Key Thoughts

Posted

Rob Vajko

Don’t Be So Surprised

Dear Politicians, Pollsters and Pundits:

Please stop telling us that you are “stunned” and “in shock.”

Please stop telling us you can’t believe that the American people elected someone like Trump to be the next president of the United States.

The reason you are incredulous is the very reason why Trump won the election—because you haven't been listening.

Trump got the White House with zero experience quite simply because he has, in fact, zero experience. “Political experience” has become a phrase no longer palatable to the American people. They are tired of campaign promises that they know will not be kept. They have no idea whether president-elect Donald Trump will keep his, but they do know, without a doubt, that politicians have lied to them time and time again.

They are tired of working harder and harder and getting farther and farther behind.

The people of the United States have been trying to tell their leaders for years that they don't want to keep funding programs that aren't working. We’ve spent almost $20 trillion just on housing and medical care for the poor in the past 50 years and yet the poverty rate remains as high as it was when the programs began.

They are tired of paying taxes and being asked continuously for more money for more programs because the government doesn't know how to budget and allocate. We have nine different agencies or departments that oversee food and agricultural systems in the U.S., including responding to natural disasters, protecting from terrorist attacks and paying farmers to destroy or not grow crops.

They are tired of politicians who are in the pockets of lobbyists and who've stopped representing the people who elected them. They are tired of paying higher and higher prices for health care because big pharma is in control.

They are tired of living with the fear that all the money they've given the government for Social Security won't be there when they need it because the government used it to fund programs the American people never approved or wanted. How is it that the government can get away with what would put any financial investment group in jail?

They are tired of representatives who don't live under the same restrictions and fears that the people do because the politicans have their own safety net that the rest of the American people don't get.

They are tired of feeling like undocumented foreigners have more rights than they do while their own safety is being sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.

They are tired of cushy government jobs where representatives get paid large sums of money but don’t even bother to show up to vote on the issues that matter most to those who have to work 60 hour weeks just to make ends meet—if they can find work at all.

They are tired of living in debt and having no way out.

Trump didn't get elected because the American people think he's great. He got elected because the only alternative was someone who would continue to turn a deaf ear to them and their concerns.

When the body that is supposed to represent the people stops listening to the people, the people do indeed have to do something radical to be heard. I think that the American people believe that maybe, just maybe, someone might now be listening.


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