I am not going to lie, MAGA is perhaps one of the best marketing tools that modern politics has seen. Its the pure ideal that America is not what it should be and that all of our collective efforts as Americans should be on identifying what is preventing us from being great and executing that plan with laser-like focus.
That is great in theory but how can we make America Great Again when the uber wealthy 1% of this country only wants it for themselves?
When we say MAGA, it’s MAGA for the whole country. That is the only way it works but after this week we clearly see that the 1% doesn’t care about MAGA for all of us, they only really care about Making America Great for themselves. It is a sense of entitlement that I see in my practice all too much and it is finally playing out in plain sight for the whole country to see. When I say that 1% of the country feels as though they are special, I mean that 1% sees themselves not only as special, but almost a separate chosen race of humans that play by a different set of rules. You might think I am being facetious or speaking in hyperbole, but as a counselor when I have heard my clients say this very thing I take what they say literally. Just take a look at the news stories that past several weeks and tell me that the 1% doesn’t think they are different and the rules don’t apply to them.
The college admissions scandal has lifted the veil on how the wealth in this country are using their money to make it even easier for their children to get ahead in life. We are not talking about hiring the best tutors and sending them to the best schools, we are talking about straight up cheating and bribery. If it wasn’t difficult enough for people in the middle-class to get ahead in life, this was like kicking your dog and adding 100 lbs in your backpack.
If that isn’t bad enough, we have the Boeing company putting an airplane into service that had obvious flaws but decided that the shareholders and stock price were more important and gambled with people’s safety. Even when American pilots confronted Boeing executives in October about the anti-stall system at the heart of the investigation…they did nothing. Just a few short months later we have a second crash killing even more people. As a result we had two airplanes crash killing 346 people and that even wasn’t enough for Boeing to drag their feet and do everything in their power to not ground those airplanes.
We have pharmaceutical companies deciding that shareholders and stock value are more important than having their lifesaving drugs being priced at a value that allows everyone to afford their medications. Hell, they even are willing to allow the US government and tax payers to subsidize their shareholders by mortgaging our budget and creating huge deficit to pay these ridiculous prices.
If all of this doesn’t make you mad, which I know it does, none of this compares to what the 1% is doing to our own government officials. If rich people paying to get their kids into college through bribery makes you mad, why in the hell are millions of us walking to Washington DC and calling out the same system that pumps billions of dollars into our government to make laws that make an already rigged system for the wealthy even more in their favor at the expense of the rest of us?
This isn’t about income redistribution or some government plan to even the playing field, this is about having an honest conversation about how we can truly become a great nation when the wealthy, who already have it easier, are making it more difficult for the rest of us. How can we survive and grow as a country, when the people who have more than they could ever spend, make the rules easier for them to get more while making it more difficult for people who don’t have enough?
The answer most liberals will throw out is that we need the government to level the playing field and redistribute that wealth through some sort of tax system. That isn’t the answer at all and any conversation about that will only polarize us more and lead to more inaction. The answer is quite simple, we are the 99% and our voices and buying power is much larger than the 1%. If we are joining together (which is what they don’t want and why they are dividing us), then the people at the top will have no choice to listen. If we don’t buy their products, if we don’t vote for them, if we don’t watch their movies, listen to their shows, etc. we take back our power as a country and they will have no choice but to hear our voices.
So join me America.
Get on your social media accounts and make your voices loud and clear.
Go or not go to the store and make your voices loud and clear.
Turn off your television or change the channel and make your voices loud and clear.
You are not special. This is not your country for the taking. We are not taking it anymore!
#MAGAFORALLORMAGAFORNONE
