People Who Voted for Trump

 A recent news story--post-election analysis--said that many young Black and Latino men voted for Trump because they see him as improving jobs and other financial/economic matters.

As  to those Latino folks: After January 20 they are likely to see their friends, relatives, neighbors and co-workers being deported. Plus, no one  has said a word about the cost to the US--us taxpayers--for flying these immigrants back to their countries of origin. (Not even touching on the fact that today, the news showed Trump's about-to-be "immigration czar" replying to a question about families being separated by these deportations; his reply was, to paraphrase a bit, no, we won't need to separate families, just deport (US-born) children along with their parents.

And--to another group of voters who voted for Trump because they are unhappy with the rising prices the country has been experiencing: Again, wait until after January 20. Trump has pledged to raise tariffs on imported goods. Those voters who have been buying cheap Chinese goods at Walmart are going to see those items hugely increase in their prices to US consumers after Trump's tariffs are added.

If Trump makes good on his promise (threat) to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico, U. S. car manufacturers are going to be unhappy, and car buyers are going to see car prices go up. This is because car makers are making engines and transmissions in Canada and Mexico, for the sake of--can you guess?--cheaper labor. This was facilitated--maybe encouraged--by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed by Bill Clinton in 1989 (and replaced and superseded by another agreement, of which I do not know the terms) during Trump's first term.

Update, Jan. 31, 2025

Today ABC Television News said that Trump's increased tariffs on goods imported from Canada, Mexico, and China will be put into effect tomorrow, and quoted experts saying that US consumers can expect numerous prices to go up as a result.

Trump said there may be some "disruptions," and that he believes the American people will understand. Well, I don't think they will. I think many people will say, "We elected him to lower prices, and now he's doing the exact opposite."

I think that people--if they do in fact expect a candidate to keep his campaign promises once in office--don't examine issues in enough depth as to say to themselves, "Well, if he does such-and-such, will x happen--or y?"

I think that, rather than looking into the issues at depth, people allow themselves to be swayed by sound bytes and catchy slogans--maybe slogans that will fit on the front of a cap--and are quick to believe that we need a change because nearly everything the previous administration did was wrong or bad.

So...when you're buying food and you're shocked by what's happened to the price of avocadoes, be sure to say a silent Thank You to Mr. Trump. 

Update, Feb. 7

As you may know by now, the threatened tariffs are off--for now.

I'm pretty sure Trump got pressure from many quarters. The Wall Street Journal --not exactly a liberal or leftist publication--called them "the dumbest trade war in history."

Trump is made to look much better by the fact that he got agreements--concessions?--from both Canada and Mexico. Were the tariffs merely a threat and a bluff to secure these concessions? Unless there's someone around who knows the answer and is willing to publicly disclose, we, the public, can't know.

 

 

A Paean to Our Grandmothers

I've been noticing lately a lot of appeals (by commercial interests) to images of our grandmothers. There's "Nonna's [grandmother in Italian] Minestrone Soup," Nonna's Pizza (right down the street from me). There's a TV commercial that includes an image of Yiayia (grandmother in Greek), though I think it says "Yiayia wouldn't approve." And there's the Jewish grandmother (the image is perhaps more common in the Eastern US), known as Bubbe in Yiddish. Whether you call her Nonna, Yiayia, Bubbe, Nanna, Nan, Gran, or some other name, I'm confident that grandmothers are much alike, largely regardless of their ethnicity.

The image of our grandmothers is very evocative. Some of the associations are love, nurturing, a big, soft breast that nearly smothered us when we were hugged.

For many Americans, our grandparents' was the immigrant generation; that might have some negative connotations: conservative, backward, unassimilated, maybe more foreign than American.

But the positive side of it all is that our grandmothers are our tie to our heritage, to the food (and of course more) of the "old country."

It's the food thing that's the most important. If Italian and Greek grandmothers are like my Jewish grandmother, grandmother is synonymous with food, with overabundant cooking and baking. I swear that my grandmother cooked and baked for 26 or 28 hours a day. The house always smelled of cooking and baking. At Thanksgiving, there were both beef and turkey; sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes; pie and cake.

Our grandmothers were great cooks, the custodians of age-old recipes that might or might not have been handed down to later generations. And our mothers, however good they were or are as cooks, simply don't put as much time and effort into cooking and baking as Grandma did.

And food is love. If you didn't eat something when you visited my grandparents', my grandmother would be hurt. Very hurt. (There are lots of jokes that embody that stereotype of the Jewish grandmother.) It would be an affront to her cooking, her hospitality, her grandmotherliness. In my particular case, as I wrote elsewhere, I was very thin, so in addition, getting me to eat something would be one brick in the edifice she wished to build of a beefier me; that was a project of hers.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein