BREXIT AND TRUMP

The Brexit vote is about blaming ‘them’ or ‘the others’ for everything that is wrong in the lives of citizens and the nation.

The rise of Donald Trump is about blaming ‘them’ or ‘the others’ for everything that is wrong in the lives of citizens and our own nation.

Regardless of the final outcome, Brexit or remain, Trump or Clinton, the economy is not going to improve. Jobs will not return to America. America will not magically change into the 1950’s.

If the fantasy of 11 million people being deported from the USA and a giant magical wall ended illegal immigration, our economy may actually worsen. Does even one rational person really believe that suddenly taxes will be reduced because ‘those people’ are gone? In a few states where draconian laws resulted in an exodus of people, taxes increased! Politicians cited sharp declines in sales tax revenue. Businesses declared bankruptcy or simply closed.

Does anyone believe that the quality of education will increase because schools are no longer overcrowded or need to provide bilingual education? Maybe you believe that prisons, courts and the police will ask for budget reductions without those illegals to contend with.

Brexit and Mr. Trump are signs that the average worker is fed-up and angry. The average worker wants someone to blame (other than the 1% of the super-rich that keep the average worker broke). People of color are always popular targets because they are easily identified and ‘different’.

Nothing much will change. Should Mr. Trump win the election, he will blame congress for the failure of his magic pixie dust that was supposed to change everything. Should Mrs. Clinton win, Trump and conservatives will blame her election for the lousy economy and lousy jobs. In either event, the Muslims remain a convenient target and we always have the Blacks to blame for everything.

An interesting side note: we conservatives love to tout self-reliance and criticize the whiners and complainers while we whine, complain and blame others for our misfortunes.

Violence in Mexico

The horrific acts of violence committed by the cartels are done so to intimidate the public and to project their image as powerful and beyond the control of the government. The U.S. media helps the cartels to project this image and we are too lazy to examine facts that put things into perspective.

First, almost every news article about violence in Mexico contains references to many previous stories about violence in Mexico. Suppose that were the policy for your city? If every murder, rape and robbery were reported on the front pages of every news paper in America; if every crime were the lead story on every news program the world would view your city as a horrible place. Recently, there were multiple murders in American cities. Although the news was reported, there were no references to earlier killings, rapes and robberies in these cities.

Searching for facts to put things into perspective, I read that some media sources believe as many as 40,000 people have been murdered in Mexico since 2006, largely due to the drug war. The fact is that most were murdered because of the fighting among the cartels and most of the dead were involved with a cartel.

Search for this fact. How many people were murdered in the USA since 2006? Over 70,000! Yes, we are twice the size with a larger population. However, most of our dead were not involved in crime. Most of our dead were innocents.

Instead of this comparison, the media compared the number of people killed in Mexico with the number of U.S. military killed in our current wars. A more realistic comparisons puts things into a more realistic view. Are there places in Mexico that are very violent? Yes. Are businesses in some cities paying 'protection money' to criminals ? Yes. Do I travel every two weeks and walk the streets in a Mexican border-city? Yes.

Although I do not see evidence of violence I do see evidence of the impact of our skewed reporting. Tourism along the border is gone. Both U.S. and Mexican border cities suffered huge losses in jobs because of relentless reporting in ways to terrify the public.

Class and Style

During an interview on BBC today, the person being interviewed said something that caused the host to interrupt. As the host realized that the person being interviewed was not finished speaking, he apologized and asked the speaker to please continue. When common polite behaviors stands out, we may be in trouble as a society.

Name-calling and being so uncertain of one's opinion that one must 'win' every argument is commonplace, especially on 'talk' radio and the Internet.

Too many people search for sources to confirm their prejudices or flawed beliefs. Often they fail to realize that the multiple sources that confrim their belief are all based on a single root source. People need learn how to search for facts.