Well it's about time, I mean to have my screen windows open around the clock. It took until mid-July. No need to anticipate waking up in middle of night to close everything up, so as to keep furnace from coming on. I know, many people simply turn their thermostat off. I have done that in years past.
I got a new thermostat that has the possibility of confusing me. I was told my previous one had to go - it operated on a "hearing aid battery." That's what the plumbing/heating guy told me. And he added "they didn't tell us about that." Always wrinkles involved in maintaining a single-family home.
The word out there is that costs are mounting to a quite concerning level, costs for maintaining your own home. I look at the rows of neat little houses in south Morris and I wonder if this is such an efficient arrangement. I wonder why the houses had to be built so close to each other. Maybe this is why we don't see new homes constructed very often in the old established residential parts of town.
Look how the townhome addition is expanding out next to the bypass. Ah, the lure of the country and open spaces. Well, the people might have to listen to a trucker's "Jake brakes" sometimes. Boy, the traffic can be pretty steady along the bypass. Whoever planned that knew what they were doing.
There's a house under construction right now in the townhome addition. I don't know if all the homes there are technically townhomes. They look that way to me. And just down the road are a couple quite opulent new full-scale houses. Well, congratulations to these people on their material blessings.
The direction of politics now is to give more favors to the very wealthy. The less-well-off go along with that because it's "aspirational." "I may not be wealthy but at least in America we all have a chance."
I remember some class warfare when I was young. Go to any small town and you'd find people my generation (young at the time) grumbling about certain well-off people. I know it happened in Morris. You'd hear resentment toward certain local "bank presidents." Oh, those guys could very much be lightning rods. I sense nothing like this in 2025.
Looks like the "aspirational" attitude won out. It is nice from the standpoint of all of us having comity. Still, I wonder if there might be a tipping point where the less-well-off say "wait a minute." Maybe as a Democrat I'm more inclined to lean that way than other people. We're the ones who listen to the "redistributionist" arguments. We have been very much out of favor over this last chapter of USA history.
But world history teaches us that the less-well-off can become aggrieved. Do you sense any signs of this building up in America? Well maybe not yet. And we cannot predict the future. But we can speculate on possibilities. That's what I'm doing.
We have been buying into the Republican mantra of "trickle-down" for so long. Ronald Reagan taught us this. It has validity to a point. We are seeing extreme conservatives win so triumphantly now, we might wonder if that can continue indefinitely.
Firm stance
There are so many committed Republicans out there who would be so incredulous, rude to your face, if you hinted that maybe economic class divisions need to be lessened some, sandpapered down as it were. These people continue to win. I have seen the zeitgeist in America change over time. We have gone from patriotic Americans supporting our war efforts, to where war is absolutely shunned. And I find that amazing. We spent years trying to replicate what we accomplished in WWII. The troops we saw in the news reports always reminded us of our heroic "grunts" in WWII.
We got deluded by that and decided that "patriotic" Americans had to support our wartime adventures around the globe. Everything since WWII has seemed like a failure. And maybe we misunderstood our own success in WWII. Oliver Stone the moviemaker has been a leader in trying to get us to re-think WWII. Essentially he says the Russians coming from the east were instrumental in crushing the Nazis. D-Day was a vehicle for opening a western front that would wear the Germans out.
It all worked in the end. Success? Who really wants to think about success when you consider the sheer tragedy of WWII worldwide? Those who were killed were not around to tell us their story. We had "veterans" who survived and could talk a good game at Memorial Day programs. We should really leave the past in the past.
Toe in the water
And now, what about the possible revival of real "class warfare" or just "class envy?" I put my toe in the water a few days ago. I suggested in a comment to Yahoo! News that maybe some of the billionaires who got the tax cut could chip in for funeral expenses for the many victims of the Texas flooding.
The "trickle down" Republicans would lose their temper and call you an idiot if you suggested that the DOGE cuts hurt readiness for natural disasters. But when you look at the sheer size of the cuts, how could you argue there could be no bad consequences? But Republicans get all up in arms.
They'd say "don't point fingers," as if Republicans themselves don't point fingers at various people all the time.
So, what about the idea of those billionaires just helping out a little: all those families that will have sudden funeral bills staring at them, like for around $10,000?
Does anyone really need to be a billionaire? Hey, do you really know how much a "billion" is?
I got someone's dander up by the comment I shared on Yahoo! News. This individual responded: "So billionaires caused the floods?" This attitude has seemed most common. Forget the old wisdom of "I am my brother's keeper." It's gone.
Has Christianity itself been bastardized? Bastardized by the Trump movement? You can't talk simple logic or compassion with these people. Wouldn't some of the billionaires have their souls warmed if they helped out families of the flooding victims some? So many young people lost. Now we'll probably see a boom in the funeral home industry.
I looked up a church service from an LCMC church in Kerrville, Texas. LCMC is the same denomination as for our Good Shepherd in Morris. Of course they express grief. Then again, you can be sure that all LCMC people voted for Trump and the Republicans.
Maybe people need reminding that a guiding principle of the Republican Party is that it "does not want people to like government." Well, we reap what we sow.
Many people have asked "why did so many poor white people fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War?" Well today, I must ask "why do so many disadvantaged and struggling people fight to support Trump and the Republicans?"
"Aspirational?" In the abstract maybe.
It continues
Here's a headline as of 10 a.m. Tuesday: "Trump administration to incinerate USAID emergency food instead of sending it to people abroad."
Christianity is behind the power of Trump and MAGA. Is it time to resolutely reject the Christian faith?
Give credit to the Catholics, I think they are trying to hold firm. Firm for what's good for humanity.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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