicans have to wrap their minds around the fact that the American people basically decided that healthcare is a right, and they figure, we should get healthcare. And our fellow countrymen should get health care.
I have come to think that “taking things away” is the most significant root cause of our society’s utter discontent. People who heard the stories of their parents/grandparents getting out of high school and immediately getting a pretty well paying job that would last for a lifetime are in shell shock. So much has happened in the last three decades to take things away from them. I think they just might be reaching for the last straw in that regard. They are holding on by a thread.
Donald Trump was part of that “last straw” effort and of course it is becoming abundently clear that he is by no means any type of answer to this problem. I find it confusing that the GOP continues to rail against the almost 100 year old Social Security and 50 year old Medicare as if it were even possible to eliminate those things without losing their hugely cherished office. When will they ever start caring for the whole of the population instead of the privileged few? But even more amazingly, when will common folks finally see through the thin GOP veneer to understand that fact about them? When that finally happens I’m sure there will be another party waiting in the background to quickly take their place.
I just pray that come 2020 at least one person will jump into the foreground who is up to the gigantic task of repairing all of current office holder’s damage. Right now that person, at least to me, is Elizabeth Warren. I think it would be fitting that she, as a Teddy Roosevelt type crusader, is the first woman president. I just never had much confidence in Hillary…
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