The following essay is from a Quora comment that I made in response to this honest question:

But I still think it is strange what has happened to the USA. It used to be the country that got together to solve any kind of problem or public need. You had the entire country to have paved roads and everybody had cars way ahead of us even so with electricity and telephones. You invented the Internet. But now it looks like every community expects somebody else “big corporations” to come and sort all problems out. What changed so that the US stopped to be a “let us get together and solve this shit!”. I am by no means complaining to you I just don't get it. It is like the public is afraid of starting or wanting changes. - Kjell (2019)

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There are a lot of Americans who feel the same way, Kjell. It’s not wrong that you’re confused.

The problems stems mostly from capitalism, principally the form as espoused by Milton Friedman. Milton said a few things that I hope will give you an idea of what’s been happening for decades:

“The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system.”

and…

“The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.”

and…

“When government - in pursuit of good intentions - tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.”

It’s not all on Milton’s head, though. A lot of where we are now is the tacit agreement between various groups seeking power and control and freedom from government limitations, such as the Religious Right, the Koch brother(s), the white supremacist Alt-Right, protectionists, Libertarians, conservative Republicans, and others who were tired of losing their individual fights.

Obama really put a bee in their bonnet, which gave the Tea Party, the Koch’s pet project, a target to rage against, and pushed the GOP into forming a policy that would try to make Obama a one-term President.

They failed to make that goal, but they were deeply successful at obstruction and fear mongering. Leveraging tools like propaganda, a unified messaging scheme, the use of lower-level sacrificial lambs to test the waters for said messaging (how low can they go before things break), spreading false narratives, and engaging the services of networks like Fox News whose leadership were keen to have America run by people who were far more empathetic to their goals.

It is around this time that Trump pops up with his claims that Obama wasn’t a real American, but an imposter from Kenya. Other lies that were spread around were that Democrats wanted to take away everyone’s guns, and that national health care would necessitate the need for Death Panels to decide who would get health care.

The reality, however, wasn’t about the issues that were all over the news cycle day in and day out, but the Right’s new agenda package.

• Lower taxes for the wealthy
• Reduce, if not eliminate, regulations on business
• Get rid of illegal immigrants
• Eradicate religious diversification
• Legitimize the re-segregation of America
• Empower a renewed need for male dominance

Trump gave the ‘cabal’ two things.

1. A target that media would focus on and a mouthpiece that sat at one of the biggest tables on the world stage in a single person
2. An in to start changing the American government that would facilitate their desire to ‘terraform’ the country in the form of a Republican party that was reshaped by the Tea Party

By the end of the 2016 election, enough American were disgusted by the choices on offer to not vote enough for Hillary Clinton, and Trump was able to win, despite being dramatically short of the popular vote. Not that it mattered, since Americans don’t vote for presidents. The Electorate does, and all they need is enough incentive to pick the candidate that can muster enough support.

States Rights also played a significant role, by allowing each state to organize their own election rules, which means each state gets to select how the candidates will receive their electoral college votes.

This has never been about making America great again, but taking America back from the dirty, unwashed, uncouth and colored filth that come to bright, shining America to build a better life for their families.

Its about getting revenge for losing their slave labor, having to see all those Black people walking around free, making money, and being happy instead of earning the white people money with their blood, sweat, and lives because they are less than human. Cows don’t run Fortune 500 companies, do they?

Its about getting people out of their face when they want to poison a lake to make 100,000 more widgets an hour and not having to pay a lot for labor.

Its about getting those fat stacks of cash, and fuck anyone who isn’t devious enough to get it first.

Its about winning.

And the only way to win this game, the game that involves the lives of 300,000,000+ human beings, is to play dirty, no matter who it hurts, as long as someone comes out on top.

And that, my friend, will get us a planet devoid of intelligent life.

Strap in. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

NOTE: I started writing this earlier this year when I was fired from my first new job in four years after four months. I just got the to the point where I didn't care to tell the tale any more, but now, some months later and more depressed than ever, I wanted to post what I'd written, just to get it out there. I'm no angel. I'm nowhere near perfect. I make mistakes and sometimes I've been fired because it was the right thing to do, but not this time. This is simply a matter of a rich asshole who thinks he's all that and a bag of chips can treat people like shit and it will never touch him. Something similar happened in France a while ago. That didn't end well. -TCR

On July 14th of this year, I will turn 50. That's quite the milestone for anyone. I never felt that I wouldn't make it to the half Century mark, but it feels somewhat surreal now that I'm here. One thing that being 50 doesn't often involve, however, is the level of humiliation I was forced to undergo with a recent employer. Out of a sense of honor, I won't reveal any identifying details, but I feel it is necessary for me to get this out of my system. First, though, some context...

