I had a friend who worked as a guard in a state prison.

"It's amazing how these guys think," he told me one morning, when we were both off work and drinking coffee in a diner across the street from an abandoned paper box factory.

"The prisoners," he said. "They don't think like we do. Everything is somebody else's fault."

I kept drinking coffee and let him tell his story.

"The other day, they're lined up to get their meds," he said. "You can't let 'em keep their own pills 'cause they'd crush 'em up and snort 'em or sell 'em or take 'em all at once.

"And one of the guys, he's in line to get his meds and he doesn't have a shirt on.

"So I tell him, 'You can't be in line without a shirt. You gotta go back to your cell and get your shirt and put it on.'

"Guy starts raisin' all kinds of hell with me," my friend said, as the waitress gave him a refill on his coffee. "He's tellin' me it's hot and he doesn't wanna wear a shirt and he doesn't wanna go all the way back to his cell and it's not a fair rule.

"I tell him there's nothing I can do about it, it's just the rule and, if he wants his meds, he's gonna have to go back to his cell and get his shirt."

My prison guard buddy started laughing.

"So, the guy looks at me and he says, 'Well, then I'm just not going to take my meds!'"

"Like I'm his mother or somethin'," my friend said to me. "What do I care if he takes his meds? What am I gonna do, be sad if he dies?"

"But that's how they think," he said. "Nothing's their fault. They shoot dope and they molest kids and they rob old ladies and they get arrested and locked up and it's just everybody picking on 'em. And they think that if they don't take their meds and they die, that's gonna be somebody else's fault, too. They just wanna destroy everybody else and themselves 'cause things ain't goin' their way."

I paid for my friend's breakfast. As I remember, it was $5.75 for two pancakes, sausage and coffee. I paid because I knew I'd use his story someday. Just because you pick a story up in the street doesn't mean you shouldn't at least look around for somebody to pay.

I watch the disappointed, angry voters line up for Trump, line up in a country with stagnant middle- and working-class incomes, watch them line up in a country where people with a high school diploma can't find a union job, watch them line up in a country where, election after election, we vote in people who let us keep our guns and our God while they take everything else.

And I hear voices saying, "I'm not gonna take my meds. I'm gonna vote for Trump. I'll do it. I really will. You'll be sorry."

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, "Marc Dion: Vol. I," is a collection of his best columns from 2014. It is available for Nook and Kindle.

Photo credit: Marc Nozell