Seeds of Discontent

The seeds of discontent have been sown. Unfair trade deals, transnational corporations and corporate America have been on the move and are looking for opportunities whether here or abroad.

The old rust belt cities of North America lost their industrial jobs to the south and Mexico. When Corporate America wasn’t satisfied with the profits in the Southern States, they resettled in China or anywhere else that they could find a willing slave and a country that didn’t interfere with their plans of accumulation and greed.

The United States is not a settled empire in terms of looking out for its own. It still throws caution to the wind in its quest for prosperity. Most European countries try to satiate their citizenry with good jobs, healthcare and pensions but not here in the States. Here they float the idea in the press and elsewhere that those things are unAmerican and you should count more on your can-do attitude.

Meanwhile, there is a stirring in the American South where cities have been decimated by corporate America and where their profit-driven relocation has caused pain and damage of such staggering consequence that a lot of rural America looks like a war zone, with families caught up in the crosshairs. The opioid epidemic has further taken a toll on society and has left many people hopeless with a feeling that things won’t get better.

President Donald Trump gave these particular people an ear and talked directly to them and said the things that they hoped to hear and wanted to hear, while the politicians in Washington wrote off the possibility of The United States ever having another industrial boom or manufacturing sector again. Fascism and discontent breeds in dark places like this and Trump’s base was waiting for a leader to call them to action to escape from their economically deprived pit. Corporate America and our country’s politicians are to blame for this instability and the consequences thereof.

Social media’s silencing of President Trump will not help the situation. I understand that you don’t want people yelling fire in a crowded movie theatre, just the same as you don’t want an authoritarian ruler causing an excited mob to attack our country’s Capital Building, but a controlled mute of this leader will only draw more disenfranchised followers from the thickets. I actually ran into a guy at work who said concerning President Donald Trump “he did everything he said that he would do and now they have silenced him”. The social media ban is a violation of our, and his, First Amendment rights – one of the main tenets that democracies are built upon. We can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one.

Our country is ripe for a worse outcome than the one we recently encountered if we don’t change our plans. An educated society and a public outcry against the excessive abuse of corporate profit against our citizens’ welfare along with true concern and dialogue from progressive politicians with President Trump’s supporters is the answer. For any of it to work, we must have democratic principles followed by democratic policies.