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Lord of the Flies

Donald Trump is a bigoted racist,
a shameless sexist,
a textbook example of narcissism,
an embarrassment as a Presidential nominee,
and self-deluded about war and peace.

And those are his good points.  It gets worse.

What is important about his capturing the nomination
of the tattered Republican Party
is what has fueled his support:
a lot of people in America are hurting.

America is rich,
and a lot of people have gotten richer,
but even more have gotten poorer.

The fundamental economics of not only our country
but of much of the former industrial world
is shifting to a new economy,
an information-based economy,
and the old industrial workforce has been left
to do the best they can with boarded-up buildings
and work at a hamburger joint.

The landscape is littered with anger and conspiracies.
The anger is legitimate.  The conspiracies are absurd.

If there is any truth at all to the conspiracies,
it is that the shift of wealth to the rich
and the erosion of the middle and lower classes
has been deliberate.  We cut taxes for the wealthy,
and were told that when the wealthy get really wealthy,
money will dribble down to the people who are hurting.

Baloney!  A lie!  Shameless economics!
"Can You Spare a Dime?" writ large.

And Donald Trump, without an honest fact to his name,
promises to create millions of jobs--no hint of how--
and build a wall that will make everything right--
and Mexico will pay for it--and take all of Iraq's oil,
and make the Chinese wear coolie hats,
and retaliate like only a rich hotel owner can
if the Iranis so much as flip him a finger.

He says he will make America great again,
as it used to be when people of color knew their place,
and did their work, and when women did what men
wanted them to do and look like.  It will be great!
He is disappointed that our military is bigger than
the next ten or twenty nations put together,
and he will make it big enough for him to do
just exactly whatever he wants them to do.

And the people who are hurting cheer!
Why?  Because they really are hurting,
and they have been ignored, mostly.
The drug companies cheer, because
their obscene profits are harder to maintain,
and they want to be turned loose again.

We put students into life-long debt when they go to college.
We are letting our infrastructure go to hell because
it costs money to fix streets and bridges, and switch
from oil and coal to sustainable energy.
We need to invest in our school systems, which lag
behind those of about twenty other nations.
People need better health care, not less of it.

Trump says he can fix everything, just like that:
it will be great.  How?  Because he is big and strong,
and his doctor says that not even Jesus had better health,
or Moses, or Mohammed, either.

"There are flies on you,
and flies on me,
but there ain't no flies on Trump."


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