I've been writing professionally for about 20 years now. The breakdown is simple; over 100 books as technical editor or revisor. One book as the author. Two more as co-author. Since contract writing is all about the ebb and flow, I also consulted, personally and for other consultancies. I wrote documentation for myself and the small businesses I worked with. After the computer book publishing world dried up for tenured authors like myself, I went into corporate work where I did high-level consulting and traditional employment. I wrote documentation for all of those companies. In short, I'd say I have experience.

2008 was a bad year for me, though. When contracts started dropping like flies from one consultancy I was working for, I was laid off along with half of the staff. I worked a number of contract jobs for a couple of years for a sizable discount. Money was "tight", apparently. The Recession illustrated to corporate types they could bring in the same revenue with fewer employees when those remaining felt the constant fear of being made redundant. HR departments also decided that work experience was shit and everyone needed an advanced degree to jobs cleaning toilets. Since I never received a degree, as I am not a traditional learner, I was left out in the cold. My advancing age and experience didn't help, either.

To summarize, I did end up getting a real job in 2011, which lasted about 9 months. The new drought brought me to 2013 where I got a promising contracting gig, but corporate politics well over my head nixed that. I would have to wait until just after the New Year of 2018 to even be offered something, so I took it.

Just four short months later, that would turn out to be a costly mistake.

So, the overview is easy. Small company. They've been in business for seven years, develop an application, and sell it to a tight, vertical market. Since it works on top of existing systems to add features that don't exist in the core market players, it's not really competition. The company charges a not-insignificant monthly fee for these small businesses to use their software. I was hired to perform a job and that job was to fix their documentation, both internally and for the customers.

I can say, in all honesty, that after four years of unemployment and two and a half years of rideshare driving, I was both elated and rusty. I worked with it, anyway. I was honest with them in my interview, and was told that I was hired, in part, because of that honesty. I'm old, have too much experience, and don't have a degree. I also have sleep apnea (treated with a CPAP) and mild narcolepsy, so I doze off during the day at times, usually when I'm not engaged in a conversation. I didn't hide anything (well, maybe a few things, but none of that shit's their business.)

I migrated nearly 300 articles from their old knowledge base system to the new one. Manually. With my colleague, I developed a half dozen methodologies for updating, modifying, extending, and simplifying the documentation, all of which were shot down. I found a friend in my colleague, as we shared frustration over the casual dismissal of what would be landmark improvements to the company. I was even asked to research and provide information for Single Source documentation systems, which I did, and was told weeks later that we weren't going to do such a ridiculously logical thing.

Wow.

I marshalled on, weathering the weirdness and coming to accept that the smart thing was just not going to happen. We weren't in charge. We didn't have the money. We weren't rich. We were peons. Then some things started to change. I was brought into meetings to go over new features that I was expected to document. Nothing weird there. I dutifully took notes, asked questions, and did my best to add these projects to my plate. I inquired about priority, but was never given a straight answer, so I did my best, assuming that these new projects would take precendence. It's sometimes necessary to assume when your direct queries don't result in clear answers.

One of these projects turned out to be rather dear to the owner. I figured that since the owner was the lead (and sole) programmer and kept the entire thing in his head (and some random folders on his machine) that the entire thing was dear to him. Boy, was I mistaken. This one project caused a lot of problems. It wasn't a complex thing. In fact, it was rather straightforward, but the owner had his own way to describing it, and I didn't pick up any hints that, regardless of all the work I had done to normalize documentation and apply a standardized style guide, I was expected to deliver documentation in an obnoxiously specific way.

I was expected to write like the owner.

Needless to say, the owner doesn't speak anything but Programmatic Nerdish. Combine this with the fact that English isn't his first language and you get what would appear to be a surmountable oddity. Surely, without much convincing, the owner would recognize the need to have consistency in documentation and angle the content neatly towards the customers, right? I can hear the choruses of "No" in your head, and you'd be correct.

First draft was returned with notes.

Second draft was returned, but without notes.

