Extremism makes people think in extremes. Polarization is another word for extremism. Thinking in extremes is both dramatic and scary---but not necessarily reality based.
Reality has been taking a hit what with alternative facts and such. But is still where most of us are trying to live.
Reality is--I'm sitting in a comfortably warm room with sufficient lighting and writing on my computer. I'm not in hiding from a fascist regime out to get me (picture the diary of Ann Frank). I'm not walking toward the border trying to escape a civil war that has destroyed my house and my neighbors houses (think Syrian refugees trying to get away from the fighting and find a place to raise their families). I'm not stuck in a tiny cabin with inadequate food watching those around me be beaten or misused because I was sold into slavery and bought by a people that thought owning other people was OK (think American slavery).
I am not being forced into a marriage with someone I don't love or being left on the prairie in winter because I'm old. I am not being burned for practicing herbal medicine or refusing to go to the approved church. I am not being denied a job because of the color of my skin or the language I speak. I am not being taxed at such a high rate I can't afford the basics necessary to life. I am not refused emergency medical care because I don't have the money to pay for care. I am not being stoned for a romantic tryst. I am not being put in an orphanage for being born female. I can still go to school if I have the money, and I went for free as a child.
My life could be much worse. There are people whose lives were much worse. There are people whose lives are still much worse. And while many of those people are in other parts of the world or in other times, many are also in this country--now.
I am lucky.
There is sex trafficking in my town, both of adults from other countries and children from here and other countries.
There are people wrapped in garbage bags and newspaper trying to sleep out in the cold.
There are people that can tell me where the best dumpsters for edible food are and when is the best time to get to them. They can also tell me what businesses pour bleach on their old food and take box knives to the clothing and shoes that go to the dumpster.
There are people locked in dormitories brought to this country for good jobs that are not allowed to leave and are charged all of that "good money" for the crappy food they are allowed to eat and for the cot in an unheated warehouse they get to sleep.
There are old men and women whose utilities are off because they are buying their very expensive medications.
There are mentally ill people that are fighting internal monsters while the people running their boardinghouse keep the money and treat them badly and don't give them their medications.
I am independent, free to use my money as I wish, and capable of choosing how to spend my time.
I am lucky.
So when I hear about a wall going up, I think about the amazing great wall of china which no longer separates 2 kingdoms but serves as a tourist attraction and the Berlin Wall which was so despised--a symbol of what was wrong in the world and the great joy when it fell. I have never been to Mexico. I don't know anyone in Mexico at this time. This wall will not affect me personally.
I am lucky.
When I hear about a ban on Syrian refugees and no more Muslim immigrants. I'm not Muslim or even religious. I have never been to Syria. I don't know anyone from Syria. This change will not affect me.
I am lucky.
When I hear the war against abortion rights and women's rights to choose about their bodies is being attacked--again, I don't like it, because I'm a woman. But this will not affect me personally.
I am Lucky.
When I hear about a hiring freeze on federal employees, I realize that Veteran's just lost the availability of a lot of good jobs that they would have normally had a good shot at and that Veterans Healthcare, currently actively seeking both physicians and workers, will just have to continue limping along understaffed. I realize that the Post Office may really go away. But I am not a Veteran.
I am Lucky.
When I hear about getting rid of 75% of government regulations, I'm afraid that will mean environmental protection--stopping waste, toxins, poisons, being dumped into our water or released into our air so that the corporations that were spending money to keep their factories from endangering us all can make more money. That will affect me. But I am old so it will probably only shorten my live slightly.
I am lucky.
When I hear about us returning to a full-fledged coal and oil dependency in the name of our coal and oil workers and coal and oil barons, I'm disturbed. But I have a Prius. And I don't use coal. And while I would love to see the skies continue to clear and waters to be spring-like, I am old--it will be alright. My child-bearing days are over. I will not have to see my descendants choked by the air or their babies malformed from drinking water contaminated not only with petroleum but with benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene and other chemicals used to force the oil from the earth. All I have to worry about is the multiple earthquakes that shake my house everyday and threaten to drop my bedroom down a floor or wedge my doors shut. There are worse ways to die than in an earthquake.
