Empty

Ever awake to a feeling of aloneness? Not loneliness but aloneness? I know the terms seem the same but for some reason they feel very different to me. Why is that? I have no idea. I just have this feeling from time to time that there simply isn’t another person around that mirrors my reality. Very very alone.

Yes there are those who feel lonely from time to time but do they ever feel truly marooned and without another soul available to talk to, listen to, bump up feelings against?

It’s like being in a bar with lots of people, noise and jumbled strains of music and conversations. The liquid flows that makes people loose and convivial. The crowd is present so no one is alone. But yet they are. Watch those who sit alone. Who stare into the glass. Those whose eyes slide up the wall to the ceiling and examine every dimple, cobweb and dust mote to be seen. They see those things; others do not see him doing it.

That person is alone. Down the bar or at the corner table are others sitting apart from others.

There is company in the room. Not fellowship. Connections are unplugged. Stray wires and filaments in need of joining but never quite make it.

These are tough times to be alone. Is there ever a time that isn’t?

I know I’m in a funk about the elections. I’ve never disavowed a President before; if he wins the election then he is our President. I said this about George W Bush until he overplayed his role in Iraq and no weapons of mass destruction were found. It seemed at the time the President had snookered the American people. I still feel that way. He no longer had my support to be president. Oh he had the legal right and he exercised that. But all of his decisions became suspect to me and a host of others. Not blind politics any longer for them. They saw and knew what it meant.

Checks and balances then kept Bush in check. Cheney not so much. But then he had limited powers and the Congress didn’t let Bush do everything he said he wanted. The Supreme Court provided some balance. Senate Democrats did the rest. Gridlock resulted and remains this way today.

However, with Trump set to take the oath of office on January 20, 2017, things are different. The House of Representatives remains under Republican control. The Senate remains in Republican control although there are some arcane vote margins that remain in place and that will keep Republicans from running amok totally in the Senate.

Whether the Supreme Court winds up with a Trump supporting role or not depends on who is named to fill vacancies on the court. There is one vacancy currently. There will be at least one more during Trump’s first term. So the weight of conservative versus liberal on the court remains an unsettled issue for now.

America’s federal government is hanging in a delicate balance. Trump has the White House. He claims he will make decisions that will up end undoing many regulations, executive orders and other policies that have White House authority. It remains to be seen what he actually does, and then even more, what the consequences of those moves will bring to the rest of us. Consequences there will be. How fast and how severe is the big unknown.

Undoing trade pacts will have an immediate effect on consumer prices. They will rise, or the goods will be unavailable in American markets. Also, American goods will be less likely bought and sold in international markets. Unemployment will spike in America as a result.

The nature of trade pacts are two sided, never one sided. There is always a quid pro quo. It takes some time to realize the consequences. But the underemployed don’t have time to add to their misery.

Disruption in labor markets in America are not caused by trade pacts. They are caused by aging industries unwilling to switch to lower cost means of manufacturing and they are then moved to lower cost labor markets overseas. That and technology shifts that are huge. Those are the causes of dying industries in America and higher jobless rates among manufacturing trade unionists.

If those same industries would innovate new manufacturing methods, materials and product designs, they can save themselves. If they are unwilling to do those things, then their industries will ebb away like the buggy whip industry.

A great deal of disruption to our economy is about to play out because the house, senate and white house are all in the hands of one party. Furthermore, that party claims to be the party of conservative ideologies which serves not laborers, but owners of wealth and corporations. Who do you think will get hurt in this environment?

And the Supreme Court may very well fall victim to the conservative ideology as well. Then where will we all be?

Did I hear someone say the system is rigged? I guess it is. And it isn’t rigged in the direction the accuser was claiming. The shoe is now on the other foot. I wonder how many of us will soon be barefoot as a result?

November 30, 2016