The Country’s Gone Nuts

The nine years have been a whirlwind, and everything is circling in the air with no landing zone for the near, maybe distant future. Why have people bought into the isolationist politics we are experiencing? I know I’m not alone either, but I’m still mystified by the people residing in the far right and left. Both parties are against spending when they are not in the majority in Washington D.C. The Dems budget increases all center around creating and maintaining various welfare reforms and international aid expenses. The Reps are famous for a hundred years of tax cuts for the rich and making the rest of us believe that trickle down will actually work this time. That is one thing, but its been going on forever, at least since this country has existed. Today is different though, we’re either a hate your neighbor unless they think like you or love your neighbor in spite of your differing beliefs. Both create separatism and both are adding fuel to the flame of life in the United States. The last two presidents are notorious for telling you how evil the other is and the name-calling is viral. Where does it end? Civil War!!!! It seems to be coming, just not conventionally as the 1870’s. This is a digital age and a digital war. The problem is that for so many of us, they can turn off aid, make a comment on tv that affects the markets, and even control what media outlets are allowed in daily briefings. We are all being manipulated in what we believe, feel, and think. What happened to a single evening news like Walter Cronkite giving us unbiased information allowing us to make up our own minds. It doesn’t seem people have enough time to even think for themselves anymore, it’s too easy to scroll and get headline statements and social media evaluated your search desires and tailoring your whole content experience.

How long do we allow this to go on? Listening to people we know and eavesdropping on tables at restaurants, you don’t hear anyone happy with the way this country is headed, let alone where it’s been. We’ve given up on “We the People” and have given way to “Whatever they tell me to do”. We’ve got to believe that we have to vote a certain way because we don’t want others mad at us. If you worry about that, stop telling them what you did, it’s none of their business. We’ve turned into them and us instead of we are all Americans. I’m not even sure what that means anymore and I sure feel unrepresented. I used to think of myself as a Republican. I used to cringe at the thought of Democrats being elected. Then I started having a better sense of finance and when I felt I needed a raise, I’d hope for democrats. When I wanted a tax break I’d vote for a republican. But the last seven years I worked I was frozen from pay raises. The only reason my pay went up was due to some screwball calculation called locality pay. Tax breaks are now only for the top one percent; in fact the last tax cuts increased my taxes an additional four percent. Mostly due to the increased standard deduction and I haven’t been able to itemize since. Heck, I bought a rental house and was able to come up with near twenty thousand dollars in potential write-offs. Only to find out they never adjusted income caps, so we didn’t get to claim any of them, and we are on retirement income. The only trickle down I feel I’m getting anymore is yellow and wet and it isn’t champagne. The only real increases in my life are how much it costs to live to a standard I might have had in my thirties. I can’t wait to vote next year, not only for the hope that the checks and balances form of government will kick in, but also the hope that there might be a uniting of the government to rid us of MAGA and maybe getting the Grand Old Party back to something that recognizable.

On a good note, and God knows I need it; we got my dad out on the lake at the age of eighty-five. It took having a lot of rain that allowed the boat to be even with the dock for him to step straight across, but we finally got him out on the lake he has lived at since the mid-nineties. It a took a bit of time, but we are trying to get out as much as we can. Next step is to get back to fishing regularly. When we lived in Colorado it was routine to be in the water. Didn’t have a boat back then but it didn’t matter as I was fly-fishing standing in a river. It has taken a bit of time uncovering my old bass fishing rods, but now I’m thinking they just need to be cleaned up and hung on the wall at our fishing cabin. The technology has increased too much to be fishing with fifty to seventy-year-old rods. Not to mention forty-year-old plastic worms and lures that are worth more than my newer fly rods. I haven’t upgraded or cared too much cause we go fishing with my cousin who provides everything including the cleaning of the fish. But I need to get a regular routine of distraction from remodeling and maintaining our place and a rent house. This all is a distraction from the nutsy world right now. I just need about twenty more days a month of diversion.

I’m getting tired of the lies, deceit, misdirection, and continued topsy-turvy everything. Personally, the only thing that looks normal to me is the interest rates running between 5.5% to 7.5%. As late as 2016, we were stilled saddled with an 8.25% home loan. When we refinanced it to 3.5%, I thought I must be doing something illegal. Then we moved and got an even lower rate. There is now an entire generation that believes mid-three percent is the normal and are now outraged. They don’t understand that the only reason it ever got that low was to stimulate the economy following the worse market crash (2008) since the twenties and the great depression. Aren’t you ready for something in government that seems normal? I know I am, to wake-up and not find out the president was trying to create policy tweeting on the shitter at 2:00 A.M., not seeing government officials with a smirch smile and fingers crossed behind their back and telling us not to worry and all you hear about the big-beautiful bill are lies just trust me. Fire every single one of them! Republican and Democrats and especially the ones that run as independent but identify with the Democrats. We the people need to take control again, put term limits in place, and create a world not of peace, don’t think that will every work, but maybe one that respects each other and one that shows hope that everyone can advance to solving the worlds problems and not just the one-percenters, not the biker-gang, the ridiculously rich.