Surprised Now the Election is Over – Why?

Donald Trump won the electoral vote but lost the popular. He spoke (among other things) to the poor who were worried about loss of manufacturing jobs and no prospects for the future. Surprisingly the vote of this demographic was split, though he did win the majority of the poor white vote. However, the most surprising thing was the percent of college educated whites including women he won over. If one thinks about it, this should not be surprising. Today there are many forces at play, among them globalization and technology. Throughout history, jobs moved from England to the Continent, from there to North America and from North America to Asia (contrary to election rhetoric South America pretty much remains agrarian). Technology also has a history of not only evolutional but also revolutionary change. Machinery changed craft shops to factories and factories were changed by mass production. These changes, by their very nature, are disruptive with technology causing the greatest upheavals. Today, there is much talk and fear of robotics replacing manual labor in manufacturing. but little is said of technology’s effect on others in the work force. Those at the lower end of the wage scale only temporary displacement to be concerned about. Capitalism, to function properly, needs to have the poor live at some relative level of comfort (or else pitch forks in the streets). Capitalism facilitates constant innovation, creating upheavals where new jobs are created and old lost. For centuries, since the Industrial Revolution, the lesser skilled labor force has seen their jobs shift geographically and due to changes in technologies. During this churn many fall by the wayside. There is a historical precedence for these upheavals and for governments often, to preserve the capitalist system, having to adjust. Though there is a lag between the time old jobs are lost and new jobs or new systems (changes in education or new sources of income created) it has always happened. After all there was the “New Deal” with Medicare, Medicaid and various welfare programs to deal with the turmoil in the early part of the twentieth century. Even now there are moves underway to increase the minimum wage and serious discussion about other methods like tax credits or outright cash distribution (a city in Canada has experimented with this) to attend to the loss of or stagnation of income at the low end while we wait for the new technology to come around. For the group that surprised the pundits, the college educated upper middle class, there is no system, , there is none being discussed, nor has there ever been one never mind one under development, to keep them from sliding down to the ranks of the poor. What technology is doing with gusto is, if not completely eliminating, greatly reducing the value of many middle management, technical and administrative jobs. People working in these positions comprise the largest portion of the middle and upper middle class. The working poor aspire to have their children fill these jobs, but deep down inside they realize that these will not be there in the future. Historically, effects of disruptive changes needed developments in multiple technologies and time to resolve. The mating of Information technology with mechanics is needed for robotics to significantly change the factory floor. Unfortunately only the information technology, which already exists, is needed to eliminate middle management along with many technical and administrative jobs. This is already happening. The punditry and most politicians have not seen this but people holding these position have, and they are afraid. Realizing that the current system has no initiatives in place to attend to them, they voted against a status quo. The working poor may slide from an income of say $40,000 (I’m guessing at these numbers) to one of $35,000, not a life style changing amount, while the possibility of returning to $40,000 if not a bit higher is within sight. The current system has demonstrated its ability to do this. On the other hand, the upper middle class may be looking to falling from an income of $90,000 to $35,000 with the accompanying lifestyle change and they are scared. Back about 15 years ago, during the “dot com” collapse, I was talking to a friend about the possible repercussions of an economic collapse including civil unrest. He pointed out that historically, for a regime change, a certain relatively high percentage of middle management needs to be negatively impacted. Whereas the working poor, for the most part, do not have skills to organize and lead a rebellion, middle managers do. So Mr. President Elect, your first priority when you get to the white house should not be to stall, if not reverse, the browning of America nor should it be to protect us from the proliferation of Islam with its imagined terror; or to figure out how to improve the lot of the working poor, though you need to do that, but to develop and implement policies to alleviate the fears of the middle and upper middle class. If you cannot do this, there may indeed be pitchforks in the streets.

