Riding a vicious cycle

Today’s life is a vicious cycle.
I don’t believe the Mexican border is a source of national emergency. The emergency is the 800,000 persons who are without a paycheck.
In a “let them eat cake” tone, they are being told to adjust so a wall can be built.
It probably won’t directly hit me, but people close to me are biting their fingernails. Many persons depend on their annual tax refunds, although they don’t work for the feds. They “loan” a portion of their paychecks to the government, interest-free, knowing they will get most of it back between the day their W-2 forms arrive and April 15.
Every person who doesn’t receive his or her paycheck from the federal government creates a trickle-down effect when bills aren’t paid and necessities aren’t purchased, car loans fall behind, mortgages and rents reach critical delinquencies and credit cards accrue extra interest. Farmers, crippled by increased tariffs, won’t receive promised government assistance. In effect, those groups can’t cover their crucial bills.
Landlords depend on rental income and their tenants who aren’t government employees will be called on to pick up the slack. Advertising a property as “Section Eight friendly” has become the norm as low rents are made possible through government subsidies.
The Monday morning news aired footage of a local supervisor for the U.S. Forest Service stating in a shaky voice that his income supports his household from paycheck to paycheck and adjustments aren’t an option.
Insurance is required before one can license a car, yet people are up in arms about being required to have health insurance. Being unable to buy auto insurance can lead to stiff fines, penalties and inability.
So long as one is healthy, medical insurance may not be needed at the time. Still, having it is important in case health doesn’t prevail; in April, my heart failed and I received an artificial valve; now, I have a pre-existing condition.
I get four to five calls each day telling me something I posted on Facebook has led the insurer to believe I hunger for more health insurance. I have a combination of insurance that covers all bases, but I know many persons who do not.
I don’t know what I posted to create that perception. Memo to self: Be careful what you post, react to or even scroll past.
The man who said I would forever cripple my family financially if I didn’t buy burial and funeral insurance gasped when I told him I had donated my body to science. His company called back again the next day, reading from the same script.
We can now buy “real beer” in the supermarket, yet near beer is still shown in the ads.
We are still free to make as much wine as we want, but we must grow marijuana, which is technically a weed, under strict conditions.
Hemp, which is not hallucinogenic, struggles for acceptance as a crop, which it was long before it was considered a weed because it is cannabis, but not the same strain as marijuana.
Caught in a vicious cycle, we look to the media to keep us sane, but can it?