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I woke up this morning thinking about how completely disconnected the news feels from what Americans are actually going through right now.
Turn on the TV and we’re talking about Iran. Venezuela. Greenland. Russia. Ukraine. There is always another country we’re supposed to be worried about and another crisis overseas that apparently deserves our immediate attention.
But talk to actual Americans and they’re worried about something completely different.
They’re worried about the grocery bill. They’re worried about rent. They’re wondering if they’ll ever be able to afford a house. Families with decent jobs are watching more of their paycheck disappear every month and people who are making more money than they did five years ago somehow feel poorer.
And I genuinely don’t understand why that isn’t the biggest story in America.
A house, a car, groceries, childcare and insurance were not considered luxuries twenty years ago. That was a normal middle-class life. Now millions of Americans are being priced out of it while politicians stand behind podiums telling us how great everything is going.
People don’t give a shit what the numbers on a government chart say when they can open their banking app and see exactly how they’re doing.
The party line now is, “But the stock market is up! The economy has never been better!”
Okay. And who does that actually benefit?
It benefits rich people. It benefits the owners of these companies, the same people our politicians are in bed with. Lower- and middle-class Americans, which is the majority of this country, don’t have hundreds or thousands of dollars left over every month to throw into the stock market. Most Americans don’t even have a 401(k), because traditional companies can’t afford to open them for their workers.
So what are we even talking about here?
You can get on camera and tell us the economy is doing great until you’re blue in the face, but that means nothing to the family putting groceries back because their cart costs too much or the 30-year-old who did everything they were told to do and still can’t afford a house.
That is the “America” people are actually living in.
Americans know what groceries cost. They know what their rent used to be. They know what their parents could afford on an ordinary salary, and they know they’re working just as hard for a life that keeps getting further away.
The average American does not care about the stock market. They care about how much their bills cost and how much they have left over at the end of the month.
This is what our government should be obsessed with fixing.
Donald Trump didn’t get elected because millions of Americans wanted another war in the Middle East. He campaigned on America First. He promised to stop endless wars, bring down costs, stop wasting American money overseas and put ordinary Americans ahead of Washington.
So why are we once again spending so much time talking about Iran, Venezuela and Greenland while Americans are still waiting for the things they were promised at home?
And this isn’t just about Trump. We have watched this happen under president after president.
When they’re campaigning, everything is about us. Our jobs. Our families. Our bills. They tell us Washington has forgotten ordinary Americans and promise they’re going to change it.
Then they get elected and suddenly there is always something more important: another enemy, another war, another country that apparently requires our attention and our money while the problems Americans elected these people to fix somehow keep getting pushed aside.
At some point, we have to ask why this keeps happening.
And I don’t think it’s an accident.
I think Americans are constantly flooded with things to fear overseas because a population terrified of the next foreign enemy is a population that spends a hell of a lot less time looking at what its own government is doing at home.
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Keep Americans worried about Iran and they aren’t talking about why they can’t afford a house. Keep them terrified of Russia and they aren’t asking why healthcare can financially destroy a family. Convince them that China is the greatest threat to their future and maybe they spend less time asking why the American Dream has become unaffordable for so many Americans.
The fear keeps our attention pointed in exactly the wrong direction.
Because imagine if Americans gave their own government the same scrutiny they give every foreign enemy put in front of them.
Imagine if every cable news network spent weeks obsessing over why young Americans can’t afford homes.
Imagine if politicians spoke about the destruction of the American middle class with the same urgency they use when talking about Iran getting the same nuclear weapon they’ve been warning us about for the last 30 years.
Imagine if billions of dollars leaving this country received the same nonstop coverage as whatever Vladimir Putin said yesterday.
That would be a very different national conversation.
Instead, we get fear.
And we have seen how powerful that fear can be.
After September 11, Americans were terrified, and Washington used that fear to launch a so-called “War on Terror” that lasted for decades. We invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq. We got the Patriot Act, massive government surveillance and wars that cost this country an unimaginable amount of money and human life.
Iraq didn’t attack us on September 11.
Yet we invaded Iraq. And the weapons of mass destruction used to sell Americans on that war weren’t there.
Our government has lied us into war after war, killing millions of people in the process. There is something deeply psychopathic about lying an entire nation into a war knowing what the consequences will be.
You would think that alone would make Americans question every single time Washington tells us there’s another foreign enemy we need to fear.
Instead, twenty-five years later, we’re still doing it.
I find it amazing how many people will tell you the government lies, the CIA lies and the media lies, but the second their own party starts beating the war drums, suddenly they’re repeating the same government talking points they would have called propaganda six months ago.
Apparently Washington only lies when the other party is in charge.
If Washington misled Americans about Iraq, why wouldn’t you ask questions now?
And if you voted for someone because he promised America First, why wouldn’t you hold him to it?
That isn’t disloyalty and it’s certainly not unpatriotic. These people work for us. Not the other way around.
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Iran isn’t responsible for your grocery bill. Russia didn’t promise to make your life more affordable. China didn’t campaign in your state promising to fix Washington.
The people sitting in Washington did.
And that’s exactly why it is so useful to keep Americans looking everywhere except Washington.
Because while we’re fighting with each other over the latest assassination conspiracy, culture-war outrage or social issue dominating our feeds, nobody is asking why ordinary Americans are working harder and getting less. We spend all day fighting each other over whatever story we’ve been handed while the people we elected get another day without having to explain why the basic American life is becoming unaffordable.
The greatest trick Washington ever pulled was convincing Americans to spend all of our time fighting each other and fearing people thousands of miles away, in countries most Americans couldn’t point to on a map if their lives depended on it, while the people actually running this country quietly made the American Dream harder and harder to afford.
I’m tired of being told who I’m supposed to hate. I’m tired of being told which country I’m supposed to fear, which social issue I’m supposed to be furious about and which story should consume my attention this week.
I want to know why the people we elected aren’t making life better for the people who elected them.
Because Iran didn’t ask for my vote.
Russia didn’t promise me anything.
And China doesn’t work for me.
Washington does.
And somewhere along the way, Americans forgot something incredibly important:
This country needs us to function. We do not need Washington to tell us how to live. They need our votes. They need our tax dollars. They need our labor to keep this entire country running.
The government exists because of the American people, not the other way around. And according to our Constitution, we should have overthrown our government by now.
So tell me: what do you guys think about all of this? Do you feel like Washington is focused on the things that actually matter to ordinary Americans right now? What are you seeing happening in this country that deserves a lot more attention than it’s getting? And how are you seeing all of this play out in your day-to-day life?
Tell me in the comments. I genuinely want to hear your thoughts and what you’re seeing in your own communities.
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"That’s why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it." George Carlin 2005
George Carlin said it best many years ago: “They call it the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”