Dollar Store

 

 We’re gonna jump down turn around
pick a bale of cotton,
jump down turn around pick a bale a day 
--Pick a Bale of Cotton, traditional  

Call me a relic call me what'cha will
Say I'm old fashioned say I'm over the hill 
--Old Time Rock and Roll, Bob Segar

 I don't know where my soul is
I don't know where my home is 
--I'm Like a Bird, Nelly Furtado
 ___________________

Not wanting to be one of those people who critiques other blogs, please see that this not the point of this entry.

As a follow-on to yesterday's "Prelude to the Finale", RAW will mention a piece from yesterday's Huffington Post about a mother who left her kid in a closed vehicle in a parking lot on a hot (89 degree) day. The child was released unharmed, but the story shadowboxed one comment to their piece which called for a sort of vigilante posse to "patrol the parking lots of Dollar stores."

"I think we should all form a vigilante group and wander discount store parking lots and rescue kids and pets left in hot cars. I will buy us all frappes if you design the logo for our Mommy Hot Car Rescue league!"

 
Frapes all 'round! What's not to love?


Does that sound reasonable to you? That ostensibly well-meaning comment reveals why liberals are unsuccessful in implementing any sort of meaningful projects. The comment is angry, dismissive and denigrating, embodying the divide between the haves and have-nots. You who have the time to patrol parking lots where the dregs shop may be able to fish the occasional child out of a sweltering (or freezing) car, and that may make you Superman for a moment. Then you may go back to HuffPo and report on your intervention, feeling very good for a moment.

But the people reading HuffPo are not the average worker bees who are lucky to have a moment to turn on the evening news, which means they will not really get a fair diary of the news but merely a entertainment facsimile leaving them all the more incurious about their world or alternately feeling hopelessly separated from it.

The problem is not confined to those who shop at Dollar Stores or whose thinking is disarranged. Child abuse (neglect) is a problem in all social strata. By making it a blight of "those people" who shop at Dollar Stores, you make an uncomfortable and illiberal divide between you and your sisters. We are all guilty of neglect; those with more money are able to fob their children off on au pairs, or sit them in front of the latest video games; anytime we fail to connect with those in our environment we cannot understand and so cannot contribute to a reasonable solution.

That parent and child saved from the potential fiasco at the Dollar Store will return to an abode without proper cooling or insulation, perhaps vermin-ridden with peeling lead paint or compromised asbestos tile. Maybe a mobile home full of carcinogens (FEMA or not).

There may be insufficient or no food in the fridge, or spoiled food. There will probably be no adequate medical care to treat an emergency which might arise, or to create a healthcare plan for achieving and maintaining a well body. (Waiting in an ER for 6+ hours does not qualify as adequate medical care.) The frustration which arises from such a fraught life may result in depression or substance abuse, which rolls over into abuse perpetrated on the innocent or a living dead sort of ennui which is just bad.

It is the paradox of the blind men in the room with an elephant. Each touches one part and so is certain that the animal is narrow, hard, rough and wrinkled or hairy depending upon which part he got to "see". We are not blind, and yet when we react by treating a symptom as though it were the root problem, we may as well be.

People seem to enjoy getting up in arms about the "outrage du jour", and that emotion feels like "doing something", which seems to quell their feelings of impotence, discharging their energy in a socially acceptable way. "You see, I am a caring person and just got very upset about what I saw." It is as though the outrage packet carries within it the knowledge that very little will change. The packaging of that reaction on Facebook or in 140 characters on Twitter is becoming a new art form.

A recent prime example of this was the reaction to the new "Common Core" school initiative proposing a set of standards for public schools in the vein of the spectacularly unsuccessful, "No Child Left Behind". Steve Krashen at the Cinncinnati Enquirer got it right when he observed that U.S. still lags miserably behind in school achievement among the other industrial nations and pins it to the fact that the U.S. has the 2nd highest level of Child poverty in the developed world.

"When children are hungry undernourished, ill" and go home to dysfunctional families, new standards and tests mean very little.

Are there any questions?

Simple Folk

What do the simple folk do
To help them escape when they're blue?
The shepherd who is ailing,
the milkmaid who is glum?
--What Do Simple Folk Do?,
Camelot (19767)
_________________

Predictably, everyone prone to hop on the sound byte did, but sound bytes fail to tell the actual story. The actual story is, most contenders for the job of U.S. president are totally out of touch with the common man. We seem to like having our collective heads whipped around by the spinmeisters and being outraged by gaffes, and since we don't demand better, we do not get it.

Romney is certainly not the first candidate to show his disconnection with the voters. Al Gore fumbled when asked for the price of a gallon of milk; George Bush did not know the price of a gallon of gas. Simple, real people know these things, and they know by pennies how much each increases by the week.

But now it's Romney's turn in the barrel.

He said, "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it." Insensitive statement, to be sure, but it was the follow on which should have merited the outrage. Continued Romney, "I'm concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling and I'll continue to take that message across the nation."

Now that is a load of baloney, but who has addressed it? This implies and marginalizes a small band of perpetually straggling groundlings -- the 5%? But the rest are worthwhile ... the "heart of America", the 90-95%?

The truth is, 15% of Americans live in poverty (Poverty Rate Rises in America). The rate is higher for children: 22% of all children, or over 1 in 5, live in poverty. But that's not the whole story, either.

Almost half of all Americans live at or near the poverty line (Close to Half of All Americans Live Near Poverty). These are people who are a couple of paychecks or one serious medical event away from destitution. With 49 million Americans lacking medical insurance, the potential for catastrophe is near. Their head is above water, but barely. These are the people who have fallen OUT of the middle class, and are hanging near its bottom margin by a tenuous thread.

Even if you go with a rosier Census Department study in December '11, close to 100 million people, or a third of the U.S. population, live at or near the poverty line. Math is not my forte, but 33 - 50% of us are very poor. Does that mean that Romney does not care about almost half of the country?

Romney's statement may turn out to be one of the more honest utterings of the campaign. He could not possibly feel our pain, or he would not have made such an absurd statement.

He was patently pandering the other ones he "doesn't care about" ("I'm not concerned about the very rich, they're doing just fine"), because he is in the rich's pocket.