[quote=flyer][quote=FlyerInHi][quote=flyer]
It’s sad to watch all of the conflict fueled by selling these empty
promises–again, on both sides–paired with the desperation of so many people who actually believe any politician can change their lives in any meaningful way.[/quote]
Why do you feel the necessity to add “on both sides”. All that does is enable extremists by saying there’s an equivalent opposite side.
Come on, we are taking about Trump here. He’s been disavowed by the last 2 Republican nominees — John Mc Cain and Mitt Romney. There is no equivalent on the democratic side.[/quote]
I added “both sides,” because, as others who have posted have also mentioned, many of us clearly see the qualities you so abhor (caged or otherwise) in other candidates, as well as Trump.
The desperation of the masses (on both sides) to crown a political savior is unlike anything I have seen in my lifetime, and clearly illustrates how hopeless millions of people feel about life.
Blatant empty promises are now, more than ever, the lifeblood of most campaigns, and the electorate mere pawns in a game that, at its core, has little, if anything to do with sincere intentions of changing the destinies of most Americans.
Sadly, most will find, after the fact, that their lives were not transformed as promised, and the cycle will begin again.[/quote]flyer, have you seen any of the recent videos put out by the MSM showing the sheer desolation of “rust belt cities” such as in OH and MI and interviewing its (now chronically-unemployed) inhabitants?
The “desperation” you describe isn’t about race. It’s about families which have, for generations, been able to support themselves with union factory jobs with full benefits and now find themselves permanently out of work and their long-owned homes worth nearly nothing, due to lack of living-wage jobs in the area. They can’t even sell their homes and transfer out of the region for a better job and likely can’t find good renters because there aren’t any living-wage jobs in the region. I can see why these people feel that they’re “stuck” and frustrated with NAFTA, etc.
You see, flyer, you and I ALREADY GOT OURS and GOT OUT of the “rat race” with our union-negotiated pensions and benefits for life! But how would you like to be a ~40-year-old lifetime union member with 3 kids in school and told your lifetime job will be ending because the factory in which you are employed is moving its operations to MX in a few months? Um …. the “seniority” you have acquired over the years won’t do you any good in this instance.
For example, Lorrain, OH (where Trump and Sanders have set up campaign offices) has been a literal ghost town for years due to its longtime steel factories “outsourcing” of ALL their (former) living-wage jobs to China. Two more steel factories are set to close at the end of this month:
Three Ford plants in this part of OH were closed about five years ago. The following (2011) video states that their factories will be renovated into other factories or warehouses in the next four years (ostensibly to create “replacement jobs”) but of course, NOTHING has been done with any of them as of today:
I think more than a few Piggs currently sitting in their Sorrento Valley (SD) offices (with carefully-placed SD indigenous plants out their professionally-landscaped office windows situated on a modern “company campus” with a running track/obstacle course and cafeteria with CA farm-fresh “organic” food for their employees’ lunchtime enjoyment) are a little happier with their lives and thus, much happier with the “status quo” than they would be if they were longtime “rust-belt dwellers” who now have genuinely hardscrabble lives.
Our “representative Pigg group” is undoubtedly ALSO happier than they would be than if they were longtime (LEGAL-resident) Otay Mesa (SD) dwellers (with multiple family members as neighbors) who now have the US Homeland Security Dept’s bright lights on high-beam shining through their windows all night while desperate illegal immigrants are constantly attempting to jump their backyard fences to temporarily “hide” in their backyards from the border patrol’s jeeps and helicopters.
NONE of this “discontent” with the status quo today is about race, people. It’s primarily about our porous borders, lack of employment opportunities and often being “forced” into “welfare programs” due to having no other choice (college degree or not). And those “welfare programs” INCLUDE Obamacare and all the rules and regs that go along with accepting a “subsidy” to help pay its exorbitant premiums, however “paltry” that subsidy may be.
We all need to be able to put ourselves into other Americans’ shoes (who don’t live and work in a SD, CA area of $700K+ homes) to understand exactly what is going on here with Election ’16. Having regularly traveled by road to 17+ states (some dozens of times) all of my life, I’ve seen things that a good portion of the rest of you likely never come into contact with and can’t possibly envision in your wildest dreams. Remaining in your bubbles whilst taking personally all this “campaign rhetoric” and believing it is all about YOU (are you listening, flu?) and stating that the pure “campaign rhetoric” we’re hearing is an intentional overt put-down of all races except “white” is skirting the real issues.
What US-citizen parents of minor kids on this forum SHOULD be worried about, IMO, is IF there will be any slots left for their UC/CSU-bound kid when the time comes after each campus admits their “fair share” of students with a CA HS diploma who are suspected NOT to be US citizens. This is so because the law forbids the admission boards to ask each applicant’s citizenship on their applications! And you parents should be concerned as to whether that “Dream Act” student will be eligible for a Pell grant as well to comfortably get them thru all four years. The “Dream Act” applicant may have only spent 3-4 years in attendance at a CA public HS (the rest of their schooling was in MX) in order to produce the records necessary to “vet” their UC/CSU applications. Practically speaking, just because a college applicant proves they earned a CA public HS diploma with 3 or more years in attendance in no way proves they ever resided in the US to do so! They could have easily simply crossed the border every morning to attend a US school by using a friend or relative’s US address to prove a US residence for “enrollment purposes.” This happens every . single . school day in SD County with the respective District Administrators turning the other cheek with a “wink and a nod” whilst their area school parking lots are lined up with hundreds of motorists at each school site sporting Baja, CA license plates dropping off and picking up students. This has been going on for decades. In area HS’s, these “foreign-plated” vehicles overtly fill up the HS parking lots in broad daylight cuz the MX students (residing in MX? YES!) can drive themselves to school every morning with their newly-issued CA Driver Licenses, no less :=0
I think a lot of people are getting upset for the wrong reasons by the tactics employed by Election 2016 candidates. Especially SoCal residents.
I don’t see most of the “campaign promises” made by any candidate in Election ’16 as “empty.” I believe that a lot of them are actually doable given the “right” cabinet members placed in the “right” posts and the “right” mix in Congress.
And all of the above conditions don’t have to be present all at once to be successful in delivering ONE campaign promise.
And for the record, I am still registered as an “Independent.”