GOP Want to Create “Safe Zones” for Syrian Refugees

Granted, life in a war zone is horrific, but life in a refugee camp isn’t so great either. We spent most of seven years in Germany after the war (WWII) as refugees living in various camps where in the better ones, we share a room the size of a large classroom with three other families. The room was divided into four areas by army blankets strung on wires. Our section had just enough room for two cots, one for Mom and Dad and one for my sister and I and a wall locker. In the next section lived a couple with a son and a nephew who was around 10 years old. Toward the end of the war the Nazis executed his mother and father right in front of him. He was very traumatized and would have nightmares almost nightly which we could clearly hear through our blanket wall. The entire floor shared one bathroom and there was a separate bathing area for the entire building much as one would find in a gym. For kids this was not too hard. But one time more recently, I was at an airport and our flight was delayed. I was sitting around and started thinking about what the life of my parents as adult refugees must have been like. It occurred to me that it had to be like waiting for a flight at an airport for several years. How awful! There is no work. There is very little entertainment. There is no comfort, only waiting endlessly. Not to mention the anxiety of not knowing if you can ever be granted asylum or return to your home. So those of you who think that herding people into camps is such a great deed, go spend a weekend at an airport waiting for a flight and imagine doing that not for two but for one thousand days.

Preamble to the Constitution of the United States

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” In the last day of the Democratic Convention, a Muslim immigrant and father of a fallen soldier gave a moving speech which put our Constitution into the spotlight. He asked whether Donald Trump had ever read it, reached into his pocket, took out a pamphlet containing the Constitution and offered to loan it to him. Given the Constitution’s current prominence, I would like to discuss its Preamble and give my interpretation of what it means in the current era. In reading it again, I noticed the Preamble has a number of words capitalized where they might normally not be. I assume this was done to elevate their importance. People, Order, Union, Justice, Tranquility, Welfare Blessings of Liberty, and Posterity (defence was not capitalized). It is interesting that in today’s political climate, defense is a major theme of the presidential candidates, each stressing that the most important part of a president’s job is to keep us safe and they would be the best Commander in Chief and be able to do that better than the other candidate. In fact the oath the President swears is not to keep us safe but to “faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”. WE THE PEOPLE: From the very beginning there is an emphasis on the “People” and there is no mention of government until later in the Articles. It is we, the People, who established the Constitution and are thus responsibility to for its charter. Subsequent Articles describe the structure of the government and broad responsibilities. Too often we think of our government as some foreign entity that mistreats us. We forget that government serves at our pleasure and is responsible to us, “the People”. So if we feel mistreated, it is not the government but we who elected it and who it is accountable to and works for, who are responsible. The tasks enumerated in the Preamble and listed below are our responsibility and government is just a tool to help accomplish them. Note: At the preamble stage there is no differentiation between people. Article one talks about legislative power, staffing and taxation. Here is where a bag of worms is opened and is created a source of much criticism. The way I read the section regarding the tallying of people is that it was not directly a division by race but maybe by position and taxes. At the time of the writing a segment of the population felt that only land owners should have a right to vote and this may have been a compromise to appease them. Native Americans, if they pay taxes are counted (“excluding Indians NOT taxed”). But I don’t know if there were any “Indians” taxed at this time though there were Native American farmers in some New England communities who stayed loyal to the Colonials during King Philip’s War I assume they were taxed. It also does not discount Africans per se by stating that all Free Persons are counted as one “including those bound to service for a term of years”. This inclusion of indentured servants, who are predominantly white, in the count of “whole people”, and exclusion of slaves, all black, counting them as a fraction of a person, is troubling but may be in part a financial matter and not strictly a racial one. FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION: One of a number of common usages of the term union is defined as “a number of persons, states, etc. joined or associated together for some common purpose”. A “more perfect Union” recognizes that we are a community as opposed to a bunch of individuals and requires us to work on ways for us to complement each other. ESTABLISH JUSTICE: There is a difference between legal and just. Legality tests adherence to a written word. Justice is more complex and gets into subjective areas based on morality and what is just in one person’s eye is not just in another. Justice is one of the responsibilities we delegate to our legislature. If we are true to our charter, we require our representatives to pass laws and implement policies that are perceived as just by larger and larger disparate elements of our society. INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILIT: Tranquility is defined as “quality or state of being tranquil; calmness; peacefulness; quiet; serenity.” Though we tend to think of tranquility primarily as freedom from crime, I think the founders took a broader view. PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENCE: This refers to us (all of us) getting together and defending ourselves against foreign aggression. Not much nuance. PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE: I believe this is the most neglected portion of the Preamble (particularly by the Right). We the People have a duty to work for the overall wellbeing, not just the material, of all of our citizens. This is particularly challenging, but no less necessary, during rapid changes in global economics, technology, demography and world order we face today. Though the notion of “I am my brother’s keeper” is a very important portion of the “general welfare”, it is not the only one. SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY TO OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY: There are a number of definitions of liberty. 1. “freedom from arbitrary or despotic control”. The key terms here are ARBITRARY and DESPOTIC. To fulfill our responsibilities stated in the preamble there needs to be some level of control though it cannot be arbitrary or despotic. We the People need to ensure that policies implemented by the government on our behalf are not. 2. “freedom from external or foreign rule, independence”. 3. “freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice”. I believe this definition of liberty is the one we generally think of. At the very extreme, the Right takes this too literally considering any control, however necessary some controls might be to “promote the general Welfare” to be unacceptable. State’s Rights people want as many of these controls moved from the federal to state government though the preamble speaks of “we the People of the United States” not individual states. 4. “freedom from captivity, confinement or physical restraint”. Establishing a just legal system ensures this. The Asian Kingdom of Bhutan has a Minister of Happiness and measures itself against a “happiness standard” rather than GDP. We might consider forming ministries for the six challenges outlined in the Preamble to the Constitution. We already have a Defense Department and a Department of Justice, (though it is more focused on law than justice). We could have a Perfect Union Departments focused on issues that unite us and facilitate the advancement of our society; a Department of Tranquility under which could fall corrections, policing, recreation facilities, parks …..; a Department of General Welfare (we tend to think of welfare in the narrowest of terms as providing assistance to the needy), the department would encompass healthcare, education, transportation, environment, discrimination, labor and food and drugs; and finally the Blessings of Liberty Department would ensure that policies proposed do not put us under despotic and arbitrary control or lead us in a direction that will diminish our power over the workings of our government (Citizens United is such a court decision. Adam Smith, in the Wealth of Nations, warns against allowing people who make a living from profits to influence policy, because their interests are not only not aligned with the wellbeing of the society as a whole but are often conflicting. He goes on to point out that, on the other hand, the interest of people who make their living from wages and rent are generally aligned with the wellbeing of a society as a whole.) I know, I know, more bureaucracies. But the larger and more complex a society, the greater is the cost of governing. We should focus not on how large or small but on how effective our government is in helping us achieve the goals outlined in the Preamble. The charter in the Preamble was not meant to be accomplished piece by piece as broken down above. All segments are interrelated and any one needs to be realized in the context of all the others. The Constitution is a marvelous, well thought out piece of work which has endured these centuries and indeed will continue to guide us for several more centuries.

