Trigger Point

A friend posted on his blog about his trigger point, what act or point would induce him to tell the government official on his doorstep to go to hell.

For him, it was a rifle his parents gave him, that his father and grandfather had used, that he taught his children to use when they were so small they had to put the rear beanbag on their shoulder and move the rifle back behind them so they could reach the trigger. If anyone tried to take that rifle from him, that would be his trigger point.

My trigger point was the passing of the USA PATRIOT Act. It has since been augmented by the passing of laws allowing pharmacists (pharmacists!) to have more power over a patient than the doctors prescribing the medicines. I got slapped once for practicing medicine without a license (because I was licensed to do so in Germany, and erroneously thought I could carry on my practice in the US), and I am still far more qualified to practice medicine than a pharmacist is.

There are so many trigger points, and they are proliferating, that it’s no wonder “Joe Sixpack” (as another friend so quaintly calls the bulk of American citizens) is fristrated, angry, and prone to outbursts of random violence – and their children pick this up and react with the same random violence.

They can’t articulate what angers them because there are so many things: price gouging, the gradual erosion of freedoms, the imposition of burdensome searches, the restrictions on travel, the frozen minimum wage (a bad idea to begin with, but now that we have it, one that needs to be scrupulously maintained) that doesn’t provide a living wage, the shoddy workmanship of many products that are no longer worth the price they cost (this harks back to price gouging, and rides tandem with it), the rising taxes amid so-called tax breaks [1], the removal of overtime and comp time for many job positions, the increased work day [2], higher prices for virtually everything [3], the constant media barrage showing TV personalities portraying “working class” Americans doing things even the upper middle class can’t afford to do coupled with the constant gloom of rising costs, disasters, and potential pandemics, and the reports of constant government incompetence and the indifference of our president to the plight of the working class, particularly the working poor, and you have a general malaise that erupts in violence because no one knows what else they can do to make things better, even as they know that violence isn’t the answer.

What else can they do, when our elected employees won’t listen to us? Violence and lots of money seem to be the only coins they listen to – and both beget more oppression for the working poor. The working poor are targets for the most heinous financial schemes ever, ones that would make the mafia dons of the Roaring Twenties blanch – even they weren’t so greedy as to kill off their pigeons.

So, the trigger point may well be a hair trigger for an increasing number of people.
I’ve passed my trigger point, what about you?

[1] The wealthy and corporations get the tax breaks, the working poor don’t have access to those tax loopholes to ease their tax burdens and can easily spend more than 50% of their income on overt and covert taxes.

[2] 15 years ago, when we worked an eight hour day, we were at work for eight hours, that’s been artificially stretched to nine hours with the forced hour for lunch – and many companies expect their employees to cut their lunch hours short in order to get work done – unpaid time for the company, and then there’s the required, “be here 15 minutes before the start of your paid work time”, and the “can’t start preparing to leave work until after the paid work time ends” – so their work day can easily stretch into 10 hours, 2 of which are uncompensated, and takes away from their free time to do household chores, spend time with their family, meet with friends, engage in hobbies, and other such activities.

[3] Which would be good if there was a balancing rise in pay for the working poor to cover those rising costs. When it costs 2 healthy adults over $6,000.00 a year for health insurance, when their actual medical costs are less than a thousand a year, there’s something wrong. Health insurance shouldn’t cost more than the actual health care. That health insurance costs the employee $3.00 an hour, at minimum wage, they’d have to work 25 weeks (almost half a year) to pay for that insurance. Even at double the minimum wage, they’d have to work a quater of a year for it. Health insurance costs more than the mortgage on my house – and that’s plain wrong, especially with states now passing laws that require their residents to carry health insurance.