Elder Patriot – Ken Langone is a co-founder of Home Depot and a political observer who is often moved to speak his mind. As a successful businessman he’s witnessed the power of economic prosperity when it comes to healing demographic divides.
On any visit to one of his stores you’ll meet a broadly diverse team of employees all working together for a common goal – servicing the customer. His employees know that the success of the store they work in translates to their success, individually.
Similarly, the success of other Home Depot stores, gives customers the confidence to walk into any Home Depot store expecting the same great service. That fuels store over store economic growth and increases opportunities for the each employee even further.
Langone’s employees are examples of something that we’ve been saying here for a long time: Prosperity brings peace.
Alternatively, competition for scarce resources allows political opportunists to drive a wedge between different social and ethnic groups for their own purposes.
Just pay some heed to Obama’s recent comments, meant to be critical of President Trump, that chart the history of divisive political discourse in America.
“The past few decades the politics of division and resentment and paranoia have unfortunately found a home in the Republican party.”
Nice try Barry, but the politics of division has been the bulwark of Democrat electoral strategy for decades. They have made it a central focus of every campaign in memory to identify and single out different demographic groups for victimhood and assigning them hyphenated American status.
And, whether Republicans went along for the ride, or sometimes adopted those policies as their own if can’t hide the fact that over those same past few decades American families have had to get by with declining household incomes.
Household income down – politics of division up. Coincidence?
The most glaring, but by no means the only, example of the success of this strategy is manifested in the Black community and their overwhelming support they give to Democrats.
This support has endured even as their place at the bottom of the socio-economic scale has endured through one Democrat administration after another over fifty-plus years.
Keep people fighting for scarce resources and suggesting the conservative bogeyman will take even those meager crumbs from them has instilled fear and self-defeat in these people.
Democrats have repeated this across virtually every social and economic demographic. Unfortunately, it’s a tactic that is unconscionably effective.
Prosperity denudes politicians of that power and tears down those walls.
This is one of the things about President Trump’s policies that have brought economic prosperity to a broad swath of Americans regardless of demography that scares the bejesus out of those committed to dividing us along the manufactured left-right paradigm.
Langone made this point while visiting with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto:
Cavuto: “Why don’t you think the president is getting more of the goodwill from this good economy — the good economy? Now there’s been a battle between [Trump] and President Obama; who takes the credit for this bull market — the longest in history? Who does?”
Langone: “Forget about it. Obama ought to do what every great president did. Go off into the sunset. Be the mother of the groom. Wear beige and keep your mouth shut. OK?”
“What I’m saying is that, like it or not, Trump’s base is rock solid. Donald Trump needs 15 percent of the voters to get re-elected in 2020. That 35 percent is rock solid. I would hope he would do things different than he did, but damn, give the guy credit.
This, my friends, is what the great Awakening is all about – Americans of all colors, creeds and orientations coming together to Make America Great Again so that every child might fulfill their dreams and reach their potential in life.
President Trump is rather abruptly closing the door on America’s divisive past.
