By Tom Burke
There seem to be a lot of people who support Donald Trump.
Why you ask?
Well, if you listen to what they say it’s pretty obvious. Because what they say is, “America is broken. I want it fixed. And I don’t really care who fixes it.”
Now, to be objective, not everything is broken, just, it seems to many, the stuff government deals with.
And these people don’t think our current political class, at any level, on either side of the aisle, can fix it. (Need proof, ask a Bernie Sanders supporter.)
“Noooo,” you say? Well, consider:
Our highways are broken. Try commuting to work in a major city such as Seattle, New York or D.C. (I’ve lived in all three places) or even up I-5 from Everett to Marysville on a Saturday. It’s a nightmare. It’s broken.
Mass transit is broken. If it weren’t, more people would be riding buses, trains, light rail or the subway, metro/Bart. Ask any commuter what the experience is like. You won’t like the answer.
Our health care system is broken with still-too-many uninsured; it’s way too expensive (compared to other developed countries); and try dealing with the paperwork of Medicare or Medicaid. It’s ugly.
Our immigration system is broken with 11 million illegal residents living in the U.S. Not undocumented aliens or some other kinder/gentler euphemism, but people who deliberately broke the law and suffer no apparent consequences. People perceive a broken system when only some laws are enforced.
Our school systems are broken. Too much testing, too much teaching to the test, too little focus on basics, too much political correctness in lieu of common sense, low graduation rates, overcrowded classrooms, and not enough good teachers.
Our tax system is broken at the federal, state, and local levels. Big companies avoid paying their fair share, little companies are overburdened with paperwork, tax rates at local levels are way too high. (The average property tax on Long Island, New York, where I used to live, is nearly $1,000 per month.) The IRS is dangerously understaffed but there’s no shortage of tax accountants and lawyers who work to game the system.
Our military is broken. Endless wars with no signs of victory or even markers for success, too many troops serving too many tours in places we shouldn’t have our troops in the first place. And to add insult to their injuries, veterans who have sacrificed parts of their bodies and pieces of their mind are being ill-treated or ignored by the country that sent them into danger and put them into pain.
Our war on drugs is broken.
Our infrastructure is broken with aging bridges, inadequate highways and failing waste and water systems.
And there’s more. People wait for what feels like hours to clear through a broken airport security system; our government records are hacked; the mental health system is only semi-functional; income gaps grow wider every year; and the economy isn’t optimum.
And with all that’s broken we spend hours, days, weeks, years, millions of dollars, tons of political capital, huge chunks of TV time and newspaper column inches, and an incalculable amount of emotional energy arguing about where people pee.
So is everything in America broken?
Not by a long shot. Amazon delivers anything you want to your door in two days or less. Costco saves you money on everything from socks to steaks. Cars get great mileage and can drive themselves. You can communicate with everyone, everywhere, anytime. The knowledge of the ages is a keystroke away on the internet. Wine was never so fine, beer was never so tasty, produce never so fresh. Sheets never so white, teeth never so bright, and LED even makes light, lighter (and cheaper).
But here’s the problem: What’s broken, it seems, is essentially what the government is supposed to keep fixed; what works is 90 percent business’ purview.
And a candidate like Hillary Clinton, as she is perceived by many, is just more of the same. (Again, if in doubt of that ask those who voted for Sanders in the primaries.) To them it’s the same old answers (in parsed gov-speak and nuanced wonk-talk with simultaneous translation required) to the same old questions; the same old solutions to the same old problems; and the same old faces in the same old places.
People are tired of the same.
People are angry. People want their broken world fixed. And a businessman is running who claims he can fix it.
Can he? Of course not. Everything that’s broken is really, really complicated. And it will take decades and trillions to make improvements.
But when folks want the trains to run on time, when they want someone to blame, when they hear someone who says, in their own angry idiom, “I can fix it all, we can be great again;” that’s a siren’s song that’s hard to resist.
People are tired of living in a broken world. They want a fixer. And that’s why Donald Trump is still in the running.
Tom Burke lives in Bothell.
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