Why Make Cadillacs If Majority Can Afford Cobalts?

If you haven’t protested in our state capital, join the crowd.
No one is happy, or so it seems. Everyone is just plain mad, fed up, and are not about to take it anymore. I believe it’s because many people want a day off, and protesting is the snazziest way to get a day out of the office.
We will just protest silently as we go to work, if we have a job.
So, common man and woman, it will finally fall to us, the ordinary ones, who foot the bills for everything, logical and nonsensical, who sit pensively and watch a stream of unhappy folks steal the headlines, to stand up and yell. I doubt we will, since we are the “silent ones.”
If you are like me, you are fed up with stories about governments that are broke, public employees who have to fight tool and nail for what was negotiated, and courts bowing to whims of the loudest crier.
Let the story be told of how non-union taxpayers make ends meet in this dreadful state of affairs which we find ourselves. Many of us are just too weary at the end of a day to shovel down supper and head out to a meeting that, in truth, will have no effect on the problems that concern us.
I suppose we have gotten what is coming to us. We do, in fact, get the kind of government we deserve. We elect and forget, pay taxes and slap our foreheads when we get the bills. How has it evolved into this sad state of affairs?
Remember that great sea of Americans known as “the silent majority?” Here we are, standing over here, see us? We have no union contract to ensure us a salary increase, or guarantee us anything. We work at the pleasure of our employers. Today could be our last day on the job, and we won’t have a clue until closing time.
How about that factored into some fat budget figures? Do we gripe aloud? No, we keep our mouths shut and keep on working.
How about those who fall through the cracks for any type of assistance?
We could probably fill the Herald weekly with true stories of good people, honest people, hardworking people, who worked their entire lives, and in their sunset years, could use just a little help over the bumps, maybe to pay sky-high oil bills or a gas bill, or a credit card bill that is way too high.
Can they get help? Sorry, they don’t qualify. Yet they see someone who never worked, and gets a free check, and they grow irate.
Credit cards? Why yes, they are the scourge of the workingman, but there are times when no option is left than to use one.
We all know those who seem to have a keen ability to “milk the system.” Such stories add only to our sense of frustration, and yet such stories proliferate.
Still, among us silent ones, is a thing called pride. That can be a deadly five-letter word. Because of pride, many good folks would rather go to bed sick than visit a “free” clinic. They would rather eat saltines and margarine than visit a food bank. We don’t hear much from those people, do we?
All we seem to hear is of screaming mad people who carry signs and demand this or that from a bankrupt government, then they add insult to injury by giving a zippy sound byte to a TV reporter. Spit in our faces, why don’t you?
What about those who do not qualify for any sort of government help? They are left to their own devices, and they are a vast majority.
While headlines are filled with endless drivel about growing demands on healthcare, good, bad and ugly, how about the weekly listings for charity fundraisers for local families suffering terribly with medical afflictions too awful to mention?
There is a disconnect somewhere. Ordinary people slip through the cracks, and that hurts us all.
The most successful fundraiser may net a few thousand dollars, and an entire community may dig deep into its wallets to help, but what is that stacked against six or seven figure medical bills, most not covered by insurance for one reason or another?
Mortgage the house, the horse and future, and still, it won’t make a dent in the medical bills.
We never see that afflicted child or physically tormented adult marching up the statehouse steps in protest, do we?
We pay our bills. Elect our officials. Read the news and shake our heads in disgust. We make due with ever-smaller amounts for ourselves as prices rise for food, gas, drugs, clothes, utilities and insurance.
We hear about an economy on the rebound, yet unemployment is more pervasive than salt water. Take government statistics for what they are worth, not much. Statistics can be made to state anything, just like the Bible.
We are bombarded with rhetoric about government creating jobs, yet we puzzle at the very thought. Government is not in business to create jobs. That is not its role.
The “wealthy” are demonized daily by the propaganda machine and government, as if they did something criminal by attaining riches. Since when, in this capitalistic society, is wealth a bad thing? Why produce Cadillacs if the majority can only afford Cobalts?
Take away the dream of wealth, of stepping into a better place, and you might as well kill everyone’s ambition right here and now. Why invest in the future if there is not a hope of gain?
Wealth is promised to no one, yet it keeps us rolling. When the dream is done, so are we.
We, the silent ones, continue a search for true leaders. We remain in a desert far from water, it seems, for leaders with moral convictions, who will stand and not back down for what we, the common folks, believe is right for this place in which we live.
One will come along, sooner, we hope, than later, because we haven’t seen any that could be called great. All grovel to the lowest common denominator.
Each day, we get up and hope for the best; we pray to God, whatever we believe Him to be; and do our work to the best of our ability. That is how we were raised.
There are more of us than you might think, and we anxiously await the change we know must come to restore America’s greatness that only wells up from strong, proud, truly free people.
I’m not apologizing, because that’s the way I feel here amongst the “silent majority.”