REFER TO GREY: Contemplations by Robert Greigos © 2007-2025

Yes, this is what Trump objects to whenever he travels in his bullet and bomb proof limousine. He looks out from behind thick glass and instead of adoring crowds cheering him on, he sees squalor and concludes it’s all “those people’s fault”.

And who are “those people”? Anyone not like him, in the narrowest possible sense.

And what is his solution to the problem of “those people”? During his first term as President, he asked his generals, “Why can’t we just use our nuclear weapons?” To which his Secretary of State left the room shaking his head muttering, “we elected a complete moron”. And now in his second term, (yes, we did elect him again) he has fired all his restraining public service oriented generals and law enforcement officials and public health officials and public policy officials, and ordered his replacement clown show of fake, made for “reality TV”, so called “officials”, and has ordered them to “sweep the streets”.

And you know who made the difference voting him into office this second time by the narrowest of margins? The same people who long ago gave up voting in disillusionment, but who in late 2024 changed their minds in hopes he would help create a ‘better deal” for them, a more doable affordable health filled life for them. Yes, the same hope lost people populating not only the sidewalks and underpasses of our major cities, but all the fallow lands beside “backroads” and in amongst “backwoods” of rural America. Travel backroads in any state and you will see the same sad cobbled together collections of patched up trailers, leaking houses and shacks, and last leg vehicles, all waiting to be “swept into the gutter” like their urban counterparts on display in the images above.

Back in the early 1930’s, newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt also saw plenty of human squalor during his travels outside the White House. Yes, it bothered him too. But was his solution to have the National Guard and Federal Troops and ICE Agents turn their guns on this floundering portion of US population and sweep “all those losers” into the gutter? No, he inspired them and put them to work in Federal programs. He sured up the banks and got Congress to enact laws limiting speculation with the hard earned savings of the American people. And he worked day and night for three terms as President to help build a sense of community across America where everyone was included and everyone had opportunity. What he started and kept working at enabled the US to end WWII and set us on course to enjoy what has become nearly a century of growth and collective prosperity.

Yes, our so called “collective prosperity” has currently failed to include everyone within these US borders. Efforts to include everyone reached its peak success during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Since then, wealth inequality has worsened to an unparalleled extent. As of early 2024, per Wikipedia and the Federal Reserve, the top 10% of our population holds and controls 67% of our national wealth while the bottom 50% holds and controls 2.5%. And just the top 1% control 30.4% of our collective wealth. Quite literally, the entire world’s top earners are sucking wealth from the environment and all the rest of us at a seriously deleterious and crippling rate. The projected end result will be an environment depleted and unviable for most species and a social landscape reminiscent of feudal times with rich landlords and paid henchmen shepherding the rest of us as destitute slaves or worse.

But is the solution to our growing problem of wealth and knowledge inequality to sweep our collective failures into the gutter, including wholesale dismantling of government programs and institutions, and rewriting our very history as taught in our schools, libraries, museums, and public media as Trump and his clown show are attempting? And is our future to include “lets get white people to make more babies” as pronatalists like VP Vance and ex DOGE Czar Elon Musk, along with right wing Christian Nationalists and those in the anti-abortion crowd fearing “the great replacement” seem to advocate? You tell me.

I’m getting older and very likely I won’t be around to see what really happens during the next ten to twenty years. The future is quite literally in the hands of those of you who care what the future brings. But, I’d suggest remembering that simplistic, shallow, short-sighted, self-serving solutions are just as likely to have far reaching consequence, good or bad, as carefully considered planning and acting. However, evidence is abundant within our last 100 years that carefully considered cooperative planning and action, on average, yields far better consequence for more of our numbers than overly simplistic, shallow, short-sighted, self-serving solutions. And, there is growing evidence within recent scientific discoveries that we could all do far far better for everyone and the environment in our future than we have so far. All we have to do is make our determined and steadfast goal: “everyone a winner, not just a few”.