I am starting to get the feeling that there is cosmic, karmic, or divine justice in this time. As a society we have reached an inflection point, a confluence of trends and habits that are forcing us to choose who we want to be as a nation. American history is riddled with periods that are at odds with the higher ideals laid out at our country’s founding. Preeminently among those moments is slavery, but one can easily point to immigration policies throughout, to Japanese internment camps, and populism associated with anti-Catholicism among the other “antis- du jour.” It is that fundamental, often highly successful, vilification strategy that populists use, a “Trump card” if you will. It usually includes anti-intellectualism of some brand and often the misuse or abuse of the term “patriotism.” The “us vs. them,” “citizen vs. immigrant,” ultimately “patriot vs. traitor.” The Native Americans would like to have a word. Therefore it is not surprising during this pandemic that Native Americans are getting screwed again. Or that black and brown people are being affected disproportionately. America likes to see itself as operating on a level playing field when it is anything but. It’s almost as if the US map is a board game and its citizens are just pieces to be pushed around and manipulated by the savvier players.

Like the stock market has anything to do with the average American on the street, while its rise mostly corresponds to balance sheets. Often layoffs of that average Joe or Jane will result in a company’s stock rising. Who wins there? Stockholders. Who are stockholders? About fifty percent of the population and when you break down those numbers further it gets even worse. As of 2013 the top 10% of stockholders owned 81% of the wealth. That does not seem to be a level playing field at all. Which reminds me of the credit crisis of 2008, the Great Recession. Snake oil salesmen, that’s what they were only dressed in Brooks Brothers suits, convinced thousands of people to refinance their mortgages, to over leverage themselves to buy a house they realistically could not afford, and not only did the savvier players convince their victims to do this, but they bet on them failing at doing it. Doesn’t seem level to me. And in response no one went to prison. Sure the Obama administration created more checks on the financial services industry, aka the ultimate Republican bad word, “regulation,” only for those regulations to be rolled back at the onset of the Trump administration. Easy money? Free money? Monopoly money? It’s only Monopoly money when you don’t have $400 of cash available for an emergency, which is all that…