Where's Riley?

Most of us dream about being rich and famous when we are young but few of us achieve either.

In fact it is becoming harder and harder for the "working" person to even get a sense of security.

While not rich, most of them were able to get a reasonably good paying job with benefits including health care and a pension.

While it still required you to go to work everyday it provided a decent life, the ability to have a family and a home.

You could of course screw that up, but if you stayed sober enough, followed the rules enough you counted on having a job and making a decent living.

While it really was a post World War 2 scenario, before then we had the Great Depression, it lasted long enough to create a lasting image of America that prevails to this day.

New suburbs sprang up thanks to the wide availability of cars and all those houses required appliances and services.  WE also built the interstates and if you were able bodied and not working it was your own choice.

The cracks started as the cities lost a lot of their middle class to those same suburbs and we started to see urban decay.

Then we started to see some competition from our old WW2 adversaries who recovered and were eager to sell us cars and other things.

Companies started to shift to lower cost labor areas, first inside the country and then overseas as we promoted free trade and allowed the easy transport of goods across borders.

We then saw the robots become more and more prevalent as they grew in sophistication and displaced most if not all of the unskilled laborers.  We also saw technology allow companies to eliminate all sorts of jobs that used to be considered secure.  Clerks from secretaries to bank tellers became less and less needed.

It is going to get better as the jobs now available are generally lower paying with less benefits, if any.

Many workers have simply left the workforce as working as a clerk in a drug store is financially not much better than scraping by on the various Government programs available.

Its not the life of Riley anymore.

He is now addicted to Opioids and driving an Uber.

Painful Thoughts

The National Security team knowing they have an unstable leader, were able to negotiate a NATO agreement without him.

I admire their dedication but it doesn't mean he still won't do something that causes problems.

He wanders about with half formed opinions and few actually facts making decisions that impact the whole world.

He appeals to a certain group of Americans who are simply inward focused and feeling a bit victimized.

These are the white working class Americans who are having trouble with the changes in American society and economics.

They used to be pretty much assured of a decent job and lifestyle as long as they stayed out of trouble.

They are to a large extent people who helped build this country, at least for the period that their families have been here, but many are the descendants of immigrants from the late 19th century and early 20th century.

They are children and grandchildren of our World War 2 heroes and grew up during a period when you could finish high school, maybe serve in the military, and then get a good job in a plant or as a policeman or fireman.

They could get married, buy a house, raise a family and effectively enjoy the American dream, bought for them by their immigrant ancestors.

It started to unravel as technology and globalization eliminate the unskilled jobs and the world started demanding they learn skills or get a college degree.

They want to reverse progress and go back to the state of affairs that in all honesty treated them like robots or automatons.  It isn't going to happen but they don't want to have to think.

They really don't and why should they, you can still be presient.

Underlying Racism

There is a quotation from and F Scott Fitzgerald story that effectively says the very rich are different than you and me.

Its not just because they have more money either, its more about an expectation of entitlement.

Its not just the rich though.

I you grew up in a rural farm community you develop a certain view of life while those growing up on the streets of a big city develop an entirely different one.

One is not better than the other and there are clearly others, such as growing up black or ethnic where those outside that group will never really understand certain aspects of their worldview.

Much of who we are is dictated by our early upbringing and while clearly later in life we can add conflicting layers,the early foundation is always there.

There is significant overlap, especially since the advent of TV and now the Internet, which can greatly influence early development, but fundamentally we are who we were then.

This is one of the reasons nostalgia is so prevalent, it reminds us of those, generally care free times, when our needs were taken care of and every day was its own learning adventure.

However it also creates certain biases and beliefs that are hard to dispel.

Which brings me to the situation with Roseanne.

She started out her career portraying who she was, which was pretty much the persona on her TV show with some minor differences.

She resonated with a great number of people who struggle to get by but do their best to survive and raise their family.  One characteristic though is a certain disdain for suits and the college educated.

More so when those people are minorities.

So in a moment of total honesty, possibly induced by Ambien, she sent out a terribly racist and indefensible tweet about a women who as far as I can tell had no real interaction with her.

The public comment unfortunately reflect more private views than we might like to admit.