It's Hit the Middle Class

http://www.cnn.com/...

Read it and weep, folks.

This makes me feel especially bad today because a family member of mine has been laid off her job, and will be moving out of the area.  I will not relay too many details because she wants to keep it private for now, but suffice to say this 59 year old woman, mother of four, is going to live with her 80 year old mother because it's all she can afford to do.

I wish I could help her, but I am barely making it myself.

Thank goodness my family member won't be homeless.  Thank goodness she has a mother to go to, even if it will mean spending out her entire savings to get there and accepting an eviction on her credit record.  Thank goodness, thank goodness, thank goodness!

The sad thing, is I have an aunt who is very wealthy and owns two homes in California.  You know what, though?  She won't help.  

But, this is not uncommon either.  And the current administration and people who identify with it tend to blame the person who is troubled for her troubles!  This is not acceptable!  

If you read the comments beneath that article, it's sickening.  I wouldn't have seen any of it, as I am boycotting CNN, however someone sent me the link when they found out about my family member.  

What is wrong with this country?  No, it's not just the Bush Administration, though that's a large part of it.  

There is a segment of this population that just loves to rub peoples' noses in their troubles and go 'tsk tsk'.  Sleeping in cars?  This is a consequence of living beyond your means, to be sure, but this is okay in terms of 'punishment'?  And why are we happy to punish those who fail to make good choices?  I think part of the problem is the word 'choice.'

It's misused.

Who makes an active choice to buy food or diapers?  If it's a choice between electricity, heat and savings account, is that a choice?  If it's a choice between fast food burger-flipping at $6.00/hr or wiping butts at $8.00, is that a true choice?  

And what about corporate choices?  Should they not be accountable for  those choices?  The choice between, say, keeping their promises in terms of pensions and healthcare and giving CEOs who are failing their companies golden parachutes or outlandish compensation?   What about those choices?  What about the choice of my relative's boss to eliminate her job because it paid her $40,000 a year and have her train her replacement who is doing the same job for $30,000?  What about the consequences of those choices?

Well, we're beginning to see them.  We've maxed out our credit.  We're working all the hours we can and still be responsible, caring parents.  

Some of us haven't seen the inside of a mall in years.  Some of us don't have credit cards.  Some of us are buying clothes second hand, some of us are trying to figure out how to make it work and save for the retirement, and for college for our kids, without much help.  Some of us are learning to grow our own food, etc.  Maybe we should have been along.

Maybe we all should have been all along; growing our own food, taking only what we need and not what we want, living lightly, sharing bounty and doing the best we can while still maintaining integrity and consideration for others.

When middle class families are going homeless, are using foodstamps, are going to food banks, to make it to the end of the month, is it their own fault?  We're talking middle class, here, people, not the working poor.  Who knows what they're going to do?

When will people wake up to what's going on with their neighbors?  When will we wake up to the fact that greed is not good, to paraphrase from Gordon Gekko.  

I know I can't be the only one who sees these things are interlinked; the economy, capitalism, the environment, industrialism, the oligarchy, the plutocracy, all of it - and us - inexorably intertwined, never to be unraveled or disassociated from the whole, despite the drive to divide us.

I know I sound like a doom and gloom prophet, but times are going to come soon where a true test of who we are as people, a true test of our national character is going to come.  And it wasn't 9/11.  And it will be pass/fail.

God help us all if we fail.