Celebrate the Holidays with Random Acts of Kindness Stimulate the Brain and Change the World

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The Power of Kindness

How to stimulate the brain and change the world.

What exactly is a random act of kindness?  While Wikipedia takes a stab at defining it whatever is on Wikipedia is subject to continuous change.  As a result there are numerous references on the Internet to Wikipedia definitions for the phrase, "Random acts of kindness" but all of them are different.  Here is the latest incarnation of their definition.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

A random act of kindness is a selfless act performed by a person or people wishing to either assist or cheer up an individual person or people.  Either spontaneous or planned, random acts of kindness are encouraged by various communities.

Any further search for a definitive definition for this phrase has been met with frustration, deception and despair, all reactions contrary to the whole concept of random acts of kindness.

Perhaps the problem with today is our preoccupation with precisely defining what we are doing before we can do it.  When there is confusion in terms of the definition, there can only be chaos in the execution or lack of execution.

In other words, maybe we just think to much.

Why in the world do we need definitions in order to do good?  I mean do we really adhere to a world view that if it is not in Wikipedia or the Urban Dictionary then it cannot be right, or good or even worthwhile?

I use both resources on occasion but as a journalist I also realize that any effort to use democracy to create truth is doomed, and both resources do it.

What does that mean?  Both services allow their definitions and other content to be submitted by the public, edited by the public, changed by the public and even interpreted by the public.

That sounds like a form of democracy, power to the people, regardless of whether the people know the subject or understand the power.  It is like the French Revolution, a brutal and bloody overthrow of a monarchy in 1789 with no idea what to do if it succeeded.  It took them three times to get it right.

Encyclopedia Britannica defines it as follows:

French Revolution, also called Revolution of 1789,  the revolutionary movement that shook France between 1787 and 1799 and reached its first climax there in 1789. Hence the conventional term “Revolution of 1789,” denoting the end of the ancen régime in France and serving also to distinguish that event from the later French revolutions of 1830 and 1848.

So what exactly is a "Random act of kindness" and why should we care what it means?

Well, I say a "Random act of kindness" is a selfless and often spontaneous act performed to help others or to cheer them up.  It is usually performed anonymously with no expectation for acknowledgement or recognition.

If we worried less about motive and reward and more about giving we would need no definition and no reason to act.  It would be an everyday occurrence because it was just the right thing to do whenever you can do it.

But from a scientific perspective there may be compelling reasons why you really should be doing it every opportunity you may get.

Helping others feel good and happy might just be your ticket to happiness and to a whole lot of other people, and that sounds like a good thing.

Science has proven that the brain generates chemicals naturally,  One of these is a hormone called serotonin found in the pineal gland, digestive tract and the brain.  It serves to transmit nerve signals to nerve cells.

Changes in the hormone level can alter your mood by making you sad when the level goes down and making you happy when the level goes up.  When you stay happy this endorphin protects you from depression while helping to strengthen your immune system.

Studies have proven when a person does a random act of kindness it not only increases the happy feeling, through production of more serotonin, for the recipient of this act of kindness, but also for the giver and anyone watching the act or reactions.

Imagine that, we spend billions of dollars on prescription drugs because we don't feel good only to feel worse and destroy our immune system in the process, when we could be feeling well by doing random acts of kindness.

Unfortunately, here in America it may be difficult to find people able to react naturally to a random act of kindness.  You see, if they are already under the influence of prescription drugs their brain is no longer able to react naturally to such acts of kindness.

Think about this, based on our national addiction to legal, prescription drugs, one could conclude Americans are about the most depressed people on the planet.  We have the highest standard of living, most expensive health care and education, more wealth and better homes and diets than most people.

Yet we have had a 400% increase in anti-depressant pill use the last two decades because of our depression.  That figure comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, not me.

Helplessness, hopelessness, and immobilization are now the fashionable keys to being good Americans and great fodder for social gatherings.

Sooo.  Maybe our first random act of kindness should be to help people get off the drugs that are keeping them from being depressed in the first place.  There are a host of prescriptions to take care of our plethora of mind illnesses.

Here are some of the manifestations of depression and mood swinging.

Which Drugs Are Abused?

