What have we learned?

      The "Political Shutdown" of 2018-2019 is teaching us many things about ourselves.

   As for the reasons for such a debacle, we can all agree that politics played an overriding issue.  Some will hold to their political beliefs and deny any blame, but deep in their heart of hearts - they know it was so.  It was about a political promise that need not have been made, and a wall that need not be built. 

   But we have learned so much more than that.

   We have learned that most of the "leaders" in our government are so far removed from their own people that it is shameful.  The president has surrounded himself with millionaires and billionaires who have no clue about what identifies us as today's American.  The deep and wide chasm that separates us from them is unfathomable.  A cabinet chief says he doesn't understand why workers can't just go get a loan when they are expected to carry on without pay and have no money to buy food and make rent or mortgage payments. 

   Roughly 75% of American Workers today live pay check to pay check.  An alarming number of them live near and below the poverty line because wages have been kept far below the inflation rate.  While corporations hand out salaries and bonus' in the thousands and millions of dollars to upper management white collar folks,  the workers are falling further and further behind.

   Oh, they like to tell us the economy is doing great.  The great economy, however, is working for those who count their wealth by the number of digits in front of the decimal point. 

   Our hard working people who work in the federal and private sectors have been forgotten, abused, and used as pawns in political fights over substandard offers of minimum wages, non-existent benefit offers, and high turn-over rates in unlivable jobs. 

   The president has never seen a day when food, shelter, and health care was not available.  His cabinet of mega-rich people have no understanding, either.  Why should we be surprised that they would look at the beleaguered federal workers in any different light?

   When our supposed-leaders in the White House and Congress find a promised wall worthy of such intense angst and food tents sprouting up around the country, we need to seriously take a good look at ourselves - and them!

   A huge majority of our workers today have less than ten-thousand dollars in a retirement account.  Our country's "leaders" do not understand how that can be.  (Sure, there are those who find it easy to go in debt over their head, but they are the exceptions.)

   A huge majority of our workers today do not have the slightest idea about what to do if they lose their job.  Their fear of how to feed and cloth their families and get the basic health care they will need is overwhelming to them.

   But our president and many in congress spent thirty-five days of their lives sitting on their butts, having a drinky-poo, and counting their re-election war chests.  They gave lip service to those without pay checks only when a television camera spotted them.

   Yes,  the political pundits are saying we discovered a lot about this "shut down" and ourselves.

   But if you ask me, I don't think we enriched our knowledge nearly enough.  Because the arguments are still raging, the workers are still at the short end of the stick, and the rich guys are still way over there on the other side of the chasm...laughing, celebrating, watching the stock market and trying to understand why the rest of us can't just go get a loan.  

   And some fool still wants to build a wall.