New Orleans     “Houston, we have a problem.”   Let me rephrase that…we have lots of problems.  That’s just my opinion though.  The president of the United States has a different take…

…when Trump answered a question about whether he was motivated by the financial situation of Americans to make a deal to end the war with Iran. “Not even a little bit,” he replied, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”

Am I wrong to thing that the elected leader of more than 300 million people should have more than “one thing” on their mind and that somewhere up there the American people and their “financial situation” should be on the list?

Inflation, triggered by Trump’s war, is now at 3.8%, highest in several years.  Worse, average wages so far this year are 3.6%.  Normally, that would be a good, healthy bump in the paycheck, but now that means working hard for the money, and still falling behind.  It hardly bears saying that an average means half of working Americans made less that 3.6%, so they aren’t just underwater.  They’re paddling like crazy to keep from drowning.

American’s imperiled financial situation is also showing up in other areas.  Defaults for student loans are increasing, especially among people in their middle ages, 40s and 50s.  More and more people are taking on credit card debt, because their money is not stretching far enough in the month.

These are not the administration’s “undeserving poor” that were singled out in Trump’s budget bill for millions to lose food stamps and health care coverage to pay for rich people’s tax breaks.  The undertow of that tsunami has already taken down millions.  The war and other administration programs are now pushing middle class families below the water line.  These families actually vote in reasonably good numbers, as opposed to lower income families.  Trump doesn’t care.  He doesn’t have to face the voters again, but how is this going to help all of his acolytes contend for political jobs in the future?

The administration and its party count on the fact that when they target the poor few will notice and few will care.  When gas prices hit $6 a gallon in California and are moving towards $5 in many other US states with an average at the pump over $4.50 everywhere, that’s not something that is invisible.  On a recent trip, I had to pay $3.99 and am still smarting from the experience of seeing more than $80 on the pump.

Trump and his team are taking us into PT Barnum country now.  As he supposedly said, “you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”  Add to family’s financial peril, the fact that there’s no effort either to hide the corruption and rot at the top.  Reports of IRS deals that would guarantee Trump’s family no audits on their returns.  No bid contracts for millions for his pet projects.  Ballrooms we don’t need that are promised to be privately paid, but then get a billion-dollar appropriation from a supplicant Congress.  Pardons are given on a pay as you go basis.  Impunity is the order of the day. Who really thinks any of this can “Make America Great Again”?

That’s domestically.  The world is paying the price for Trump’s war, because to the degree he doesn’t care about American’s situation, he is outright hostile to the rest of the world and the damage it is doing.  Internationally, we’re all alone in Iran with only the Israeli pariah state our bunking buddy.  It’s impossible to read the news without seeing a piece almost daily on the weakness and fall of America.  Autocrats are on a free ride, dancing in the streets, and just about slapping America in the face.

In the US and globally, we desperately need someone steering the ship who thinks about everybody, not someone who doesn’t “think about anybody.”