I am lucky.
When I hear about denial of climate change, by men that profit from not believing in climate change, I am curious about those minds that can so lie to themselves that they endanger all those species--including our own. But while I have never seen weather like this, the changes were already starting when I was a child. It is obviously speeding up, and I will have to die before my statistically promised life expectancy is reached or move further north soon, if I would survive summers. I fear I cannot afford to move. I hear that while hyperthermia is not a pleasant death, it is relatively quick.
I am lucky.
I hope the changes don't get worse than this. I fear my lucky streak may end.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Saturday, January 14, 2017
What is fascism, really?
definitions:
a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.
an authoritarian form of government, although not all authoritarian regimes are fascist.
(Originally, "fascism" referred to a political movement that was linked with corporatism )
fascism, especially once in power, has historically attacked communism, conservatism and liberalism, attracting support primarily from what in a classical sense is called the "far right" or "extreme right"
the dictatorship of the most reactionary elements of financial capitalism.--Fascism is an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic, the most imperialistic elements of the financial capital... Fascism is neither the government beyond classes nor the government of the petty bourgeois or the lumpen-proletariat over the financial capital. Fascism is the government of the financial capital itself. It is an organized massacre of the working class and the revolutionary slice of peasantry and intelligentsia. Fascism in its foreign policy is the most brutal kind of chauvinism, which cultivates zoological hatred against other peoples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism
Perhaps, its like pornography--"I can't define it, but I know it when I see it"
"At rallies—surrounded by supporters wearing black shirts—_________ caught the imagination of the crowds. His physique was impressive, and his style of oratory, staccato and repetitive, was superb. His attitudes were highly theatrical, his opinions were contradictory, his facts were often wrong, and his attacks were frequently malicious and misdirected; but his words were so dramatic, his metaphors so apt and striking, his vigorous, repetitive gestures so extraordinarily effective, that he rarely failed to impose his mood."
If you thought I was describing Donald Trump, Surprise! This is a description of Benito Mussolini and his rise to power--Officially the first fascist leader at the beginning of a fascist rise that covered most of Europe and much of the American continent during the 1920's to as late as the mid-1970's.
The current rise of the ALT RIGHT, is a blatant attempt to resurrect the Nazi Party of Germany. Adoph Hitler, a man of similar beliefs and oratory abilities to Benito Mussolini, raised the Nazi Party to a power which endangered the entire world--unless you were one of them.
That is the thing that doesn't seem to catch the people currently loving our latest rise of Fascism. It is only great to White Men. Their children and wives seem to be on board, but the females are not in line for any perks except not being threatened as long as one of the white males is protecting them, supporting them, and not tired of them.
Amazingly, fascism is not about anything but money and power. Deciding who has it. Deciding who doesn't. It is all about putting the power of the money in the hands of white men, and keeping it there--by any means necessary.
Fascism is about Business over individuals.
Fascism is about Caucasian over any other race.
Fascism is about Male over female and heterosexual over any other choices.
But the thing to remember, the most important thing to remember, is that all those fascist regimes, all those dictators, all those government changes were made through the normal election processes of the nations that became fascist.
They were voted in or appointed using the current government laws and rules; then all the checks and balances, all the individual protections of the people were removed by the new governing party using those same rules that changed such things as the tax rate and the budget. All the opportunities for bettering yourself, your life, your family's lives, became dependent upon:
being white
being male
being a member of the fascist party.
If I were a billionaire white male with a tendency toward white supremecy (say, my father was arrested in 1927 at a KKK rally in Queens, New York), and favored women from parts of the world that had to use their beauty and bodies to obtain a man that could keep them in the manner they preferred, I might prefer it if my country was fascist. I might even love knowing that in a fascist nation, I have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
The rest of us need to stay more alert than the world did in the 1930's when fascism caused World War II.
There were a lot of loser's in that one--on a personal level. And a lot of them were white men with a soul.
a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.
an authoritarian form of government, although not all authoritarian regimes are fascist.