The most commonly used prescription drugs fall into three classes:

1. Opioids

Examples: oxycodone (OxyContin), hydrocodone (Vicodin), and meperidine (Demerol)

Medical uses: Opioids are used to treat pain or relieve coughs or diarrhea.
How they work: Opioids attach to opioid receptors in the central nervous system (the  brain and the spinal cord), preventing the brain from receiving pain messages.

2. Central Nervous System (CNS) Depressants
Examples: pentobarbital sodium (Nembutal), diazepam (Valium), and alprazolam (Xanax)
Medical uses: CNS depressants are used to treat anxiety, tension, panic attacks, and sleep disorders.

How they work: CNS depressants slow down brain activity by increasing the activity of a neurotransmitter called GABA. The result is a drowsy or calming effect.

3. Stimulants

Examples: methylphenidate (Ritalin) and amphetamine/dextroamphetamine (Adderall)

Medical uses: Stimulants can be used to treat narcolepsy and ADHD.
How they work: Stimulants increase brain activity, resulting in greater alertness, attention, and energy.

Here are some of the results of our obsession with depression.

Therapeutic Drug Use
(Data are for the U.S.)
Percent of persons using at least one prescription drug in the past month: 48.5% (2007-2010)
Percent of persons using three or more prescription drugs in the past month: 21.7% (2007-2010)
Percent of persons using five or more prescription drugs in the past month: 10.6% (2007-2010)
Source: Health, United States, 2012, table 91  [PDF - 9.8 MB]

Physician office visits
Number of drugs ordered or provided: 2.6 billion
Percent of visits involving drug therapy: 75.1%

Most frequently prescribed therapeutic classes:
Analgesics
Antihyperlipidemic agents
Antidepressants
Source: National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 2010 Summary Tables, tables 22, 23, 24  [PDF - 382 KB]

What other people are saying.

Imagine this!  Kindness extended, received, or observed beneficially impacts the physical health and feelings of everyone involved!

Did you know that a single act of kindness can; bring a rush of euphoria, followed by a longer period of calm, reduce stress, increase the sense of self worth, happiness, and optimism, lower blood pressure, diminish pain, an increased sense of self-worth, greater happiness and optimism, translate to immense immune and healing benefits, increase a sense of self-worth, greater happiness and optimism, enhance our feeling of joyfulness, helps reverse feelings of depression and lower the heart rate.

Kindness Breeds More Kindness: In findings sure to gladden the heart of anyone who's ever wondered whether tiny acts of kindness have larger consequences, researchers have shown that generosity is contagious.

Goodness spurs goodness, they found: A single act can influence dozens more.

The positive effect of kindness on the immune system and on the increased production of serotonin in the brain has been proven in research studies. Serotonin is a naturally occurring substance in the body that makes us feel more comfortable, peaceful, and even blissful.

In fact, the role of most anti-depressants is to stimulate the production of serotonin chemically, helping to ease depression. Research has shown that a simple act of kindness directed toward another improves the functioning of the immune system and stimulates the production of serotonin in both the recipient of the kindness and the person extending the kindness.

Even more amazing is that persons observing the act of kindness have similar beneficial results. Imagine this! Kindness extended, received, or observed beneficially impacts the physical health and feelings of everyone involved!

Wayne Dyer

Kindness isn't just a fluffy, feel-good, warm-fuzzy concept. It is a powerful, energetic experience that transforms both the giver and recipient at such deep levels that some say it can work miracles. When we open our hearts and reach out to others in kindness, our brain releases endorphins—the morphine-like chemicals that produce the feelings of exhilaration know as the "runner's high." Acts of kindness, according to researcher Paul Persall, also cause your brain to release "Substance P," a neurotransmitter chemical that blocks pain. These two powerful physiological processes have an immense influence on our body/mind/spirit and the way that we experience life.

A steady flow of endorphins and Substance P through our bodies strengthens our immune system, keeps us feeling happy, joyful, optimistic and energized. This heightens our sense of well being so that we feel calmer, more centered and focused no matter what kind of stressful events might be happening around us. Physiologically, these brain chemicals improve circulation, reduce blood pressure, increase body warmth and improve weight control. Kindness helps us relax so that we can connect with others and with our own good feelings.