Another meeting to go over the software again, By this time, it had all changed, a bad habit the owner had. I didn't take notes because he just had a few points, one of which just happened to be that "I made stuff up."

Yes. In essence, he called me a liar.

Now, this beggars belief, because there isn't one place I've worked on the documentation where I was called a liar because I didn't quite understand something. One thing that writers do with non-fiction work is to interpret the information and make it lean toward the expected audience. That's why we draft work and vet it with Subject Matter Experts (SME). I've done this so many times with so many people, I can't even guess at how many. Hundreds. Thousands. I get the notes back and make the requested changes.

Nope. I was effectively called a liar and was given a Word document that was written by the owner which I would insert into my document to "make it better". I was also told that I could edit the English, which made sense because the owner wasn't a writer and didn't learn English as a child.

Here's where I stopped writing and never came back to it. Long story short, and I realize that's too little too late, I started cleaning up some extraneous stuff from my computer, so they locked me out. At the time, I didn't connect the two things, so it looked like they fired me. The never came to talk to me, so I just walked out. Fuck 'em. They're inept imbeciles anyway. Being able to program doesn't make anyone a genius, the same way that knowing more than one language doesn't make you a genius. (Much like the structure of that sentence doesn't make ME a genius!)

So, that's it. The guys with way too much money and far too little sense get to keep what they have, and I lose nearly everything. Again. To an old guy who buys porsche on a whim and a kid who thinks his M-B C63 is just a "regular" car, I won't beg. I won't demean myself because you think that's your right as my employer. I won't and I didn't.

I realize, too, that this is a bit of a disjointed narrative. It's been a few months now since this all happened, and I just no longer have enough fucks to give.

If I manage to make my family moderately comfortable, I will have achieved a personal victory, but I won't do that at the expense of my values or someone elses right to exist in a dignified manner.

I am a human being, Alec. You may have more money, but that just makes you richer, not superior.

I'm just going to write something directly out of my head, so we'll see how it goes. -TCR

I've always liked the name Larry. It feels old without being stuffy, and there's an inherent jocularity about it. When you hear that you'll be meeting with some dude named Larry it instills in you the idea that the interaction won't be dark or heavy. When I walked into the room to meet my particular Larry, however, things didn't go as expected.

My Larry was a woman and anything but jovial.

"Sit," she said, not looking up from her tablet. I sat.

"Thanks for agreeing to meet with me," I said as I settled into the uncomfortable straight-back chair. I noted that her chair was a large, stuffed leather affair, but pushed away the envy. Without looking up, she extended her index finger in the international sign for "shut up and wait". A few moments passed and she placed the tablet on the table and looked across the table into my eyes.

"So, how long have you known Rodrigo," she asked, not blinking.

"At last fifteen years, I think. We've been good frien..."

"Just answer my questions," she interrupted. I sat there stunned.

"Just who is this Larry woman and why didn't Rod tell me about her," I thought to myself.

I shook my head clear and responded, "Fifteen years."

"Do you now or have you ever worked for the LAPD, any of its affiliates, suppliers, or any law enforcement agency, or any organization that has a contract with the LAPD?"

"No."

"Have you ever held a position in any political party organization, been elected to any seat, or appointed to any role by a government official, either within the State of California or with the Federal Government?"

"No."

"Have you ever been incarcerated? Have you ever been arrested? Are you parents still alive? Are you familiar with game theory? Do you drink liquor? Do you sleep on your side, back, or stomach?"

"No. No. My mother. Moderately. A few times a week. Stomach."

"What, then, do you do?"

"I am an industrial robot repair technician, first class."

"Will you consent to a background check?"

"Of course," I said, sensing some positive flow to this brief and weird meeting for once.

She leaned deeper into the leather padded chair and stared at me. I'm pretty sure she hadn't blinked once, but she might have blinked when I did. The odds of that happening must be astronomical. 

She reached out with her hand, curled her fingers into a fist, and rapped hard on the table three times, the sharp sound ringing loudly in the mostly empty room with no wall decorations. The door opened immediately and an old man walked in.

"There will be no need for the background check. I already ran one," She said to me. To the man she said, "Take Mr. Chalmers to HR and have him fill out the paperwork." The old man bowed deeply, backed out of the room and waited in the hallway. Surprised at how quickly the situation had pivoted, I just sat there agape.

"He'll be joining us as head of MOBot development starting today," she said to me with those unblinking eyes, and smiled.

I never wanted to see that smile again.