Latinos

Last night I watched the actress and Hilary Clinton’s surrogate, America Ferara on the Bill Mahar show. He asked her why, when 99 percent of Black voters are against Donald Trump, not nearly as many Latinos are? She pondered the question for a while and then said that Latino voters are Americans and as such have many different positions on politics (the same argument could have been used for African Americans). My personal experience, based strictly on my observations and understanding of how the world works, leads me to a more nuanced explanation, though in the final analysis, America is right. We tend to paint everything with too broad a brush stroke and overlook the finer points. What we refer to as Latinos really are people from different countries, cultures, ethnicities and races who have only language as a common thread. Some even come from families that have been in this country longer than most of the Europeans. The “Latinos” in southern Florida for the most part are immigrants and descendants of people who fled Cuba after Castro’s Communist revolution. They were from the upper-middle and upper class with the greater majority of pure European decent. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz (though he is not from southern Florida) are examples. They tend to be strongly anti-communist and fiscally conservative. The Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and others from the Caribbean are greatly influenced by their heritage of slavery. Even immigrants from one country, Mexico, come from different ethnicities and cultures. Most come from rural areas and are indigenous descendants of the Maya with work habits that would put the “Protestant Work Ethic” to shame. These are the Mexicans doing predominantly farm work and other menial labor. Other Mexican immigrants are of primarily European descent who tend to be from urban areas, better educated and more affluent. These various groups have settled in different parts of the country, can have different physical appearances and varying social and economic concerns. Thus their politics are all over the place. Those of pure European decent tend to be less concerned with bigotry, since it is only language that separates them and in one generation that difference disappears. Puerto Ricans are US citizens and not that concerned about immigration but worry about things like wages and poverty. The indigenous are concerned with all the issues; immigration, wages, education, bigotry etc. An effective strategy to win over the Latino votes needs to do more than highlight bigotry and must speak about things that are also of concern to most Americans, addressing initiatives in the Constitution, “establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense promote the general welfare (this is one the Right often overlooks), and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” (I’m following the recent trend of waving the Constitution established at the Democratic Convention). Unlike the very successful Republican “Southern Strategy”, whispering to the prejudices of the Southern whites, the Latino strategy needs to be much broader and appeal to our “better angels”.