Janae Weinhold, Ph.D.

Now heal thyself and then help heal the world.

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Happy Holidays to all my friends around the world!

OUR HOLIDAY GREETING FOR YOU

For all of the world we offer hope for world peace and wish you happy holidays for (Christian) Christmas, (African) Kwanzaa, (Hispanic) Las Posadad-Noche Buena-Navidad, (Jewish) Hanukkah-Rosh Hashanah, (Persian) Yalda, (Islamic) Eid al-Adha-Muharram, (Buddhist) Rohatsu, (Hindu) Sankranti, (Celtic) Winter Solstice and (Chinese) New Year.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Feliz Navidad y Felices Fiestas

Joyeux Noël et joyeuses fêtes

Buon Natale e Buone Feste

Frohe Weihnachten und frohe Feiertage

Vrolijke Kerstmis en Gelukkige Vakantie

Καλα Χριστουγεννα και καλες διακοπες

Feliz Natal e Boas Festas

И Рождеством Христовым праздники

メリークリスマス休暇で幸せ

聖誕快樂，節日快樂

This is Rockefeller Center in NYC - the America we want you to remember.

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From the Coltons Point Times -- have a great, safe and loving holidays....

Classic Christmas videos - American style

    

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Is the Liberal Media Trump trashing finally over, or is it now destined for oblivion?

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With the latest effort to dump Trump, inspired and promulgated by the Liberal media, failing miserably, along with the election of Hillary Clinton, the Russian invasion of the American cyber world, and the phony recount efforts, do we finally get a break?

The election is still over, Donald Trump is still president, and the left wing liars, whiners, and wimps, best get used to the new America, Donald Trump's vision of hope, for a change.

I have been following presidential elections for more than half a century and the world has not seen such a despicable performance by a free and protected media to influence an election as that witnessed in 2016.

Sadly, the same biased, bigoted, and racist, left wing writers, prognosticators, pundits, pollsters, and political consultants will write all 21st Century historical accounts of the election of 2016.  Once again, we will fail to find truth in the news or history because of the manipulation by those who continually used their media positions to advance the Clinton agenda.

They still do not get it.

Once upon a time in America our news media reported the facts and let the public decide the truth.  Those days are long gone.  As the liberal movement swept over the media thanks to the merger of academic freedom with radical liberalism starting back in the 1960's, there has been a disconnect missed by all those attempting to shove an agenda down the throats of the public.

The people in America, to the shock of the left leaning media, have the same protection by the Constitution and Bill of Rights and retain the right to ignore the banshee screams of an alarmed liberal media that we are teetering on the eve of destruction for the past 50 years.

The same pollsters, who failed to rig our national election by misreading the mood of the public, seemed to miss their own credibility demise as public faith in our news media faded to the lowest level ever recorded this past year with just six percent of the public trusting the news media.

Ironically, it was just one of many signs that the Obama tenure as president gave them a very false sense of security, as the popularity of Obama the person could never overcome the many staggering "wrong track" polls against the Obama agenda.

The result was a media full of itself and the social agenda they intended to impose, whose real foundation, built on the temporary executive orders of a president without a country to run, were doomed from the start.  Obama was the vanguard of the political activist, community organizer, and ethereal professor, a champion of a social revolution not wanted in America.

Is it any surprise there were so many shocked experts and players every step of the election process as the lofty vision and dreams of a popular president failed to result in any public support and consensus?

While the liberals were busy congratulating themselves for eight years of Obama, and looking forward to eight more with Hillary, they did not even notice for the first time in modern American history more eligible American voters registered as Independents, than either Democrats or Republicans.

This is one of the most significant shifts in our history and the news media failed to notice as the majority of eligible voters rejected both political parties for the first time.  Is it any wonder a candidate for change finally had a path to victory?

From the point of the national conventions and selection of final candidates, the media made the coronation of Hillary Clinton the sole priority of the news media and ignored all warning signs that the public did not agree.

The nightly news anchors and reporters stopped being objective if they ever were, and created a murders role mentality among their liberal brethren to destroy the deplorable Trump by any way and means possible.

