Every day Donald Trump and Kamala Harris attack each other with outrageous insults and accusations. But I suspect that their respective supporters on the left and the right have more in common than the candidates want us to see. For starters, all of us are being screwed by wealthy, powerful corporations who back both parties and profit from the faultlines that divide us. This artificially exaggerated dis-unity weakens the once-United States and benefits our enemies, both foreign and domestic.

Recently I received a postcard from President Trump. Looking handsome and fit, he pledged to defend my Social Security and Medicare benefits from an evil-looking Kamala Harris. I had to scratch my head. Hasn’t he repeatedly branded Harris a socialist? Surely he knows that government support for the elderly was originally a proposal of America’s socialist party back in the 1930s?

Very few people would deny their aging parents Social Security and Medicare – or themselves, when they reach retirement age. At a time when our country seems split right down the middle, it’s a relief to see that at least we can all agree on taking care of our elders.

Except for the very rich. They opposed assisting the elderly from the start, and still lobby behind the scenes to end these benefits so many older people depend on.

It reminds me of polls I’ve seen where a majority of Americans approve of the Affordable Care Act, but disapprove of the same program when it’s called “Obamacare.” These folks are being hoodwinked by insurance industry lobbyists, who think that by feeding our fear of socialism they can fool us into paying astronomical prices for health care.

Like any savvy politician, by supporting socialism on a postcard while criticizing it in a speech, Donald Trump is saying what he thinks will get my vote, and yours. Kamala Harris does it too. So does every candidate for every office, Democrat or Republican. And any savvy voter knows that what politicians promise in order to win our votes is not necessarily what we’ll see if they win the election.

Trump is no ordinary politician, of course, which is why so many voters passionately support him. But I worry that these voters may have lost sight of a basic fact of life in the U.S.A.: you can’t make a savvy decision based on promises designed to get your vote.

“Climate Change Is a Hoax!”

Not all of Trump’s promises are designed to attract votes. Some are designed to attract campaign funding from the very rich, such as his pledge to the oil industry to “drill, baby, drill!”

Climate change, according to Fox News, is a hoax perpetrated by scientists who are raking in big money by sabotaging the oil industry as part of some leftist plot. But if you think about it, none of those scientists are raking in anywhere near as much as the executives and stockholders of the oil industry – or the owner of Fox News, who is actually Australian. Calling climate change a hoax is a surefire way to guarantee campaign funding from the very, very rich.

It’s certainly conceivable that scientists around the world are conspiring to invent a fake emergency. But the ordinary Americans who died in this summer’s unprecedented heat wave, or lost their homes to Oregon’s record-breaking wildfire season – or to Hurricane Helene’s catastrophic flooding just last week – are not faking anything. Disasters like these are exactly what climate scientists have been predicting for decades. And if the science is right, it’s going to get a whole lot worse.

It baffles me that people who accept the findings of science when it brings them the latest technology will be suspicious when the same methods warn of them of a problem. Can we really go on filling the atmosphere with chemical fumes forever with no negative effects?

Documents obtained in lawsuits against corporations like Exxon and Shell reveal that their own scientists were the very first to understand the long-term impact of carbon emissions, way back in the 1950s. But these in-house studies were kept secret. Corporate PR went to work persuading us that everything was fine, and the CEOs and stockholders kept on raking in the cash.

If Fox News is wrong and the scientists are right, our children and grandchildren are in for a very rough time. Whether we believe the oil industry’s PR about climate change is up to each of us. But we should understand what a massive gamble that is, and how high the stakes are. We are literally risking our children’s future.

Like many Americans, I’m fed up with politicians of both parties who cater to wealthy corporations while blowing promises like smoke-rings to the rest of us. That’s why the Biden administration’s groundbreaking investment in renewable energy is so surprising. It’s the first time I can remember a U.S. president challenging the financial stranglehold of the very, very rich. 

“Inflation is Joe Biden’s fault!”

Everyone knows that during the pandemic, when the wholesale cost of raw materials and supplies went up, retail prices naturally followed. But after the pandemic, when wholesale costs came back down, the wealthy owners of retail chains saw no reason to lower theirs. So when President Trump blames inflation on Biden and Harris, is he just saying what he thinks will get my vote?

Inflation is especially bad in the housing market. Since the 2009 housing bubble, private-equity corporations – who make money not from selling anything but from investing – have bought thousands of single-family homes, often in foreclosure. To maximize their returns, they raise the rent and cut back on maintenance. While they profit, the number of homeless Americans is spiking nationwide.

President Trump pledges strong leadership on illegal immigration. A promising deal was worked out between the Biden administration and Republicans in Congress to solve this long-standing problem. But President Trump decided it could wait until he takes office, so the Republicans backed out at the last minute. It made me wonder if he just couldn’t give up his favorite talking point.

But I’m confused by his plan to deport millions of immigrants. Surely he knows that the agricultural industry is heavily dependent on immigrant labor? How many native-born Americans are willing to sweat in the fields and freeze in the meatpacking plants, in an industry that is exempt from the minimum-wage laws? If groceries are expensive now, what will a labor shortage do?

What’s missing from President Trump’s aggressive stand on illegal immigration is a closer look at why people are flocking to our border. Calling them criminals may attract votes, but in reality many are fleeing the criminals who have taken over their home countries: street gangs, drug cartels, and private armies hired by the rich, who run Latin America just as the rich do here. These refugees are victims of a wealthy Latin American elite who have collaborated with U.S. corporations for decades to keep wages low and profits high.

Other immigrants are subsistence farmers who can no longer feed their families because of relentless drought – the drought that climate scientists have long predicted. Nobody abandons their home for a dangerous journey toward an uncertain future in a strange, hostile country, unless it’s their only option. I wouldn’t, and neither would you.

“I Am Your Retribution!”

Behind every one of these issues is a consistent pattern: the very, very rich are quietly but systematically stripping the wealth of the American economy and transferring it to tax shelters overseas. They compete to buy the biggest superyachts while ordinary Americans work two jobs to scrape by. President Trump blames the Democrats – but is he only saying that to get my vote?

Democrats do shamelessly cater to the rich. But the Republicans also deserve much of the blame. President Trump’s tax cuts during his first term overwhelmingly favored his fellow billionaires. If re-elected, he pledges to renew the cuts when they expire next year. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy calculates that this would save the richest 1% of taxpayers 46 times what it would save taxpayers in the $55,000-$94,000 bracket.

Ronald Reagan’s confidence that the rich would use the extra cash from tax cuts to fund paying jobs for Americans never quite panned out. Instead they continued to hire ever-cheaper labor overseas and pocket the cash, and the same is true today.

With reduced tax revenues, how does President Trump plan to fund the government, including the staff that manages Social Security and Medicare? Perhaps the same way he did in his first term, when the federal deficit jumped from $585 billion to $3.1 trillion.

Some patriotic Christians seem to regard Donald Trump not as a politician but as a kind of prophet sent by God to rescue us from a sinful age. I caution these people to study the biblical prophecies more carefully. As Jesus Christ told his disciples, “Take heed that no man deceive you. . . . And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” (Matthew 24:4-13, King James Version.)

To me, Jesus’s message is clear. The real prophet is the one who preaches love – not anger, division, and fear.

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Note: These are my personal opinions and do not represent any organization I’m involved in. If my words resonate for you, please share widely. You can subscribe at StephenWing.com. Read previous installments of “Wingtips” here.