(Originally, "fascism" referred to a political movement that was linked with corporatism )
fascism, especially once in power, has historically attacked communism, conservatism and liberalism, attracting support primarily from what in a classical sense is called the "far right" or "extreme right"
the dictatorship of the most reactionary elements of financial capitalism.--Fascism is an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic, the most imperialistic elements of the financial capital... Fascism is neither the government beyond classes nor the government of the petty bourgeois or the lumpen-proletariat over the financial capital. Fascism is the government of the financial capital itself. It is an organized massacre of the working class and the revolutionary slice of peasantry and intelligentsia. Fascism in its foreign policy is the most brutal kind of chauvinism, which cultivates zoological hatred against other peoples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism
Perhaps, its like pornography--"I can't define it, but I know it when I see it"
"At rallies—surrounded by supporters wearing black shirts—_________ caught the imagination of the crowds. His physique was impressive, and his style of oratory, staccato and repetitive, was superb. His attitudes were highly theatrical, his opinions were contradictory, his facts were often wrong, and his attacks were frequently malicious and misdirected; but his words were so dramatic, his metaphors so apt and striking, his vigorous, repetitive gestures so extraordinarily effective, that he rarely failed to impose his mood."
If you thought I was describing Donald Trump, Surprise! This is a description of Benito Mussolini and his rise to power--Officially the first fascist leader at the beginning of a fascist rise that covered most of Europe and much of the American continent during the 1920's to as late as the mid-1970's.
The current rise of the ALT RIGHT, is a blatant attempt to resurrect the Nazi Party of Germany. Adoph Hitler, a man of similar beliefs and oratory abilities to Benito Mussolini, raised the Nazi Party to a power which endangered the entire world--unless you were one of them.
That is the thing that doesn't seem to catch the people currently loving our latest rise of Fascism. It is only great to White Men. Their children and wives seem to be on board, but the females are not in line for any perks except not being threatened as long as one of the white males is protecting them, supporting them, and not tired of them.
Amazingly, fascism is not about anything but money and power. Deciding who has it. Deciding who doesn't. It is all about putting the power of the money in the hands of white men, and keeping it there--by any means necessary.
Fascism is about Business over individuals.
Fascism is about Caucasian over any other race.
Fascism is about Male over female and heterosexual over any other choices.
But the thing to remember, the most important thing to remember, is that all those fascist regimes, all those dictators, all those government changes were made through the normal election processes of the nations that became fascist.
They were voted in or appointed using the current government laws and rules; then all the checks and balances, all the individual protections of the people were removed by the new governing party using those same rules that changed such things as the tax rate and the budget. All the opportunities for bettering yourself, your life, your family's lives, became dependent upon:
being white
being male
being a member of the fascist party.
If I were a billionaire white male with a tendency toward white supremecy (say, my father was arrested in 1927 at a KKK rally in Queens, New York), and favored women from parts of the world that had to use their beauty and bodies to obtain a man that could keep them in the manner they preferred, I might prefer it if my country was fascist. I might even love knowing that in a fascist nation, I have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
The rest of us need to stay more alert than the world did in the 1930's when fascism caused World War II.
There were a lot of loser's in that one--on a personal level. And a lot of them were white men with a soul.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
nobody's wingman
The real definition of a wingman is a pilot whose aircraft is positioned behind and outside the leading aircraft in a formation. I knew this definition from old war movies. The hero was never the wingman.
Modern definition of a Wingman (this was borrowed from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Wingman because it is great )
A Wingman is a guy you bring along with you on singles
outings (like to bars) that helps you out with the women.
Typically in these ways :
• The Wingman will always be there to “occupy” least
attractive girl of the pair so that you may engage in the “hotty”
• Often, when an attractive girl is out with an ugly friend, she often feels restricted to not leave that ugly friend alone, thus making the hot girl, un-touchable.
• When the wingman technique is used, both girls are
approached by the men, and the Wingman automatically
engages in conversation with the ugly girl.