By late fall it seemed impossible to find unbiased media with the networks spewing the mantra that Trump cannot win while cable news became a bigger joke than the Saturday Night Live gang did.  Speaking of Saturday Night Live, the legendary network show did their best to humiliate Trump but drew some of the lowest ratings in years averaging about a third of their peak audiences from decades ago.

SNL pulled 2-3 million viewers a night, paltry for a network icon yet better than even lower numbers generated by all cable media, except the dominant Fox News.  Liberals dominated the media, yet totally missed the fact the public stopped watching the traditional news.

We are now more than a month past the election and just today, the Electoral College voted Trump president despite the many negative stories from the media about how he could still lose.  Clearly major network and cable news outlets will never accept Trump as president nor the will of the people in electing him.

If the liberal media continue to treat Trump as a pariah rather than president then it is only fair the Trump administration treat the media as hopelessly lost in unethical journalistic conduct and not deserving a place in the White House press corp.  Why recognize a media that refuses to recognize you as president?

Trump proved you do not need to spend a billion dollars on media buys to win an election.  He proved politicians could successfully appeal directly to the public and ignore the media.  The failure of the media to give Trump a fair chance and his astonishing victory tell the tale of truth.

The real dinosaur in this campaign is the outdated and biased news media.  The have suffocated on their own egos.  Now, never even considering the possibility of a Trump victory, they are lost at sea.

If there was any doubt of media bias against Trump here are excerpts from a recent article of the liberal media commenting on their own dilemma of having no one on their fair and balanced media staff who can write an op-ed article favorable to our new president Trump.

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Mainstream media puts out the call for pro-Trump columnists

By Paul Farhi December 9 at 9:09 AM 

Wanted: Columnists to say nice things about Donald Trump. Must be able to make cogent arguments in favor of the president-elect’s policies, appointees and statements. Experience preferred but not required.

It’s not an actual want ad, but it might as well be one. As they discovered during the long campaign season, the nation’s newspapers and major digital news sites — the dreaded mainstream media — are facing a shortage of people able, or more likely willing, to write opinion columns supportive of the president-elect.

Major newspapers, from The Washington Post to the New York Times, have struggled to find and publish pro-Trump columns for months. So have regional ones, such as the Des Moines Register and Arizona Republic, which have a long history of supporting Republican candidates

 “We struggled to find voices that could advocate for Donald Trump’s ideas,” said James Bennet, the Times’ editorial-page editor. “It was really unusual. It didn’t help that the conservative intelligentsia lined up against him.” But Bennet says Trump’s campaign contributed to the imbalance: “He didn’t have the people around him who were prepared to put together his arguments” for publication.

The Washington Post’s editorial-page editor, Fred Hiatt, said the paper is as committed “as ever” to offering readers “a range of smart, independent thinking, and we are always thinking about whether there are new voices we should be adding” as Trump takes office.

Said the Times’ Bennet: “We owe it to our readers to help them hear the voices that were supportive of Trump. . . . I’m proud of the work we did, but we could have done better.”

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So, the bias is built in and extensive by their own admission.  It continues with the misleading headlines, false fact checking services, and unusual use of long discredited information on Trump still used in current stories.

If the liberal and former Main Street media continue their practices of bias and twisting the truth, ratings will continue to collapse, trust will reach rock bottom, and the once venerable American media will face extinction not from government censorship or assaults on the First Amendment, but a failure to meet the public need for truth.

Oblivion will be a self-imposed death sentence due to lack of interest on the part of the public.

  

Enough whining - the People Spoke - Donald Trump is our President

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With almost all votes finally counted for president, the results demonstrate the widespread route by Donald Trump among the 50 states, which will make him our 45th President.

Trump wins Electoral vote by 306-232

Clinton wins popular vote by 2,357,260

Clinton wins California by 4,187,903

Trump wins remaining 49 states by 1,830,643

Clinton wins California and New York by 5,697,409

Trump wins remaining 48 states by 3,340,149

So far, the Trump victory has defied the media projections,

defied the polls,

defied the political pundits,

and left a lot of Hillary supporters in shell shock.

America has not broken out in civil war.

Our economy has not collapsed as the financial experts warned.

In fact, our financial markets have shattered all time records.

