I’m Sorry, but I’m Going to Add to your Stress, America

Ok, you’re about to make a decision that is going to impact the entire world forever. I hate to lay that on you right now, especially with all the stress of the world as it stands, but that’s where you are.

You’re about to go to the polls and cast a vote that will decide the future. If you cast it one way, you’ll have a President that may do a good job or may not, but you’ll get to try and influence her through the significant power of your state and local representatives. If you don’t like the job she does, in four years, you can get someone else. 
If you cast your vote the other way, and you have seen this demonstrated between 2016 and 2020, your representatives will be neutered in favor of a centralized Executive Branch power that will do whatever it wants to. You saw it happen. You watched children put in cages on one man’s say-so. This is not controversial, he was proud of it. And what happens at the end of four years if you don’t like the job he did? Well, to quote him, “Get out and vote! Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore! Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”

So this choice, it may be permanent. Is that how much you trust him? I know you’re angry, we’re ALL angry. You know how when you get mad at someone and you take a breath before you say the thing that might destroy the friendship/relationship/marriage forever? That’s where you are right now. Take a breath. Decide how many of the people he hates, you actually hate. How many of them have you even met? How many of your friends ARE the people he hates and will become collateral damage?
Please, just take a breath before you do this.

And I know the numbing wall of rhetoric that’s been handed to you as a shield.

What about the economy?

Here’s how inflation works… For one reason or another you put a whole bunch of new money in the system and it causes the money that’s already there to be worth less. So you have to use more of it to pay for stuff.
Remember those handouts you got during the pandemic that the President signed his name to? That’s the extra cash that flooded the system. The current President did some of that, too. Was it wrong for him to do that? No, it was a time of giving people life rafts to keep them afloat. But the consequence is that — and this was after the President who gave you the money was no longer in office — inflation exploded. This would’ve happened no matter who was in office before and after the pandemic. It happened in just about every country that had the finances to pull this kind of bail-out off.

What do you do to stop inflation? You build up infrastructure work to add jobs and keep the money circulating and you raise interest rates to try and burn the extra cash, very gradually, out of the system. This takes time. If you do it too quickly, a lot of really bad things can happen. The current President and the Federal Reserve have made the right moves and inflation has slowed; far more quickly than most other First World countries.
Trade is good. Infrastructure growth is good. Inflation is slowing. Fuel is coming back down. Retail prices are a trailing indicator; this means that they will come down slower than everything else because retailors can make a lot of money in that time between their costs going down and the savings being passed to you. That’s just how it works, always has.

And you’re worried about immigration and how it’s affecting American jobs and crime and whatever else can be blamed on it. But do you actually know anyone who’s lost a job to an illegal immigrant? My family lives in El Paso and, you know what, they are not seeing floods of immigrants crossing an open border. What are you seeing that’s so troubling?

Do criminals cross the border illegally? Yes. Do criminals come out of poor urban areas of the United States? Yes. Are there criminals living five minutes away from you right now in a suburban tract home? Almost assuredly. We can use isolated incidents to try and prove anything we want to believe. But do you really have experience with immigration being a problem?
What we can tell you for sure is that if you want food prices to really shoot through the roof, stop migrant workers from entering the country.

And then there’s climate. I know this is a hard thing to look at square in the face. The planet is hotter than it’s ever been. And I already hear you talking about Barack Obama buying a house on the beach (which may or may not be true, who cares?) and I know that you know that this is not how climate change works; it’s just rhetoric to shield your discomfort with.

I’m discomforted, too.

Record high temperatures across the planet in the last year. More storms of higher intensity than ever in recorded history. Fires. Crops are beginning to fall to erratic rain patterns and heat. Shorter hibernation seasons for insects so higher rates of insect transmitted disease.

It’s bad.

So when you’re making your choice about who to cast that ballot for, do you want the person who wants to put more carbon into the sky? Remember, this may be a forever choice that you’re making. The renewable industry is robust and growing fast. If you ever believed in the American Dream, that’s where it’s happening right now. Do you want the United States to be the leader or do you want it to play second fiddle to China?

American prosperity is evident in clean energy, and the continued reliance on the exploitation of fossil fuels is the TRS-80 of modern technology.

This is it, America. It’s up to you now. You are facing the challenge laid down for you 237 years ago by Benjamin Franklin when asked if the Constitution of the United States has given us a republic or a monarchy.

“A republic, if you can keep it.” — Benjamin Franklin

Do you want to keep it?

Take a breath before you answer.