Things that Scare Me

Things that Scare Me My parents lived much of their lives under a Soviet regime and seven years toward the end of the war as refugees in Germany. I was quite young during this era but do have some direct memories though most of my observations are second hand through my parents. Also having this past in my history, I am more attentive to news and stories regarding the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The recent move further right in our country and some of the accompanying rhetoric scares me because I see some similarities with this past. HOMELAND: After 9/11 one started hearing more and more about the “Homeland” from politicians of all stripes. This reminds me of the Nazi oft invoked term “fatherland”. “AMERICA FIRST” Donald Trump’s “America first” slogan has a bit of a ring of “Deutschland, Deutschland uber ales” (spelling?) the Nazi motto, meaning Germany above all else. The Germans executed this creed to the letter. Laws, both international and domestic, morals and society as a whole would not stand in the way of the Fatherland. Israel’s right has somewhat of the same philosophy when it comes to what they believe is their God given land. FUNDAMENTAL CHRISTIAN THEOCRACY: During the German occupation the French motto; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, was changed to “work, family, homeland”. This could have been adopted by the right in our country without the blink of an eye. Work a cornerstone of the “Protestant Ethic” is now a central theme: “Bring jobs back”, “paychecks instead of handouts”, “get young Blacks jobs to solve all social ills”. The policies implemented under the guise of “religious freedom” really are moves to insert “Christian values” into our policies much as the move in the early fifties added “in God We Trust” to our currency and “Under God” to our pledge of allegiance. I have seen a slow Republican shift in this direction starting with the politization of the Christian Fundamentalists some decades ago. When asked about the three words that bet describe him, the vice presidential candidate Mike Pence said “Christian, Family Man and Republican”. What happened to American? REPORTING YOUR NEIGHBOR: With the threat of heinous criminal acts by a group of “Radical Islamist Terrorists” (though in his acceptance speech, Donald Trump dropped the “radical” piece of that statement and just called it Islamist terrorism) the government at all levels is now advocating “if you see something report it”. This is reminiscent of the Soviet dogma. As a good citizen, it was your duty to report any anti-communist activities or comments. In fact, to not report it was a crime. As a result, brothers were reporting brothers, sons their mothers and workers their coworkers. The Siberian Gulags were full of people falsely accused because someone didn’t like them or wanted to gain some sort of advantage. DOCUMENTATION: Europe allows citizens from its member countries to travel across their borders without documentation. We, on the other hand, need more and more documents, IDs to vote and passports to travel to countries we never needed them to visit before. Under Stalin’s rule one even had to get documented government authorization to travel within the country, never mind outside. ISLAMAPHOBIA: The Nazis, to rally support invented a common foe, Jews. The Republicans are doing the same today in this country with Muslims. XENOPHOBIA: Patriotism is a very healthy and beautiful thing. Excessive, blind and misguided patriotism is dangerous. Today the right has stolen patriotism, waving flags and reciting slogans. Flag waving was vigorous during Nazi rule in Germany. A friend wrote me the other day saying that it is difficult to have meaningful discussions with Democrats because if you disagree with them they accuse you of racism. The same can be said of the difficulty having meaningful discussions with the right. If one disagrees, they are accused of being unpatriotic. Some time ago I was watching Morning Joe where there was started a discussion on the lowering of qualifications for entry into our military. Joe Scarborough, a Republican and host, said we had a military made up of “the best and brightest”. When a guest asked by what standard? Joe got very angry and started chanting “USA, USA, USA………” thus ending the discussion. Having said all this, I am still optimistic about our great country. One of our main strengths is our ability to correct. As long as we allow the pendulum to swing, we will go a bit too far left and a bit too far right but always turns around and we spend most of the time near the middle. The things we need to be careful of are the policies we put in place which inhibit our ability to adjust or slow us down so much that we lose the ability to properly respond to the rapid changes occurring in the world.