Nations around the world have not panicked or been traumatized.

It is about time for a deep breath in our Republic, and let Donald Trump demonstrate what kind of President he intends to be.

For all those who think someone should be president if they win one or two states by a landslide and ignore the rest of the states, you need a crash course on America, our Constitution, and the history you obviously missed.

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An Election Analysis by Actual People - Not Politicians, Pollsters, Press, or Pundits - Part 5

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One of the pleasures of publishing the Coltons Point Times is the opportunity to share with you the comments of my readers, the everyday persons working to survive and filling their life with everything they love.  A series of post-election analysis will be offered from contributing writers sharing their thoughts on the election.

They are not seasoned journalists but they are dedicated, patriotic Americans.  At times it is refreshing to hear honest observations rather than biased news so do not expect to hear from any professional politicians, pollsters, press, or pundits.

I want to thank the contributing writers and hope we can all learn more about each other if we will just take the time to read.

This Contributing Author post is hosted on the Coltons Point Times.  Contributor authors control their own work and the views do not reflect those of the Coltons Point Times.  If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email in the comment section.

A Report on the Election from the People's Republic of Johnson County Iowa

By Charles Kapp

November 14, 2016

I live in Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa, and a place the rest of the state sneeringly calls "the People's Republic of Johnson County."  I grew up in Southeast Iowa, not in Johnson County, however, and felt I had a reasonable grip on my state's electorate. 

For the last three months I have been telling my Iowa spouse, my Iowa offspring, my Iowa friends, and pretty much any who would listen that the Trump campaign would implode in a debacle that would do harm to the Republican party that would take them decades to undo.  Watching returns the other night on most of the networks it was pretty clear that my wildly mistaken analysis was shared by many.

The Donald made good on his boast.  The upset was "Uge."  Iowans returned their all-Republican-less-one delegation to Congress and supported Trump.  We are a red state.

I can only assume that votes for Donald Trump were of the "at least he isn't one of them" stripe and a vote against a woman whose bad press made that act an easy pleasure.  "He can't screw it up any more than they have" is profoundly naive.  Or is it pure cynicism?  Or just giving up? 

What it is, first and foremost, is sexist.  The question became "Are you going to support that nagging wench that we can't trust because right-wing quasi-news media tell us so or the strong 'broad shoulders' of the man?"

I have spoken with countless Iowans who I now suspect planned to vote Trump from the get-go.  A few were vocal supporters but most breasted their cards.  These are fine, loving people.  They do not want others to suffer.  But they do feel threatened.

A changing world continues to whittle away at our livelihoods.  People of color are encroaching on our white melting pot.  Our nation has actually been successfully attacked.  Violence, while hardly on the scale of so many places in the world, moves ever closer to us all.  And so, we must need more guns to protect ourselves.  We must need a strong, blustery man to protect us. 

An Election Analysis by Actual People - Not Politicians, Pollsters, Press, or Pundits - Part 4

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One of the pleasures of publishing the Coltons Point Times is the opportunity to share with you the comments of my readers, the everyday persons working to survive and filling their life with everything they love.  A series of post-election analysis will be offered from contributing writers sharing their thoughts on the election.

They are not seasoned journalists but they are dedicated, patriotic Americans.  At times it is refreshing to hear honest observations rather than biased news so do not expect to hear from any professional politicians, pollsters, press, or pundits.

I want to thank the contributing writers and hope we can all learn more about each other if we will just take the time to read.

This Contributing Author post is hosted on the Coltons Point Times.  Contributor authors control their own work and the views do not reflect those of the Coltons Point Times.  If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email in the comment section.

Just Relax and Feel Good About the Future

By Ed O'Connor
November 14, 2016

I have been thinking about my impressions and thoughts after the election. Today it hit me while smoking a cigar on my back patio. I realized I was no longer worrying about what kind of second amendment attack will the Federal Government unleash tomorrow.

Nor was I worried about what person they try to put on the Supreme Court, what kind of regulations are they try to implement to stop Fracking here in Colorado, or what we do about boarder security.

Perhaps somebody will stand up and tell some of these foreign leaders where to go and not mince words.  Lastly, John Bolton may get the position he truly deserves.

