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:
Mr. Welch was sitting on a pile of wood, watching Jack and one of the other Welch boys. They were a little ways off, taking turns digging with a post-holer. Mr. Welch was bareheaded. His wispy brown hair floated in the breeze. He had on a new pair of overalls, dark blue and stiff-looking and coated with mud around the ankles. We came up to him and set the cans down. He looked at them, then looked back at his sons. They kept an eye on us as they worked, not with any menace, but just to see what was going to happen. I could hear the post-holer slurping up the mud with the same sound our shoes had made the night before. Chuck waved at them and they both nodded.
We looked at them for a time. Then Chuck went to Mr. Welch's side and began to talk in a low voice, telling him how sorry he was for what we had done. He offered no explanations and did not mention that we had been drinking. His manner was weightily sincere, almost tragical.
Mr. Welch watched his sons. He did not speak. When Chuck was through, Mr. Welch turned and looked at us, and I could see from the slow and effortful way he moved that the idea of looking at us was misery to him. His cheeks were stubbled and sunken in. He had spots of mud on his face. His brown eyes were blurred, as if he'd been crying or was about to cry.
I didn't need to see the tears in Mr. Welch's eyes to know that I had brought shame on myself. I knew it when we first drove into the farmyard and I saw the place in the light of day. Everything I saw thereafter forced the knowledge in deeper. These people weren't making it. They were near the edge, and I had nudged them that much farther along. Not much, but enough to take away some of their margin. Returning the gas didn't change that. The real harm was in their knowing that someone could come upon them in this state, and pause to do them injury. It had to make them feel small and alone, knowing this--that was the harm we had done. I understood some of this and felt the rest.
This is why I feel so sad. There are millions of people in this country who are on the edge and barely getting by and it seems sometimes as if the majority of the politicians we elect to help us are only turning around and screwing us. And it's people on both sides of the aisle who are doing this. They capitulate to the wealthy and to corporations, giving them whatever they want. They give away millions and billions of dollars but then turn around and tell us to stop whining and pull ourselves up, to take care of ourselves. It happens when $170 billion in corporate tax cuts are passed but a rider attached to the bill to extend unemployment benefits for 13 weeks
fails. It happens when our president gives billions upon billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country, then turns around and
slashes funding to the social programs that help keep the lower and middle classes afloat.
How many veterans still affected by their efforts to defend America are having their health care slashed? How many pregnant women are finding out that they are losing crucial health care? How many schools are being denied the funding they need to properly educate our children? The Environmental Protection Agency? They don't need funds. Screw Head Start, that can't possibly be providing any kind of benefit to America.
But it's all okay, because a $300 check came our way. (Well, not my way, but theoretically many people received one.) And that's fine. Take your $300 check and don't complain when your children aren't being properly educated. Don't complain when your local and state taxes shoot up because state governments are collapsing under debt. Don't complain when police and firefighters are slashed. Don't complain when Medicare and Social Security are reduced. Don't complain when you can't find a job and can't get unemployment benefits because it would "violate the budget," whereas the $170 billion in corporate tax cuts apparently wouldn't.
How is any of this okay? How is this justified? Why am I supposed to sit back and say that I accept all of this? It's depressing. There are so many people in this country who are barely getting by, despite the fact that they work 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week. I don't see why someone working a job full time shouldn't be able to survive on a basic level.
How is it that a politician can come along, find an American family just scraping by, and "pause to do them injury"? It's atrocious, but I see it happening everywhere lately. It's discouraging and disheartening and sometimes I don't want to follow any of it anymore. Perhaps I'm too young and have not yet developed the sort of armor that allows me to properly deflect the blows, to shrug my shoulders and say "this is just how the world works." But then, why should I have to develop that armor? Why should I have to accept this? Why can't we have good people in charge who actually attempt to help us, rather than screwing the people who are most in need of some assistance? And why, if I point this out, am I called a socialist and a communist and berated for attempting to incite class warfare?
Warfare? All I want is some fucking fair. Why is that so terrible?
(Originally posted on my blog, Nightmares For Sale)