Our Culture vs Their Culture

We humans have a weakness in that the familiar appears normal to us and the unfamiliar abnormal. As a young boy, looking through the National Geographic Magazine (as young boys do) I noticed how strange women in Africa wearing many neck rings to elongate their necks or Indian women wearing nose rings looked. As I became a young man I began to see similarities between these customs and ours in the West. How different is stretching ones neck with neckbands from enlarging the breasts with implants or puffing up lips with Botox. Though the methods differ, the aim is the same, to enhance beauty. Wearing rings in the nose, which we now do in the West, in my eyes is no different than wearing rings in the ears. Wearing hijabs is strange to us but yarmulkes normal, though are cultural/religious. Modesty is locally defined. A woman with her head uncovered will be persecuted in Iran and Saudi Arabia. We look at this as primitive. A woman on the beach topless in the US today will be persecuted because she is not adhering to local customs of modesty. In Europe topless bathing is a common practice and we are thought of by some as primitive. Many years ago, while visiting Morocco, a majority Muslim country, we stayed at a modern hotel for western tourists in Marrakech. European women routinely sunbathed at the pool topless. The hotel adhered to the European standard of modesty. I strongly suspect were they to remove their bottoms they would be asked to leave. Customs are not only differ geographically but also temporally. In the early nineteen hundreds women here went to the beech covered from neck to toe as do some Muslim women today. In the fifties they wore one piece bathing suits whereas today bikinis are the common beach ware. During the “Dark Ages” women in Europe covered themselves, including their heads, much as do women in some of the Muslim cultures today. Some time ago I was watching a program featuring a primitive tribe somewhere in the mountains of Southeast Asia. They were interviewing a young teenage girl who was dressed in a colorful skirt but breasts uncovered. She was sitting very modestly on a rock with her legs crossed; so elegant in her manners, speech and movement, she could have been the daughter of proud, cultured western parents. When we see customs from different cultures, we should think about our own and ask how different are they really from ours particularly at some point in time?

Why do they Hate us (and Want to Kill us)?

This was a question posed to me the other night at a family gathering by a non-Muslim assuming that I, as a Muslim had some special insight into the minds of an irrational, vicious cult. To answer that question we first needs to understand who “they” are. Unfortunately the Right Wing media, wanting to stoke Islamophobia and fear to gain a political advantage, paints the “they” with a very broad stroke as Muslims. (I read the reporting on the recent Bangladesh massacre in the New York Times, PBS, BBC, Aljizeera and Fox. It’s interesting that Fox was the only one leading off with an Islamophobic “dog whistle” in the first sentence reporting that the terrorists were heard saying Allah Whakbar, which translated means God is Great, equivalent to something like “praise the Lord”). The Right even insist that the President call terrorism “Islmaic”. In analyzing who the “they” are lets first look at Christianity which most of us are more familiar with. Christianity, though consisting of many groups (Manicheans, Copts) can be divided into the two major groups, the Catholics and Protestants. The Protestants in turn have many sub groups such as Lutheran, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Methodist, Baptist, etc. Among the Baptists are the Southern Baptists and the extremely homophobic and Islamophobic Westboro Baptists, a radical sect, and various Evangelical splinter groups (though I’m not sure all Evangelicals are Baptists). When the Westboro Baptists Church pickets the burial of a gay soldier killed in War, we don’t think, or the media reports it, as a Baptist, Protestant nor Christian act. We attribute the action rightly to the Westboro Baptists. Now the non-Muslim members of the family gathering would say “but they don’t kill people”. OK, let’s look at another case. Many of the Fundamentalist Protestant, especially those believing in “Armageddon” in their life time, are Zionist and supporters of the Israeli Right and the occupation of Palestine. The Bible is their justification, seeing that these lands were given to the Israelites by God. (In fact I would venture to bet that a larger percentage of Evangelical Fundamentalists are Zionists then are American or Israeli Jews.) When Israel attacks Gaza or Israeli terrorists kill Palestinians (In the last ten years there have been 129 Israeli children killed by Palestinians and more than 1,500 Palestinian children killed by Israelis), we don’t say that Christians are Zionists and support the oppressive, and illegal occupation of the West Bank and through this support are in part responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the displacement of millions. If we said it at all, we would rightly say that some Evangelicals are supportive of Israeli aggression. And we don’t expect people to explain this action as Christians but as human beings. (I believe it is the Methodist Church that is divesting itself of investments in companies whose products are used to uphold the occupation of the West Bank. We don’t say that Protestants or Christians are divesting their holdings, but the Methodist Church.) Let me start by admitting that I know very little about Islam and having lived all my life in predominantly Christian areas, know more about Christianity. Now getting to Muslim’s responsibility for terrorism, as with Christianity, Islam also consists of many groups and sects. The major division is between the Sunni, by far the majority, and the Shia. The Sunni are more like the Protestants in that they believe there is no intermediary between them and God, whereas the Shia have the Ayatollahs and the Catholics the Popes as intermediaries. One of the factions, the Wahhabis, a small minority of Sunnis, though the state religion in Saudi Arabia, has the most fundamental interpretation of the Quran. The Salafis, a violent subset of the Wahhabis which I believe came into being with the start of European colonialism, took an even more of a fundamentalist interpretation and used religion to justify violence. The Muslim Brotherhood split from the Salafis and became more political and less violent though still fundamentalist. The Islamic State of Syria (ISIS) follows the Salafi interpretation of the Quran and since that is not the interpretation of the Shia nor the vast majority of Sunni Muslims throughout the world, it is totally inappropriate to expect non-Salafi Muslims to explain or feel guilty for their actions no more than it is for Baptists, never mind Christians as a whole, to explain the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church or the Zionism of some fundamentalists.