Now it is the progressives turn to worry about all of this stuff.  I finally felt there was peace at last in my mind. Maybe it will not last, but it sure felt good this evening.

I guess this pretty much sums up how I have felt this last few days. I was not looking forward to the future prior to the election as I felt I knew what road Clinton was going to take us down.

Now the road seems wide open like the front range out here in the Colorado foothills. I only pray Donald Trump makes some bold moves and gets us rolling down that open road.

Maybe it is this sense of relief I feel that I can just relax and feel good about the future.

An Election Analysis by Actual People - Not Politicians, Pollsters, Press, or Pundits - Part 3

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One of the pleasures of publishing the Coltons Point Times is the opportunity to share with you the comments of my readers, the everyday persons working to survive and filling their life with everything they love.  A series of post-election analysis will be offered from contributing writers sharing their thoughts on the election.

They are not seasoned journalists but they are dedicated, patriotic Americans.  At times it is refreshing to hear honest observations rather than biased news so do not expect to hear from any professional politicians, pollsters, press, or pundits.

I want to thank the contributing writers and hope we can all learn more about each other if we will just take the time to read.

This Contributing Author post is hosted on the Coltons Point Times.  Contributor authors control their own work and the views do not reflect those of the Coltons Point Times.  If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email in the comment section.

Preamble 2016

Michael Wm. Krafka

November 14, 2016

We the People, in order to form a more perfect union, have some serious work to do.  We are not, at this point in history, beset by an occupying external power.  Rather, we are dealing with what the business community calls “disruptive change” because of this presidential election.  The foundational fissures have been opening over the years from the lingering frustration that economic well being remained out of reach for the vast majority of hard working Americans.  They have watched their incomes stagnating and declining in purchasing power while the corporate profits they delivered through their hard work continue to flow to those at the very top of the economic ladder.  These pent up frustrations have vented and found a singular and unusually disruptive voice.  That voice, through the unexpected co-opting of a major political party, was freely elected into power by marginally less than a plurality of “We the People” who cared to exercise their right to vote.  This duly elected voice makes bold promises he guarantees to deliver, apparently through the messianic force of his being.  Those promises are paired with a corresponding and alarming set of threats to re-impose the centuries-old restrictions to freedom that our Constitution explicitly protects against.

Specifically, establishing Justice and insuring domestic Tranquility may once again be made subject to determining if one is of a preferred race or religion, potentially subject to government verification. Our next president has called for racial profiling by law enforcement. His desire to impose these restrictions was regularly in evidence as he loudly incited mob rule at his political rallies.
  

To provide for the common defense with an all-volunteer military is a bipartisan congressional responsibility of adequate funding and a militarily strategic matter for the commander-in-chief to deploy that military in the most responsible manner with declarations of war approved by congress.  Today, we are taken aback by cavalier talk of nuclear proliferation to our non-nuclear allies, and, compounding this alarm, by his questioning why we should not consider actually using our nuclear arsenal.  This recklessness not only jeopardizes our freedoms but our very being.

This seventy-year-old has already lived on the nuclear precipice in 1962 during the Cuban missile crises as a high school student in a military academy, certainly not oblivious to that national existential threat. The entire nation was transfixed on its black and white televisions at that time to watch President Kennedy’s address on the developing situation as he cautioned against initiating nuclear war, where the “fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth..”  In the White House, the president was counseling with his Joint Chiefs, some of whom were favoring a strike as they opposed the option of a naval blockade.  I would refer the new presidential advisers to Robert Kennedy’s memoir, Thirteen Days, where he recalled:

“One member of the Joint Chiefs, for example, argued that we could use our nuclear weapons, on the basis that our adversaries would use theirs against us in an attack.”

Apparently, our president-elect has been contemplating this dangerous logic based upon the questions he has raised.  Robert Kennedy continues his observation:

 “I thought, as I listened, of the many times that I had heard the military take positions which, if wrong, had the advantage that no one would be around in the end to know.” 

As they say, elections have consequences – God forbid.
  

The political divide on how we should promote the general Welfare is foremost in the minds of those who voted for this celebrity business mogul, trusting that he will help them reach a level of prosperity they know they deserve but are unable to achieve in the current political-economic climate.  Unfortunately, for them, his aligned party has consistently stacked the deck against the average wage earner.

