Stop the Steal: If you take a step back those folks may actually be onto something.

I have had a large number of decent civil conversations with many people who consider themselves lifelong conservatives and who use the slogan “Stop the Steal.” My conclusion is that they believe in the slogan. And they are not attempting to propel lies into public discourse. They understand the facts. They continue to promote the slogan because it stands for the foundation of current political unrest. And I find that many Democrats and Independents (not all) agree with the premise when phrased without the slogan.

So what is it? Based upon thousands of emails, comments, and conversations with people of all stripes on the political spectrum, most people simply believe that the government has enabled theft from the consumer, the worker, and people who intended to be borrowers in a traditional loan transaction. Further, once the illegal activity is exposed, the government has refused to make corrections, prosecute the business entities that committed the violations, and even rewarded the perpetrators.

In my opinion, the true basis for the behavior of the prior administration was the government itself, which was doing the same outlandish things that Democrats decry as reason enough to give them full power despite their absence on the political battlefield. The reason for the apathy of Democratic voters is that the party has failed to convince anyone that they will actually produce a result that corrects the imbalances in our society.

There are hundreds of laws and regulations on the books concerning consumer protection, antitrust, and the creation of government agencies to regulate and even stop fraud from being committed against the American consumer. For the last 4 decades, the enforcement and even the acknowledgment of such laws and regulations have been ignored. People understand this happened because of a conscious policy decision by the government to preserve and even assist the thieves who have consistently undercut the wages, wealth, and welfare of the average American citizen.

Politicians point to the growth of GDP and the DOW. But the majority of Americans are suffering from stagnant earnings imposed by illegal maneuvers in the marketplace designed to remove participation of the average American in the “growth” that is touted by those politicians.

Governance by both parties has overtly allowed the imbalance and inequality to grow despite clear evidence that raising the wage and opportunities for the creation and growth of wealth results in a MORE vibrant economy and BETTER overall survival of companies. History does not lie.

Herman Daly, who recently surfaced again, has been arguing for decades that the love affair with the slogan “growth” or the slogan “GDP” must end. We are neither measuring national economic growth nor measuring the economic welfare of the average American citizen. That is what the “Stop the Steal” proponents are so angry about.

Announcements and reporting of current “measurements” of GDP and the DOW are merely tools of propaganda to convince all of us that prosperity is just around the corner.  For most people, it isn’t. For decades the number of people who have been able to keep pace with inflation has been shrinking. And most people do not believe the government and the media propagated myths — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.

Very few people understand how they become victims but know or believe they have been cheated and defrauded in most or even all of their major transactions. I think they are correct. They have been unable or demoralized (and distracted) from opposing the forces of organizations that claim “capitalism” as the basis of their activities but whose revenues and profits come strictly from cheating consumers, closing out options for competing products and services, and frequent government support, directly or indirectly. That government support is at the expense of the American taxpayer, the American homeowner, the American consumer, and the American government itself.

As many of the readers of this blog have pointed out, the list of activities by so-called business entities is nearly endless in its depiction of those activities as crimes for which an individual would be aggressively prosecuted and imprisoned.

American media started out doing investigative journalism about the 2008 crash and suddenly went dark as they neared the truth about the players and the illegal activities that produced worthless junk masquerading as loans and certificates that were merely betting on the future announcements of performance of transactions with homeowners. Some of those high-profile journalists have admitted in private that they were shut down. So people of all stripes are suspicious of the media, much of which is owned by titanic corporate enterprises or people of titanic wealth.

Whether the voters are from a rural or dense urban area, they all agree that they are not getting a fair shake or a fair opportunity. The problem is neither ignorance nor ideology. The problem is that the people are right.  So, at the risk of incoming hate mail from my liberal friends, I suggest we stop vilifying those who chant “Stop the Steal” and maybe join them on the underlying sense of betrayal. We can fix this if we all admit that there is a problem. We will never fix it, and the political divide will get more strident if we don’t admit it.

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