Coping
The title words were spoken by a working guy that showed up to check some things out in regards to a maintenance contract that we have. He was finishing up paperwork in his truck so I went out on the porch to the gated top of the front steps to our house. Naturally I was wearing a mask. The worker was unmasked. He saw that I was wearing one so he stopped at the bottom of the stairs and asked if I just wanted him to leave the paperwork there.
In the process of exchanging pleasantries he mentioned that he had lost an adult child recently. Certainly not a pleasantry but clearly he needed to talk about it just a little. Sometimes a person just wants someone to know that they’re hurting and carrying a sad weight along. He talked about his family coping with the loss. Then he mentioned that he had recently had a heart attack.
Due to how recently he had one I was shocked that he was back working and said so to him. That’s when he said the words that I used as the title. “Gotta’ make a living.”
Rock and a hard place.
That’s what it all comes down to for working people. Often it’s ‘try and make a living.’ Roof overhead. Food on the table. Heat in the winter. Basic as basic can get. Yes, I know air conditioning isn’t mentioned in the list. I can remember growing up when my family got a swamp cooler and that was a luxury. I can also remember living in 3 rooms and all of our family sleeping in the same bedroom. Melania would say that we were lucky to have had beds.
We weren’t poor.
My first wife could remember times when all her family had to eat in the house was crackers. Crackers.
They were poor.
Would Melania say that they were lucky to have crackers?
She really doesn’t care. Do you? About the poor? About hungry kids? About people dying?
Poor is where Republicans have intentionally kept working people for decades. Democrats have helped by compromising. It’s why the middle class keeps shrinking. Evangelicals have helped the Republicans in their efforts to shift more wealth from the lower classes to the already rich.
Before the pandemic there were an estimated 40 million people living in poverty and millions more living just a step away. The pandemic and the way that President Trump and all of his enablers have dealt with it have added tens of millions to the rolls of subsistence living and not knowing how much longer they would be able to have even a roof over their heads.
But first get the ratings up!
Rather than provide citizens with enough money to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table in order to help stem the tide of death, Glorious born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth Leader and Republicans gave trillions to the undeserving rich and can’t work out how little they want to give to the tens of millions of newly unemployed that have joined the ranks of those already there.
They have intentionally put the majority of Americans in an unsustainable position economically. They will have to risk death in order to buy food and live. They have placed children and those associated with them into the breach to take one for the Republican and Evangelical leader, the Chosen One. They have to put their shoulders to the wheel of serving the rich.
Should we fear socialism?
No. Republicans have practiced socialism for the rich for years. It’s time we tried a little more for ourselves. Instead of giving trillions to the rich let’s start providing trillions to the working people, the poor, those in need. You know, all the people that Republican elites, like Trump, believe are taking money out of their pockets.
It’s your money too. Just like it’s your country too.