Let’s cut to the chase OK? All working stiff Americans are living within an empire. As the late President Eisenhower warned, and he should have known because he served it: A Military Industrial Complex. Look around you fellow Americans of most political leanings : the Super Rich control our corporate empire and thus our very lives.

The anger we should feel is actually real, not only the textbook psycho babble about our dysfunctional childhoods which only adds to our dilemma. Regardless of whether you had the luxury ( I didn’t) of a loving, breastfeeding Mom and a protective Dad straight out of the 1950s-60s Father Knows Best television show, you have a right to feel as you do. Putting Freud aside for awhile, just tune into the boob tube at any hour of the day and night and inhale the manipulation of your mind and your feelings. Everything and Everyone is for sale! The corporate world has made damn sure to poison us in every manner since our inception. Quicksilver Messenger Service told you this in their 1970 hit song:

You poisoned my sweet water.
You cut down my green trees.
The food you fed my children
Was the cause of their disease.

My world is slowly fallin’ down
And the airs not good to breathe.
And those of us who care enough,
We have to do something…

 If you are part of the 99% of us who may be a few paychecks away from financial crisis or insolvency, anger is actually healthy, IF… you use it correctly. This is what the Trump phenomena banked on when he wore that populist hat to address the MAGA crowds. When in office he didn’t ‘ Drain the Swamp’ ; he filled it with more sewage and super rich alligators to feast on us.  Of course, his adversary, the Democrats, made it all to easy for ‘ Pinocchio Donald’. They did just about nothing to address the anger all working stiffs should have. No plans for Medicare and Dental Care for All of us. No plans to cut this obscene military spending and phony wars that take perhaps trillions of dollars away from the secure safety net we all need. No real federal tax reform to go after the 1/4 of 1 % of us who are making out like bandits for decades ( the top bracket, 37%, is less than half of what it was when Reagan was in office). No plans to make it easier for middle and low income folks to have affordable housing. How about NO plans to nationalize energy and banking to really save us suckers… oh sorry, I mean customers? This is why many allude to the Republicans as the wolves, ready to attack in packs and devour you, and the Democrats as the foxes, to shrewdly get their way, giving very little back.

The success of the far right wing playbook was to divert the MAGA folks away from those aforementioned issues. Their substitution was to focus on the hot button issues of illegal aliens coming to suck on our national teat; the aborting of babies , enticing boys into becoming girls, welfare Moms ( straight out of the Reagan playbook ) big government taking away our ‘ freedom and liberty’ ( duh, like teachers having the ‘ freedom and liberty’ to teach the truth about slavery and the Jewish Holocaust), the whole Anti Vaxer and Anti Masking conspiracy theories ( watching C-Span last night and the House Committee debate on Covid mandates- the Republicans want to end the federal mandate on requiring hospital workers to be vaccinated. I watched two congressmen, each a medical doctor, saying how they are vaccinated fully but… want others to have the freedom and liberty to refuse vaccination even though they are around many sick people all the time).

Now, let’s really hit the nail on the proverbial head. The super right wing rhetoric ( and I just drove behind an SUV with the rear bumper sticker ‘ Ultra MAGA’), when you peel away that onion, is to instill the FEAR of black and brown people moving into a white person’s neighborhood and going to school with their white kids. It used to be, in my baby boomer youth, ‘ White Flight’ to disassociate from  ALL people of color ( that included people from India, Pakistan and the Philippines to name but a few). Today, they call it ‘ White Supremacy ‘ or ‘White Exceptionalism’. So, the real cause of most white Americans’ anger gets lost in all this gobbleegook. The hand that is picking their pocket has no color, except maybe green for greed. Question is: When will a portion of the MAGA crowd and a portion of those Loyal Democratic Party partisans join together and support  the issues that matter? As long as the Trumps, DeSantisis, Bidens and all their ilk in government get your support…

PA Farruggio
February 2023