The Donald's Mentor Bibi

In Recent months Donald Trump has been compared to Hitler and Mussolini. I don’t think it’s a good comparison. However, there is another who he resembles more. Donald wants to build a wall to keep Mexicans out. – Bibi has built many walls to keep Arabs out Donald is going to have Mexico pay for it. – Bibi is having Palestinians pay with their blood, sweat and tears. Blood, emergency vehicles having to travel tens of miles out of their way to get a patient to a hospital; sweat, having to carry water miles since palestinians are not allowed to dig wells deep enough to hit water (Jewish settlers are); tears, brought on by families having to live on opposite sides of the walls. Donald wants to keep Mexicans out. – Bibi keeps Arabs out. Donald wants to deport Muslims. – Bibi herded Muslims into Gaza and then set up a blockade to control them. Donald believes in disproportional punishment (Milania, presenting Donald at a rally, said that he is tough, you push him once, he will hit you ten times). – Since early 2006 there were 129 Israeli and 1,573 Palestinian children killed. (The ratio is about right). Donald wants to punish the relatives of terrorists. Bibi bulldozes homes where terrorist families live. Donald wants to patrol Muslim neighborhoods. – Bibi Patrols Muslim neighborhoods. Donald wants a white Christian state. – Bibi wants a white (Ethiopian Jews don’t do so well in Israel and Sephardic, non-European, Jews are second class citizens) Jewish State. Last but not least, both Donald and Bibi want to use whatever means necessary, regardless of international law or morality, to defend the homeland. It is uncanny how closely The Donald’s rhetoric resembles Bibi’s actions. I think he studies Bibi’s speeches and plagiarizes shamelessly.

The Noble Quest for Profit

I have been following the current presidential primary race with great interest and have noticed a theme I had previously observed and commented on. Whenever Donald Trump has pointed out to him discrepancies between his proposals and actions he falls back to “I’m a businessman”. A couple examples: He talks about China taking manufacturing jobs while at the same time some of the paraphernalia he hawks at his website is in fact made in China. His response is that he is a businessman. When question about his bankruptcies, avoiding repayment of debts, he says that’s what businessmen do. The amazing thing is that the majority of the public accepts and forgives almost any acts in the pursuit of profits by a business, large or small. To use a popular phrase “that’s what they do” Companies leaving a particular local to move to a state with lower wages, leaving thousands of people unemployed, in quest for a greater profit are not criticized because their act is done in the spirit of business. Companies leaving the country are not viewed as unpatriotic but just as doing business. (In fact it is not the company but a politician or party that is blamed.) Unions on the other hand, attempting to improve the lot of workers are viewed as un-American. So a commercial enterprise’s quest to better itself and thus its owners through tax avoidance, endangerment of their workers, pollution of the environment, fraud, acts of disloyalty to its employees or by whatever other means is OK, but a questionable act on the part of a poor person trying to put food on the table, is viewed as horrific. Business is deemed noble, whereas labor is viewed as base. The ultimate success is to rise up from being a mere worker, even if the worker is a rocket scientist, to starting a business, even if it is shoveling manure. The business community must be commended for the effectiveness of the publicity campaigns over the centuries that have instilled this attitude in us.