He and his party continue to champion financial deregulation, which was at the core of the 2008 financial crisis, allowing predatory lending to run unchecked.  The poster-child of entrenched income inequality is how the bailed out Wall Street banks paid millions in employee bonuses while accepting taxpayer-provided TARP funds to cover their losses.  Citigroup reportedly rewarded over 700 employees with at least $1 million in bonuses while losing nearly $19 billion during that year.

Yes, the investment banks largely repaid those government loans, but those executives directly responsible for causing the worst recession since the Great Depression continued receiving increased incomes and bonuses.  As a result, the middle class lost their jobs and their homes, triggering the global financial crisis, a crisis the president-elect said he was openly rooting for HYPERLINK "http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/19/politics/donald-trump-2006-hopes-real-estate-market-crashes/"to engineerHYPERLINK "http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/19/politics/donald-trump-2006-hopes-real-estate-market-crashes/" HYPERLINK "http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/19/politics/donald-trump-2006-hopes-real-estate-market-crashes/"a HYPERLINK "http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/19/politics/donald-trump-2006-hopes-real-estate-market-crashes/"personal financial windfallHYPERLINK "http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/19/politics/donald-trump-2006-hopes-real-estate-market-crashes/".   

However, by 2008 the middle class and the poor had already found themselves dealt out of the game for some time.  In the forward to his fortieth anniversary edition of The Affluent Society, economist John Kenneth Galbraith discussed what might have changed from his 1958 observations with a perspective of forty years later.  On the attitudes of achieving affluence, he notes:

“Forty years ago I did not fully foresee the extent to which affluence would come to be perceived as a matter of deserved personal reward and thus fully available to the poor, were they only committed to the requisite effort.”

Galbraith’s 1998 observation was just taking root.  Fourteen years later the 2012 GOP convention championed the attitude of affluence equating to personal and moral worth.  Then VP-nominee Paul Ryan coined the term “hammock of dependency” to demean the initiative of those still struggling to recover from the Wall Street catastrophe, or who looked to find a leg up in life.

He insinuated those who were down and out lacked the dreams for themselves and their children, favoring to live out their lives in government-subsidized poverty.  He would divide the worthiness of Americans into two classes, “the makers, and the takers.” 

Presidential nominee Mitt Romney put the nail in his electoral coffin with his infamous “47%” address to wealthy donors, charging that the lower income group would never accept livelihoods out of poverty, apart from government aid.  Those nominees that year found new ways to shrink the Republican tent that resulted in their defeat. 

Yet, this “47%” now makes up some of the electorate throwing their support behind this new outsider and his party, and they may ultimately find that they have voted against their own best interests.  The GOP, again in the Oval Office after eight years and with continued control of congress, will primarily pursue tax cuts first before programs to drive growth.  This will continue to put the middle class at the bottom of the heap.

Speaker Ryan’s Medicare and Medicaid restructuring will first and foremost directly impact senior citizens “by raising out-of-pocket costs for some and shifting others from traditional Medicare coverage to commercial insurance”, according to a Forbes magazine article.  There has been no disclosure on the amount of offsetting tax credits seniors might receive, along with ambiguity on many other details, which is typical for Ryan-authored proposals.

Then will come the promised large tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations which could spike the national debt by $1HYPERLINK "http://crfb.org/papers/promises-and-price-tags-fiscal-guide-2016-election"1.5HYPERLINK "http://crfb.org/papers/promises-and-price-tags-fiscal-guide-2016-election" trillionHYPERLINK "http://crfb.org/papers/promises-and-price-tags-fiscal-guide-2016-election" over ten years according to the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.  Once again, we find the middle class voters who elected this upcoming government left holding the bag to pay the debt.  Par for the course, the net gains from these tax reductions will likely find their way through the loopholes and to the offshore havens that keep the tax rate percentages of the wealthiest lower than 90% of the country.
  

We have yet to see anything from this next president or his congress that would un-rig this game for the people who put them into office.

Now the election is over and the vote count completed.  The voters constitutionally handed the presidency to Trump, the rogue Washington outsider, widely seen as an ethically and morally challenged demagogue.  The numbers, data, and evidence matters as the results are in and we are required to accept them.

