Hit 'Em Where It Hurts

Many years ago I received some business advice I chose to ignore: Remind people of their pain, then tell them you can fix it. This works better than just letting them know how you can make their lives better. Or something along those lines. I didn't heed the advice. I've also never been great at business, but that's okay. I don't want to remind people of their pain, even if I can help alleviate it.

Perhaps this is one of the things that bothers me most about the lunatic running for president: He talks a lot about how awful life is, how bad the country is, how unfair "the process" is (especially for him), and on and on. And he says he can make it better. In fact, according to him, only he can fix it. I haven't heard him that could be any stretch of the imagination be considered an actual plan. Even in the unlikely circumstance that he wins the election, I'm pretty sure he won't build a wall. I don't think he'll send every illegal immigrant back to his or her respective country (although to hear him talk about it, you'd think the only place from which people illegally emigrate is Mexico). He won't make sure citizens' wages increase. He won't keep jobs from being outsourced to other countries. In at least these last two regards, he is as culpable as anyone. He employs illegal workers, whom I suppose he pays an illegally low wage; his businesses use cheap overseas labor. I can't understand why his gaggle see him as "an outsider" when he is the figurehead of everything that is disgusting about big business and the "good old boy" network.

I'll stop now. Today was the first day of early voting in Florida. My son drove up here to vote (since mine is his legal address until the end of the year when he's no longer my dependent), and this afternoon we went off to the polls to exercise our civic right and duty. I told him how proud I am of him, to find it so important to vote that he would drive two and a half hours each way to make sure he did so. (He's looking for a job and will hopefully be gainfully employed by Election Day.) I told him that the first time he went to the polls, he was a mere three months old, strapped into his snuggly carrier so he could wait in line with me. We both put our I Voted stickers in places where they would last longer than a day -- he on his cellphone case, I on my steering wheel -- as reminders of our good citizenship.