As a defeated prole in a post-modern-America breadline, this iPhone-era forgotten man queued up just days ago in the predawn winter rain for a shot at some precious and stabilizing home energy relief. My wife and I have somehow managed to keep our mortgage payments current on a small home in Southeast Portland while I pull down $9.50 an hour at my day job, which provides no health insurance, no benefits and no overtime 99 percent of the time. Her monthly retirement/disability check is similarly way below average. Somehow these wages and benefits are not enough…. [F]or now, my family needed help from our community. And I gladly accepted the kind offer from the incredible people at SEI. I call that socialism with a human face, but I’m sure my conservative friends call it something else entirely.
To say that there are people suffering in this country isn’t exactly news anymore. The reality is that millions of Americans are facing the reality of living in poverty. Millions face tough decisions every day: Food or electricity? Rent/mortgage or health care? There’s a degree of suffering and want sweeping this country that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. You’d think that Americans would recognize the need for compassion and a willingness to assist those in need, right? While there’s certainly an element of that, there’s also a disturbingly powerful strain of mean-spirited, Randian selfishness, a pronounced lack of compassion that continues to widen the divide between those who have and those who don’t.
I got mine; you can damned well get your own….
I find it interesting that collectively we seem to see nothing wrong with subsidizing oil companies to the tune of billions of dollars, but the idea of doing the same for those in dire straits is decried as the worst, most un-American form of Socialism imaginable. We’re willing to give money with no strings attached to all manner of corporate interests, yet we can’t stomach the thought of doing the same for individuals and families in legitimate need. It’s something that, no matter how hard I try to understand it, simply defies rational understanding. If we can subsidize corporations and maintain two far-flung wars to the tune of trillions of dollars, then why is it immoral to devote billions to help our fellow Americans in legitimate need of a hand up?
Here in Portland, the need is great, as it is in other parts of the country. I’m no philosopher, but it seems to me that, if we’re to have any claim to be a compassionate people, we need to be willing to reach out to those in need. I believe that few really want to live on the dole. The vast majority want to be able to do for themselves and their families. The reality in this economy is that this very often isn’t possible. When the jobs aren’t there, how can someone support themselves or their family? When the jobs aren’t there, does that make someone unable to find a job worthy only of our scorn and derision? Derisively screaming “GET A JOB!!” at the unemployed doesn’t work when there are no jobs to be had.
Somehow, we’ve allowed the public dialogue on this issue to be hijacked by the Tea Party, a cabal of mean-spirited, self-absorbed, selfish, angry White Folks who seem to equate compassion with weakness. It’s time for Americans to recognize that we’re better together than apart, and that America is more than just a collection of individuals. What was it that Abraham Lincoln once said?? Oh, yeah….
United we stand. Divided we fall.
