So Many Topics!

Immigration Policy

Muslim vs Americanism

Business Conflicts of Interest

Lack of Personal Transparency

World Tensions – War?

Beating Back ISIS

Obsession with Lifestyle *

So many topics to address and yet justice can only be done one at a time. Which to choose? Which one is the most important? Which of the topics has potency to affect all the others?

The latter point may just be the most helpful idea in making a choice. Aha! I have it. Obsession with Lifestyle is the topic for today. And why is that you ask? Well read on!

Scanning today’s news headlines I find a preponderance of items dealing with films, popular music and musicians, celebrities from the entertainment industry and the challenges or triumphs they are experiencing. I also note public interest articles on environment, the animal kingdom, funny videos that are sure to tickle the news junkie, and many other subjects too esoteric to go into. Of course there are the diet and health items as well as travelogues enticing the reader on to consideration of exotic trips to out of the way places. Of course sunny climes are depicted during our dreary winter months!

The point of the previous paragraph is the amount of ‘news’ items that have to do with lifestyle issues. Wealth and personal financial management articles are a close ally of this but then, managing wealth makes lifestyle choices possible. Especially the fanciful options. With all of this written on lifestyles when do the readers spend time on the truly important items that will spell whether or not they will have the time or existence available to them in which to engage lifestyle choices?

This is a critical issue. With the federal government entering identity chaos, mission and purpose of government have been redirected. Where exactly is still under examination. The changes underway in two weeks time since Trump took residency in the White House have thrown most of our assumptions out the window and policies are now being written that totally revise how life is to be lived in America. Well, that is an overstatement because policy does not control life in these united states. We citizens still do that and will continue to do so until some force enters our homes and physically changes what we are doing and when. I doubt that will occur.

Policy does shape operations, procedures and expectations. But policy also is misunderstood by most people, especially those who wish to make rapid change and are not experienced in public policy. Policy must be understandable to the majority of citizens. Personal whim does not usually muster support. So declaring certain nationalities unwelcome in the USA does not sit well immediately and creates chaos. Chaos, in turn, creates reactions and counter actions. National and international behaviors change as a result. But only for the instant to register reaction.

When the full scope of the effect of the policy is plumbed, the original policy is withdrawn and rewritten to a much milder stance. That has not happened as yet but will shortly. Just watch.

Declarations will be spouted from the White House or emissaries to the effect that “this is not what we intended, so the actual practices will be…”  See how this unfolds and measure how close or far off my prediction is. Either way the original policy will not stand.

Even the governor of Washington state has declared Trump an enemy of the state. And of course taxi drivers in New York City are mainly foreign nationals and are staging work stoppages at airports. How then do travelers move from airports to cities and back? How do airlines react to passengers of blocked nationalities? How do their nation’s react to their people being blockaded from free movement?

Then there are the trading partner relationships being upset. And foreign policies throughout the globe being upturned. Anger and frustration turn to mistrust and edginess of military preparations should such be needed.

It is a small distance from there to actions of war.

And that is my point. If Americans are obsessed with how they live with shallow feelings and interests in the lives of celebrities and wealth, how do they absorb and understand the larger issues of life and death being toyed with from the current White House?

Is this obsession the reason Trump was elected? Too many people placed their attention away from the important and focused on the frivolous? Enough so to explain why enough people voted for a person clearly unprepared and unable to be President?

Attention to details is important. Distraction has a cost. I fear we are witnessing an exorbitant price of the unthinkable right this instant. Please prove to me I am wrong!?

January 31, 2017