Just as climate science confirms the trend of global warming, we, in the global community, largely accept those results.  If a doctor were to diagnose you with a serious illness, not accepting the result would be foolish.  We must accept the results in each of these cases.  However, accepting the results is not the same as saying these results are acceptable.  Illness, climate change, and this election present long-term outcomes that can trend toward the unacceptable and potentially on to cataclysmic unless corrective intervention is applied.  

So how do we now secure the Blessings of Liberty for us and our Posterity, with the promised threats and observed recklessness this election has delivered?  Fortunately, our Constitution has inherent remedies.  Elections are transient events and no single person or party can fail outrageously and then continue in power perpetually.  However, this election’s outcome also conclusively indicates a need to address symptoms of national fracturing.

First, the tribalization of our country has been exacerbated primarily due to the middle class losing out economically.  People are becoming less and less comfortable, not to mention less tolerant, of those not sharing their ethnic heritage. Cable and Internet “news” media outlets have been the primary accelerant to tribalization, seeing an opportunity to drive racial animus as a political tactic against the first African American president.

This was in full force in 2012 with the current president-elect serving as propagandist-in-chief until Obama was re-elected.  The results of the ensuing “autopsy” prescribed by the GOP party chairman recommended more outreach to minorities and more tolerance of the progressive social views of millennials in order to expand the Republican base.  That recommendation lasted up until the 2016 nomination process where the nominee, with his characteristic unreserved vitriol, carved up America into the racial, ethnic, and religious groups to be demonized, monitored, and otherwise dealt with as his supporters cheered his new xenophobia platform

In the end, the GOP did win the Electoral College but has now lost the popular vote in six of the last seven elections, 2004 being the lone exception. This election has been characterized as a “white wash”.  Eventually, the concept of a whites-only firewall to protect Republican candidates is a losing strategy, especially given the outcome of this latest popular vote. (Yes, maybe Bernie would have won it all.)

But this tribalization is of no benefit to any group politically or economically. The entire middle class and those economically below that line need to unite to challenge the policies that will continue to be passed by this new president and his party that, as history has shown, will continue to undercut their well being.      

Secondly, civil discourse has devolved into one-hundred-forty-character road rage.  (Need I point out who champions this method as his favorite form of retribution? Leadership, anyone?). The cure to our divisions will not occur via text, or Facebook, or impulsive, angry and anonymous comments on a newspaper opinion writer’s column. Offering opposing and constructive views without personal insults might be an approach one would typically use if not separated from another by the Cloud. We rarely see this in practice, especially in the political context.

Finally, elections are cyclical, and in two years will come another opportunity for adjustments. The separation of powers defined in our constitution might supply sufficient safeguards in the interim to constrain someone familiar only with unconstrained authority from acting irresponsibly, but this would not be something we should take on faith.

This nation has been said to be an ongoing experiment.  Had the election results been as all the polls mistakenly forecast with Hillary emerging as the winner, then the outcome of that experiment could be easily predicted; we would have potentially endured four more years of congressional gridlock and ongoing investigations of the new president in order to render her ineffective and, perhaps, impeachable.

However, those were not the results and we have cast ourselves into an unforeseen period of disruption. Now, our current experiment can potentially result in resetting many of the controls on which we have historically relied to sustain our national identity as the model of freedom and democracy, and as the world’s most responsible superpower.  By nature, experiments frequently deliver unexpected outcomes.

If we’re fortunate we may get penicillin. NASA crashed several unmanned launches before putting Alan Shepard atop a Redstone rocket.  In this case we have neither a laboratory nor a test launch pad.  This experiment will be done live and in real time.  It requires close monitoring and the readiness for an immediate response if and when things begin to trend toward the detrimental.

About the author:

Mike Krafka is a native of Ottumwa, Iowa and currently resides in the Providence, Rhode Island area.  Mike has a degree in composition from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and a graduate certificate in Business Analytics from Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island.  He has a career over the past thirty years working primarily in the financial industry as a technology executive with a speciality in systems capacity management. Mike is the father of three sons who are musicians and educators in the New York City and Boston areas.