It is Friday and the start of the work day.  One quick thought then I will be offline for the rest of today and much of the weekend. 

Recent poll result: Trump has broken his own poll high points and is now the farthest ahead he has been.  Cruz has taken the number two spot, which is huge but not the subject of this post.  Another component is that Trump support at 46%…if you have no college degree. Only 18% if you do have a college degree.  You could insert rather a lot of jokes here, if you wanted to.  But there are seriouss issues that this stat exposes. 

Bernie Sanders is correct in that a college degree is the new high school degree. With outsourcing of many jobs, with automation of others, with the elimination for the need of skilled but uneducated workers across much of the country, the largest base of the middle class has been destroyed. THIS is the base that Trump and others like him are playing to. They are scared, they are isolated, and after generations of being on top, they are now being pushed to the bottom. Those jobs are never coming back. They have not been stolen by immigrants, they have been stolen politics, technology and frankly, by the progress and evolution of a connected world. Education is key, and that means we have to change the formula for obtaining education. College at most public institutions used to be tuition free. It needs to be so again.  If we are to save the middle class, and save the country as we know it, we have to do this. 
The other issue that worries me, and worries me greatly, is that with desperate attitudes often comes desperate acts. Guess which group of people in the USA is currently leading the mortality charts? Middle class, white men. They are dying in droves right now, with suicides being of particular concern.  

I am worried that this desperation may someday turn into violence. If it hasen’t already. We worry about the radicalization of people coming to our shores. Maybe we should worry about the desperation of those who were born here.