Have You Noticed … (This is an Honest Question to Friends, Family and Readers)

This is an honest question to which I’d like an honest answer … have you noticed that the people who seem angry all the time about everything, spewing nonsense about America being taken over and the world falling apart always look like this:

• White
• Middle or lower class
• 50 to 65 years old
• Struggling economically; not doing nearly as well as they were 10 years ago
• Most are not college graduates (some are but they are a minority)
• Protestant
• Married but divorced at least once
• Parents

Do you think it’s just that they are no longer relevant with jobs being outsourced and are lashing out at “other”?  Is it a desperate attempt just to be heard?  What is causing this madness?  I really, truly want to know and understand.

Take talks of “socialism” and “tyranny”.  If income tax rates increase, almost no one will be affected but I certainly will.  If my taxes go up 3%, I’ll hate it, but my rate would still be half of what it was in the 1940′s, 1950′s, and 1960′s when these people were born and grew up!?! Those are the “golden years” to which they want to return?

I mean, the world is a FAR better place than it was even in the 1980s when I grew up.  Now we can sit in our study by the fireplace and watch 20+ years of Charlie Rose interviews, jump on a plane for $99 and be anywhere in the country in hours, carry 20,000+ songs, movies, and books on a tiny device in my car, get far more miles per gallon, have major surgery through an opening the size of a pinhole, video chat with friends and family around the world, cure certain types of blindness with stem cells, and twenty year old kids become multi-millionaires in a year from Internet businesses.

Why would anyone want to go back to the way it was?  I love America today.  Heck, I love the world today – Russia is democratic (almost) and doesn’t want to nuke us, China is capitalistic (almost) and standards of living are skyrocketing … things are getting so much better every year.

Please, tell me why they are so unhappy?  Are they just ignorant of history?  Do they not realize how much better off we are in light of past experience?

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