• Now that the hot friend sees that the ugly girl has finally found a man, she is now free to start scouting.
• This is where you come in “unexpectidly” and “accidentaly”, and begin catching up on “old times” with the Wingman.
• The Wingman then offers the ugly girl to dance, (which
rarely happens to her) so she wont be able to resist.
The wingman in this definition is also never the hero.
(this concept is repulsive on soooo mannnny levels)
I have noticed that many people allow themselves to be permanently cast in the wingman role. Empty nester's, political wives, maybe all wives, single parents without partners, grandparents, roommates, you know---the beta wolves in the many relationships that make up our lives.
There is nothing wrong with being a beta, or being a caregiver, or being anything in a relationship unless we loose our selves without the role telling us who we are.
We all need to be---really be--without some other being telling us who we are.
If you have seen a widow that can't redefine herself except as a wife, a mother whose child is killed or merely grows up to be a successful and independent person, a divorcee that immediately starts hunting for a replacement spouse, a grandparent that has traded parenting for grandparenting with equal zeal, or worse the person that suddenly need pills and alcohol to fill the void.
They feel like they have lost someone.
They have.
They have lost themselves.
None of us are here just to be someone else's wingman. We are all the hero's of our own stories, even if we make the story dark or tragic or pathetically shallow and superficial.
I am making my story, you are making your story. And while you might have relationships, in fact you will have relationships---we are all in some sort of relationship with everyone else that crosses the path that is our life, we are not JUST the relationship. We are not defined by our relationships, no matter how much we love--or hate, no matter how much we give--or take. We define ourselves.
No one should think of themselves as just the wingman for someone else's success in life.
Live your whole life.
Be your whole self.
There are endless adventures for us all, at all ages.
Enjoy.
Modern definition of a Wingman (this was borrowed from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Wingman because it is great )
A Wingman is a guy you bring along with you on singles
outings (like to bars) that helps you out with the women.
Typically in these ways :
• The Wingman will always be there to “occupy” least
attractive girl of the pair so that you may engage in the “hotty”
• Often, when an attractive girl is out with an ugly friend, she often feels restricted to not leave that ugly friend alone, thus making the hot girl, un-touchable.
• When the wingman technique is used, both girls are
approached by the men, and the Wingman automatically
engages in conversation with the ugly girl.
• Now that the hot friend sees that the ugly girl has finally found a man, she is now free to start scouting.
• This is where you come in “unexpectidly” and “accidentaly”, and begin catching up on “old times” with the Wingman.
• The Wingman then offers the ugly girl to dance, (which
rarely happens to her) so she wont be able to resist.
The wingman in this definition is also never the hero.
(this concept is repulsive on soooo mannnny levels)
I have noticed that many people allow themselves to be permanently cast in the wingman role. Empty nester's, political wives, maybe all wives, single parents without partners, grandparents, roommates, you know---the beta wolves in the many relationships that make up our lives.
There is nothing wrong with being a beta, or being a caregiver, or being anything in a relationship unless we loose our selves without the role telling us who we are.
We all need to be---really be--without some other being telling us who we are.
If you have seen a widow that can't redefine herself except as a wife, a mother whose child is killed or merely grows up to be a successful and independent person, a divorcee that immediately starts hunting for a replacement spouse, a grandparent that has traded parenting for grandparenting with equal zeal, or worse the person that suddenly need pills and alcohol to fill the void.
They feel like they have lost someone.
They have.
They have lost themselves.
None of us are here just to be someone else's wingman. We are all the hero's of our own stories, even if we make the story dark or tragic or pathetically shallow and superficial.
I am making my story, you are making your story. And while you might have relationships, in fact you will have relationships---we are all in some sort of relationship with everyone else that crosses the path that is our life, we are not JUST the relationship. We are not defined by our relationships, no matter how much we love--or hate, no matter how much we give--or take. We define ourselves.
No one should think of themselves as just the wingman for someone else's success in life.
Live your whole life.
Be your whole self.
There are endless adventures for us all, at all ages.
Enjoy.
Sunday, January 1, 2017
A war on poverty versus a war against the poor.
