I woke up this morning after dreaming about roaming through my hometown of Johnson City, New York.  I often dream about it, sometimes I’m on Main Street or, like this morning, I was by the  Endicott Johnson Shoe Company factories.  Sometimes I dream it was like it used to be.  A relatively small, vibrant community whose peoples were supported by two large industries, the shoe factory and IBM.  But more often, like today, the dream is about the present.  The dream is of empty shells of factories, boarded up businesses, abandoned buildings, decaying neighborhoods where beautiful big Victorian mansions were divided to make tenement type housing for those left in the aftermath of economic downfall.  The depressing ruin of what I once knew as my almost perfect hometown has lain heavy on my heart.  I saw the effects after returning there 10 years ago after leaving 40 years earlier for the hope of a better opportunity in life.

You know, I never really knew what my focus was in the political realm.  I voted across party lines my whole life.  I looked at an issue or a candidate and voted for whatever or whoever I thought the best without much feeling.  I was missing the passion.  I didn’t understand the passion felt by the Trump electorate in “Make America Great Again” or that of the outraged, angry party that lost the election.  I just didn’t feel the passion.  I tried to fight against it all.   I’m sorry to whoever I have shocked or offended by voicing my thoughts as I looked for meaning and feeling.

As I lay in bed this morning, the passion rose in me like a heat from an internal fire that I never felt before.  It was amazing!  It was my truth at last.  It was good, it was positive, it was empathetic, it had just made so much sense to me after my dream.  I am for people.  I am for people and their jobs.  Not just the peoples that are most commonly the issue in identity politics.  Not just the blacks, the women, the LGBT, the migrant, the illegals, the refugees, the immigrants, the uninsured or about to be uninsured etc.   Yes, I care about them.   But my passion is for a segment of society that has lost their identity.  I always intuitively felt like there was a more fundamental, yet overlooked portion of society that was missing.  Something America had discarded just like the neighborhoods, factories, and town of my youth.

These are the people who have lost their way through a decline in economic growth, they are there by the hundreds of thousands through no fault of their own.  They have been there for 50+ years.  They are unemployed, living on the government and social programs, but have no real purpose or hope in life anymore.  They are Trump voters.  Frankly, it looks like he was their last hope for economic upturn and return to dignity.  That doesn’t necessarily make me an enthusiastic Trump supporter by any means but my hope for them is that some things can change.  That they can get a job and a life back.

I didn’t just wake up and realize this.  I’ve been searching for something.  I didn’t even know what it was that I needed.  I realized that answers weren’t going to come from the media.  The media is, well, the media.  Not a source of necessarily comprehensive information.  Just spin is all it is.  Entertainment, reaffirming biases, opinions, and it mainly just touches the surface of issues.  I turned to the works of experts such as political scientists, think tank members, professors, and non-partisan political policy publications.  I learned that our politicians can’t know everything about every issue, much less journalists, or our lay population that seems to know-it-all.  You have to go to the experts.  I’m so glad I did because it gave me the deeper insights that helped me figure myself out.

I can share some of the sources that helped me figure myself out and to which I am so grateful, but that’s a blog for another day.  Good night and “Let’s Talk”.