In news coverage, I often hear "Wall Street" and "Main Street" mentioned. But what about rural roads, side streets and back streets? When America's economy is good, is it good for every American? What does Globalization, which increases profits tremendously for America's privileged special interests, do for the loyal, dedicated American workers who were displaced by Globalization? Did displaced American workers send the jobs they worked at so hard for meager wages to Third-World-Country sweat-shops, or their employers, who wanted even cheaper labor?
Are displaced American workers lazy "entitlement seekers," or forced into receiving public assistance for survival? Will at least some American employers hire displaced American workers, when illegal foreign workers are available for pennies-on-the-dollar under-the-table wages? When the American economy is good, is it as good for displaced workers as it is for special interests exploiting cheap foreign labor and American markets simultaneously? Is it as good for the victims of now legal "loan-sharking" as it is for predatory lenders? Is it as good for the addicted victims of the now legal "numbers racket" as it is for the lottery operators?
Above all, why are American workers yet to be displaced by Globalization and/or technological innovation, so easily led to resent and criticize American workers already displaced? "Take our nation back?" "Make America great again?" Back to what? What was great about the redefined "Jim Crow" slavery that lasted more than a century after legal slavery was abolished? What was so great about the blatant racial discrimination pathetically ignorant Caucasians so enjoyed seeing used against minorities, that they could not see the sociopolitical discrimination they faced themselves?
Those old enough may remember that Dragnet's Sargent Friday changed the names to protect the innocent. In Educated Hands, I have changed the names to keep from embarrassing the descendants of the guilty. I lived my childhood and young adult years in a not-so-great America that I do not care to go back to. I watched TV news as flag-draped coffins were unloaded daily, as members of the military industrial complex, who did not serve in our military counted their profits. I saw workers devote their lives to American corporations that abandoned them and our nation for the cheap labor, lax safety and environmental regulations and tax loopholes of Third-World-Countries.
Save one instance in which I incorporated literary license, Educated Hands is a collection of variations of actual happenings that reveal the progress most American citizens have made, yet identify the negativity some people want to "take us back" to. Am I un-American or non-patriotic because I dare speak truth to power? I truly appreciate the American ideal, and I will fully appreciate the American reality, when all victims of special interest exploitation can fully enjoy the American Dream.