I keep seeing spikes in places homeless people used to sleep and police taking the belongings of transients and people arrested for feeding homeless people. I hear coworkers griping about welfare queens like the Clinton Presidency didn't stop that in the 1990's. I hear nurses griping about poor people abusing the emergency room because they are not having a real emergency while living in a state that didn't expand medicaid--thus millions still without health coverage have no choice but the ER. I see people griping about people in dirty clothes and stinking when they walk past them on the street and trying to figure out how to remove those awful people from the scenery.
America HATES poor people.
We have a choice to make. Do we fight poverty, or more specifically, decrease income inequality and improve opportunities for those not born into wealthy families, or do we just keep treating poor people like the enemy and fighting a war against their right to exist.
Being poor should not be a crime (unless it is a crime committed by the state). Creating and maintaining poor people via institutionalized inequities should be.
Tenement housing in the United States started soon after the revolution. In the very early 1800's, New York City began replacing single family residences with multistory (low to us now) multi unit dwellings. Known as tenements, these narrow, low-rise apartment buildings–many of them concentrated in the city’s Lower East Side neighborhood–were all too often cramped, poorly lit and lacked indoor plumbing and proper ventilation. By 1900, some 2.3 million people (a full two-thirds of New York City’s population) were living in tenement housing. While the wealthy didn't live there, immigrants and eventually freedmen moved there. It was the original melting pot--a place where a few found ways out and many drowned in crime and poverty.
The idea of keeping all the less desireables in one area quickly caught on and every large city developed their own tenement areas. Smaller towns had to satisfy this need to not see, hear, or touch the ostracized--the American version of the "Untouchables" with railroad tracks. Thus all those people that were born on the wrong side of the tracks.
The above pictures are government housing projects. People with minimal money packed tightly together. Inevitably the projects are placed in places that no one cares about--many relatively low-incomed have fought them being built in their area and won. So a city will have one or two or three areas that get the projects. Those areas are never the ones that the old money is in. And they are not the areas that the new and developing businesses are buying in. They put them where the old, culturally diverse, struggling to make it people are.
The places rapidly fill up with those with individuals that gained the least from their local schools. They provide no mentors for the young as those people are not living in these places. They are frequently in food deserts. They are under served by public transportation. They provide all the children raised in them with a first row seat to despair, poverty, hopelessness, chemical dependency, violence and death. They are their own kind of public education system.
People that can, avoid ever going near them. They are dangerous.
Babies and toddlers and little old ladies live in them. Frequently for their entire lives.
Why do we concentrate all that horribleness? Why fix it where those without can never know anyone, see anyone, meet anyone in their neighborhood but other people that have no hope but for a life of crime, addiction or violence?
Drug lords and organized crime become the modern version of RobinHood.
Sports, Music, and Acting become a possible way to fame and fortune with the expectation that the lucky young man or woman will pull the whole family out of the place they are mired in.
Before Social Security (1935), the poor house or poor farm was where the disabled, elderly, sickly and mentally ill would end up if they didn't have family that could afford to care for them. The poorhouse was more institutional and until recently, many elderly associated them with Nursing Homes (having visited a few of the poorer versions of the nursing home, I can't even imagine them
when they were poorhouses and unmonitored for abuse and neglect)
Poor farms, which would take whole families at times, resembled prison farms and were not for those that were physically disabled. They were not better than the poorhouses, but at least there was exercise and fresh air. Both the poorhouse and the poorfarm had virtually disappeared by 1950 in the US.
Anti-loitering laws were originally to prevent homeless people from sitting in public areas, begging in public areas, and sleeping in public areas. (then they were altered in the 1990's to stop gangs)
Public urination laws used to be about preventing people that weren't allowed to use public restrooms from urinating in alleys and parks. (I wonder when and who that was directed at) These days, the same laws are aimed at intoxicated people, homeless people and those that like to expose themselves. To think that a homeless person could get on the sexual predator list for having to go #1 is rather interesting. As every 3 year old knows, we all have to go.
