I'm not sure how it is that Reagan's death sent me into a depression on Monday morning, but it did. It's not that I mourn for Reagan. As I wrote in my previous post [on my blog], I really have little opinion of him. I was too young to follow his presidency and I had no attachment to the man, so his death has meant little to me. I was much more troubled reading about the three Oregonians who recently died in Iraq, cut down in their youth fighting an unnecessary war.
I was reading an article syndicated in The Oregonian, however, and I just started to become depressed. Perhaps I am too set in my views, but I feel as if this country is collapsing under the weight of self-interest and fear. I see politicians driving us to war under pretense, pushing ever forward out of ideology and a desire for better approval ratings rather than for the desire to help people. I see, in Reagan, the beginning of a war on those in poverty that has carried over to today as social stratification becomes ever greater. The rich are becoming immensely richer will the poor and the middle class are fighting harder every day just to scrape by in this country.
I recently read This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff. It's a memoir of his childhood and it's a magnificent book. There is a passage late in the memoir that details Tobias and a friend stealing gas from a local family by siphoning it out of their car. This family is poor, just barely getting by. After being caught, Tobias and his friend, Chuck, are forced to return the gas and apologize to the family. From page 245 and 246 of this edition of the novel:
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