If I am being honest with myself, I’ve never really aligned with the majority of positions that define the GOP at this moment. That also doesn’t mean that I lean hard into the Dems either, I actually like to think for myself and lately neither side is supporting free thinking… I think it actually scares them. The stupid stunt in Alaska with Peltola and the dueling Sullivans is just really insane when you stop to actually think about it. I’m sure this crap goes on all the time, the stunts crafted and executed in technically legal not-so black-and-white areas. I don’t live in Alaska, and what happens there is far from my thoughts, but I do understand that things that can happen in Alaska do affect us all: Exxon Valdez.
Like that dude in the picture, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about where we’re going as a country. I’m not disillusioned, but I am disappointed with how dumb most politicians think the electorate is and that they find it acceptable to manipulate. We are individuals, the products of our environment, and as such act accordingly based on those environmental factors. For example, someone who grows up poor and struggling will often end up being poor and struggle their entire lives. Likewise, someone who grows up advantaged will usually lead a life of advantage with little thought to those who aren’t. That is politics in the present, the poor and undereducated (electorate) is being manipulated by the advantaged (top 20%). Every once in a while, we will have an anomaly like Obama that is a politician and also understands normal people. I still can’t understand how people can look at the same statistics and come away with two radically different conclusions.
I think it’s actually an education and race thing that we’re at where we’re at. Here’s an interesting graphic that shows the distribution of wealth by race.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/index.html
Notice that out of a total of $185T, over $152T is sitting with white people. Look at the same data on wealth by education, it’s another overwhelming lopsided shift to those with College degrees. Our system, designed for a different era, has not kept up with the cost of education and the result is a larger and larger portion of the population without degrees. I started my career with only a high school diploma, that reality doesn’t exist anymore in white collar work. I now hold a Bachelors and Masters degree, but I was fortunate enough to have employers that didn’t axe their programs and covered tuition costs for advanced degrees. If I had to do it all over again, I think I would have gone into a trade that was adjacent to the technology industry. Think fiber optic tech, or HVAC tech. Until AI has reliable physical form (I, Robot or The Terminator) it won’t replace most blue collar jobs anytime soon.
I guess after all of this, I’m pissed off. Angry that more of us don’t see or understand the fleece job that’s being pulled over our eyes. I’m not playing the game anymore, one of the many reasons I started this site.
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