Why do those that aren't poor hate those that are?
Why do we assume that they would be fine if they had worked hard in school, listened to their parents, respected their elders, obeyed the law and gone to church.
Why do we assume that the kids made it to school daily or that their school was teaching them what they needed and not just trying to deal with the effects of a couple hundred poor kids a day--hungry, sick, malnourished, heavy-metal poisoned, PTSD'd kids. Kids that watched their grandma get beaten, their father shoot up, their mother supplementing her income as a sex worker in a one room apartment, the attendant raping the kid in the next bed of the shelter, the foster dad selling kiddy porn.
And this is where the middle says--"see, I don't want my kid exposed to that, those people, those people..........."
Those people that are living in concentrated abuse and neglect with no way out, no helping hands, no mentors, no hope. We have created concentration camps for our poor people so that not just one man or one family is degraded, but so that everyone is exposed to everyone else's trauma, abuse, neglect, and insanity.
We have created hell on earth.
Then we hate them for their lack of courage, their inability to rise above it, their moral failures and their ultimate passing on of the legacy of poverty.
My family passed along a love of fried food (yes, you can fry everything, anything and everything), cookies and gardening. I have friends that's families love beer and football. I have met people that have reunions to celebrate every graduation from the family university. We all love to pass along family traditions. But no one wants to admit their family has pedophiles or alcoholics or gambler's that can't quite quit. Those get passed along also unless something or someone stops the cycle. Picture growing up seeing all of the above and more on a daily basis. And no one ever breaking any cycle.
Why would anyone question 200+ years of desperation, hunger and need leading to a family where every one does time in prison for trying to make some money they only way they have been taught.
Poor people need the same thing everyone else needs to succeed:
Poor people aren't the enemy. Poverty is. And income inequality is making this worse. We need to change the "survival of the fittest" mentality to one of cooperation and collaboration to make our country a good home for all its citizens.
The problem is only insurmountable when we keep doing everything the same as we did in the middle ages.
America HATES poor people.
We have a choice to make. Do we fight poverty, or more specifically, decrease income inequality and improve opportunities for those not born into wealthy families, or do we just keep treating poor people like the enemy and fighting a war against their right to exist.
Being poor should not be a crime (unless it is a crime committed by the state). Creating and maintaining poor people via institutionalized inequities should be.
Tenement housing in the United States started soon after the revolution. In the very early 1800's, New York City began replacing single family residences with multistory (low to us now) multi unit dwellings. Known as tenements, these narrow, low-rise apartment buildings–many of them concentrated in the city’s Lower East Side neighborhood–were all too often cramped, poorly lit and lacked indoor plumbing and proper ventilation. By 1900, some 2.3 million people (a full two-thirds of New York City’s population) were living in tenement housing. While the wealthy didn't live there, immigrants and eventually freedmen moved there. It was the original melting pot--a place where a few found ways out and many drowned in crime and poverty.
The idea of keeping all the less desireables in one area quickly caught on and every large city developed their own tenement areas. Smaller towns had to satisfy this need to not see, hear, or touch the ostracized--the American version of the "Untouchables" with railroad tracks. Thus all those people that were born on the wrong side of the tracks.
The above pictures are government housing projects. People with minimal money packed tightly together. Inevitably the projects are placed in places that no one cares about--many relatively low-incomed have fought them being built in their area and won. So a city will have one or two or three areas that get the projects. Those areas are never the ones that the old money is in. And they are not the areas that the new and developing businesses are buying in. They put them where the old, culturally diverse, struggling to make it people are.The places rapidly fill up with those with individuals that gained the least from their local schools. They provide no mentors for the young as those people are not living in these places. They are frequently in food deserts. They are under served by public transportation. They provide all the children raised in them with a first row seat to despair, poverty, hopelessness, chemical dependency, violence and death. They are their own kind of public education system.
People that can, avoid ever going near them. They are dangerous.
Babies and toddlers and little old ladies live in them. Frequently for their entire lives.
