Trump Puts Husbands Back to Work

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Donald Trump has a deep understanding of how American families function.  It is apparently one that he developed by binge-watching 1950's sitcoms.

Trump grew up far removed from the households of ordinary Americans, but that fact does not preclude him from knowing their makeup and how they operate.  Trump, after all, has a big brain and he is much smarter than the rest of us.    He knows, based on a careful examination of "Father Knows Best" and "Leave It to Beaver," that ordinary American families are white (of course) and are composed of a father in a suit who goes off to work each day, a well-dressed mother who keeps house and manages the little crises caused by the kids, and two or three children.  He also knows that these good, white American families live outside of the cities in places called "suburbs."

Trump's advisers have carefully explained to him that suburban housewives do more than just spend their days dusting and deciding what to wear to bridge parties, they also vote - and recently their votes have become more and more important in determining the outcomes of big elections.

This past Tuesday while speaking to a large group of individuals in Lansing, Michigan, a group that contained many suburban women, Trump reached out in an effort to secure the votes of those women.  He told them what he knew they wanted to hear - that his administration was getting their husbands back to work!

Glory be!  Their troubles were over . . . if they had husbands, and if those husbands had jobs to go back to, and if those jobs were good enough to sustain an entire family's needs.  Every American "housewife" whose pre-pandemic lives resembled those of Margaret Anderson or June Cleaver would soon be back to a happy routine of caring for their loved ones and clutching their pearls when little problems arose.   

Put a Handmaid on the Supreme Court and suddenly the whole world is right again!

Of course Donald Trump's view of suburban life is badly skewed.  Those rosy depictions of the 1950's weren't even accurate back then - when many women were already in the workplace, and they are certainly not anywhere near accurate today.    If a contemporary family is fortunate enough to have two adults, and many don't, both of those adults have to work and sometimes even hold multiple jobs.   We live and struggle in an economy where most of the money has been pulled to the top, beyond the grasp of those who really need it, and workers must work crazy-long hours just to survive.

So Donald Trump telling suburban housewives that his administration has sent their husbands back to work is just so much smoke up their skirts - and they all know it.  What Donald Turmp really told suburban housewives this week in Lansing was that he does not have a clue what their lives are like - and that is the message they need to ponder as they go to the polls.

American families need real jobs - ones that offer security, advancement, decent pay, and retirement - and they need a comprehensive healthcare system that is not tied to employment.  But it's especially hard to meet the needs of the working classes when our nation's leaders remain steadfastly focused on the desires of the rich.  Voters need to ponder that, too, as they go to the polls next week.

Survival was not simple in the 1950's, and it's sure as hell is not simple today - and any fool who believes that one paycheck is all that a family needs to survive is probably simple himself!