HOW DID WE GET HERE?

After yet another chaotic week of assaults on our constitution by the executive branch, I find myself reflecting on how we got to this untenable place in history.

From 1945 to the early 1980’s the United States created the most affluent, highly educated middle class in the history of the planet.  A single wage earner could earn enough to buy a home, educate his children take a vacation and set money aside for his retirement.

That all changed with the advent of the global economy. Suddenly the American worker was no longer competing solely with other American workers to earn a living. He was competing with a global work force willing to work for pennies of his take home pay.  American companies quickly realized the expanse of global markets and cheap labor at their disposal.  Automation and innovative technology could produce more for less.  The American worker became obsolete.  He lost his job, his home and his savings.  For the first time in a generation the adage that a worker’s children would have a better life was no longer guaranteed.

While the middle class suffered the rich got richer.  The system was designed to help the rich with the trickle down belief that as the rich got richer their wealth would trickle down to the middle class in the form of new investments, new businesses, more jobs and higher wages.

But that didn’t happen.

The wealthy invested in new projects, new businesses and new job opportunities…overseas.  The highly compensated middle class worker was left behind; replaced by automation, expansive foreign markets and cheap foreign labor.  At the same time trillions of tax that could have been used to help American workers acclimate to the new global environment were blown on un-paid-for wars.  Back home banks gambled with depositors money, lost their shirts, got bailed out by the government and then paid themselves huge compensation packages for the effort. Greed and graft became inherent in normal business practices.  The rich got richer and richer and richer while the middle class suffered.

In 2016 the middle class reached its breaking point.  Faced with the choice of voting for an establishment candidate who pledged more of the same and a Washington outsider, they handed the keys to the most powerful job in the world Donald Trump.  So angry was the middle class that they chose to ignore Trump’s racism, bigotry, misogyny, ignorance and moral corruption in the fervent hope that somehow he would “Make America Great Again.”

Donald Trump’s ascension onto the global stage is the result of our society’s failure to protect the interests of the American middle class.  A confluence of missteps by the business community, the banking industry, the free press and the federal government that resulted in the decimation of the most educated, affluent middle class in the history of the planet.

And so when moguls, pundits and politicians find themselves aghast at the dangerously nonsensical missteps of this president, they should remember that they have only themselves to blame.