Changing My Mind

With more experience, I see things differently. From time to time, ideas expand, understanding shifts, new possibilities of meaning take shape. Getting into another’s head space or shoes, I sense how they must have felt in various situations. I’m a guy, so don’t know what giving birth is like. It must be painful, what with all the screaming and pain medications. I can imagine how it must feel, however. I do try but it is not the same as actually feeling it.

As a financial services person in the past, I have helped single mothers with loan applications and struggles saving money. I have seen what they have gone through. Burned out apartments where the landlord doesn’t help at all; no utilities; water damage everywhere; the smells of dampened building materials, rot, too. So, I wrote letters to the landlord and the city. I gave the lady a loan, helped her lower spending (I actually placed her credit cards in our credit union safe!). We withdrew just enough cash each payday to get her through the next two weeks. She paid her loan. She got back on her feet. It took time, but she came out the victor, not the victim. Along that path I learned a lot about being a single mother in the city. Tough business. We changed how we served our credit union members.

Viewing our current political scene, a former US president is a convicted felon and has more trials on other matters pending. He says he is not guilty, but juries have passed their considered judgment and claims he is guilty. Of course he has appeals to pursue, but eventually he will be exonerated or proclaimed once and for all, guilty as charged. Or not. Still, as a voter, I make my judgment regarding his suitability to become president again. My personal feeling is not. That is not based on his recent guilty verdicts, rather on his performance as president. It was sketchy, unusual and unproductive. The congress was even more scrambled than it is today, and that was a result of his manipulations and urgings. His party’s congresspeople followed his lead. No good thing came from this. I feel his presidency was a failure. Based on that experience alone, I would not vote for him. So why do his supporters continue to be loyal to him? I do not have a clue. Much of why they support him is their belief in the lies and distortions proclaimed throughout his presidency which have mostly been found untrue.

I do not believe my country is 100% correct in all things. I note discrepancies of belief and action, creed and law. I see mistakes taken, even manipulations. But in the main, I believe America continues to do right, be fair, and deliver justice. It doesn’t work flawlessly; we are human and fail our own system from time to time, but basically, we are doing OK.

And another thing, our economy is doing quite well considering the wrenching dislocations of the COVID pandemic. We are restoring the economy in spite of the major changes taking place. Our economy is not the same as it was, but it is growing in new ways, adjusting to technology, international realities, and huge changes in the retail sector. Our GDP is very good. Unemployment is very low. Employment is very high. Interest rates have risen to normal levels based on our long-term history. Many of the measures of our success are happening in the positive. Facts tell the story even if the media doesn’t. They have failed us in the name of balancing the news, only that is based on political party bias. Time to call them out and rely on fact.

That goes for the trump supporters, too.

June 10, 2024

 

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