Listening to National Public Radio on the way to work the other day, I heard a story about how the Chinese people are viewing our election.

Chinese Communist Party officials love it. Our elections being “rigged” proves to them how bad our system of government is, just what they’ve telling the Chinese people for years – that the American system is totally corrupt and very inefficient.

So the interviewer asked young Chinese students about it. These are traditionally the people in China raging against the communist system of governance and seeking more freedom, like they have in America. But listening to the rhetoric in this year’s American presidential election even has the young Chinese students saying their system of government is far superior to the crooked American system that is so rigged and unfair.

Normally I don’t much care what the Chinese think of our democracy, but Americans have also come to think democracy is corrupt, too. Polls are showing that most Americans believe the system is rigged against them.

Now I believe there is favoritism in Congress for the rich and against the poor and middle class. That’s the money in politics more than anything else, but even though the money talks to the politicians, I do not believe anything is rigged against Trump. The system is rigged against us.

The real problem started with the concept of Trickle Down Economics – reward the rich with tax breaks and other favorable treatment – and out of the goodness of their hearts the rich will toss out a few bucks for the less fortunate to fight over. Or, in my view, all of us are seated under the metaphorical urinal when the elderly super rich have to go and we might get trickled upon, if we’re “lucky.” If you don’t have an adequate paying job to support your family, you haven’t been trickled on yet.

Trump wants to double down on the trickling, but with rich folks that have better control – no more accidental trickles.

Once upon a time, I called myself a radical moderate because government works when Republicans and Democrats work out fair compromises on legislation, but there are no longer fair compromises. There is no center.

Over the past few decades, the left has won some social battles, but the right has prevailed economically. Trickle Down has dominated and destroyed the once thriving middle class.

Once upon a time the husband could make enough at his one job to support the family. When women also became breadwinners, instead of doubling the family’s income, the trickelers halved all the salaries so that these days the husband the wife both working is barely enough to support the family.

The economic system for the middle class is broken. It’s harder to stay in the middle class and much harder for the poor to enter it.

On economic issues, I’m with Bernie, but he’s gone. Hillary has always been a moderate, but when you start in the middle while your opposition is way far to the right, meaning while the fringe right may not get exactly what they want, legislation still pulls to the right. Hillary needs to pay more attention to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to actually govern from the center.

Trump just wants everything as far right as possible. He loves to trickle down. It makes him feel big and powerful.

Meanwhile, the Chinese communists are loving this because it validates their system over ours even though they have no true freedom or individual liberty.

 Keith Hoggard is a Staff Writer at Roanoke-Chowan Publications. Contact him at keith.hoggard@r-cnews.com or 252-332-7206.