This blog might seem a little political but that’s because any comments,  in any nation,  about what’s real in everyday life is, in fact, well,  political. And we need to see how these opinions fit into our spiritual lives…..  So….

To understand how putting tariffs n imports hurts the  “everyday American consumer,” you have to care about the consumer or you don’t spend time to figure out how that works.  The current administration, it seems, either does not care abut the American consumer, or  else does not feel that the increase will hit any consumer they care about, or at least, finally, does not seem to feel concern to protect the consumer from the sorely raised prices on things—all  the way to the price of cognac from Switzerland to the celery and other of the  many, many things the U.S.  imports from Mexico.

But those numbers are destined to go  up during the resent administration unless it changes, though it is showing little concern for the people who have to buy that celery and the other pieces of nearly $60 billion worth o things imported annually from Mexico and a number something like that from Canada, starting with whiskey and lumber (the U.S. imported $28billion of soft lumber from Canada this year, and  that shapes the cost of the new  house you’re hoping to build).

In Mr. Trump’s previous term, when he made this same threat, the European Union targeted precisely those industries that hit Republican states hardest: : bourbon and blue jeans. This is ironic, because while bourbon seems to be made only in Kentucky , it’s made wherever its makers find profit in making it. And it’s also ironic about blue jeans,  because blue jeans made in the USA  use materials  from China or maybe Colombia, and that material has the indelible imprint of non-democratic hands….. and so, idealism in international relations is, if not quite the opposite twin of practical, at least its  very tense cousin.

Conclusion from this in our spirituality?  Well, you and I can have some infinitesimally small influence on our nation’s policies, but we can allow the Spirit to teach us to live with whatever policies this or any other administration may dream up. We can comfort ourselves with the thought that they may last only four to eight years. That’s thinking in comparison to our nation’s political life.  

But  in comparison to our eternal life, well, pay up and say a prayer about our nation’s next election, when a certain politician will claim that the two-term legal limit on presidents means two continuous terms.  . It’s how this mind works.

Let’s not let it become they way ours works.