* with apologies to the late Kurt Vonnegut

There is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when an individual is involved in a relationship in which the other party consistently represents circumstances in a way that does not match what the individual knows to be true.

There are probably any number of highly technical labels and descriptors for this phenomenon but my favorite was the label coined by psychologist John Bradshaw: crazy-making.

We microbusiness owners get a lot of that.

Our president tells us that small businesses are at the center of his economic policies. But when we see his proposals, which increase our paperwork burdens, reduce funding for programs that help us and expend a lot of energy on other programs that don’t, we have to ask ourselves what’s wrong with this picture.

Only, when we do, we are told that we are being unfair or unreasonable or — even worse — untruthful.

Our Congresspersons also say they love small businesses but they pass all sort of laws that uphold wage-and-salary employment — which is perfectly okay — while simultaneously passing laws that punish folks for opting for self-employment over wage-and-salary employment — which is not.

But they are hurt and bewildered if we tell them that we don’t believe them.

We live in a time when we have technology that allows the White House to cultivate the appearance of accessibility without having to actually be accessible. Those forms on Everything-You-Could-Possibly-Imagine.gov all say that somebody reads each and every submission but we have no way of knowing, really.

And even if they do, the odds of those emails being read by somebody who matters, somebody who is in a position to evaluate a new idea on the merits and maybe take it to the President and say, “Excuse me, sir, but here’s something that I don’t believe we’ve considered … ”

… those odds are very slim. Let’s face it: all the evidence suggests that they don’t really want to know what we think. We all know that, even though they would be much happier if we pretended we didn’t.

Besides the government types, there are also a whole army of people who are willing to tell us that if we have low taxes and limited regulations, then all we need to “make it” as a small business is a willingness to work.

Only, taxes and regulations, as important as they are, don’t constitute everything that can sabotage success, regardless of all the hard work we can muster.

The very economic system in which we operate works against us. We know it … but try telling that to those “buck up and work hard” types.

When you stop and think about it, it’s no wonder that it can be difficult to smoke out the microbusiness owners.

All they want to do is talk at us about their parallel universe, which does not at all resemble our reality. Who has time for that?

Crazy-making, indeed.