Why do we concentrate all that horribleness? Why fix it where those without can never know anyone, see anyone, meet anyone in their neighborhood but other people that have no hope but for a life of crime, addiction or violence?
Drug lords and organized crime become the modern version of RobinHood.
Sports, Music, and Acting become a possible way to fame and fortune with the expectation that the lucky young man or woman will pull the whole family out of the place they are mired in.
Before Social Security (1935), the poor house or poor farm was where the disabled, elderly, sickly and mentally ill would end up if they didn't have family that could afford to care for them. The poorhouse was more institutional and until recently, many elderly associated them with Nursing Homes (having visited a few of the poorer versions of the nursing home, I can't even imagine them
when they were poorhouses and unmonitored for abuse and neglect)
Poor farms, which would take whole families at times, resembled prison farms and were not for those that were physically disabled. They were not better than the poorhouses, but at least there was exercise and fresh air. Both the poorhouse and the poorfarm had virtually disappeared by 1950 in the US.
Anti-loitering laws were originally to prevent homeless people from sitting in public areas, begging in public areas, and sleeping in public areas. (then they were altered in the 1990's to stop gangs)
Public urination laws used to be about preventing people that weren't allowed to use public restrooms from urinating in alleys and parks. (I wonder when and who that was directed at) These days, the same laws are aimed at intoxicated people, homeless people and those that like to expose themselves. To think that a homeless person could get on the sexual predator list for having to go #1 is rather interesting. As every 3 year old knows, we all have to go.
- Citywide bans on camping in public have increased by 60 percent.
- Citywide bans on begging have increased by 25 percent.
- Citywide bans on loitering, loafing, and vagrancy have increased by 35 percent.
- Citywide bans on sitting or lying down in particular public places have increased by 43 percent.
- Bans on sleeping in vehicles have increased by 119 percent.
Why do those that aren't poor hate those that are?
Why do we assume that they would be fine if they had worked hard in school, listened to their parents, respected their elders, obeyed the law and gone to church.
Why do we assume that the kids made it to school daily or that their school was teaching them what they needed and not just trying to deal with the effects of a couple hundred poor kids a day--hungry, sick, malnourished, heavy-metal poisoned, PTSD'd kids. Kids that watched their grandma get beaten, their father shoot up, their mother supplementing her income as a sex worker in a one room apartment, the attendant raping the kid in the next bed of the shelter, the foster dad selling kiddy porn.
And this is where the middle says--"see, I don't want my kid exposed to that, those people, those people..........."
Those people that are living in concentrated abuse and neglect with no way out, no helping hands, no mentors, no hope. We have created concentration camps for our poor people so that not just one man or one family is degraded, but so that everyone is exposed to everyone else's trauma, abuse, neglect, and insanity.
We have created hell on earth.
Then we hate them for their lack of courage, their inability to rise above it, their moral failures and their ultimate passing on of the legacy of poverty.
My family passed along a love of fried food (yes, you can fry everything, anything and everything), cookies and gardening. I have friends that's families love beer and football. I have met people that have reunions to celebrate every graduation from the family university. We all love to pass along family traditions. But no one wants to admit their family has pedophiles or alcoholics or gambler's that can't quite quit. Those get passed along also unless something or someone stops the cycle. Picture growing up seeing all of the above and more on a daily basis. And no one ever breaking any cycle.
Why would anyone question 200+ years of desperation, hunger and need leading to a family where every one does time in prison for trying to make some money they only way they have been taught.
Poor people need the same thing everyone else needs to succeed:
- role models that they know well and see daily succeeding
- early access to good learning opportunities--4 years old is too late
- someone to help them process those things they see that scare and terrify them (and not to live in a place where scary and terrifying things happen daily)
- a safe environment that is neither too cold or too hot, too crowded or too empty of stimuli
- healthy food and clean water
- a variety of people to interact with so they can see that there is more than one possible direction to go in their life.
- an understanding of their roots--and an ability to feel pride in those roots
- an understanding of their own possibilities in which they see enough people succeed that they believe they can also.
Poor people aren't the enemy. Poverty is. And income inequality is making this worse. We need to change the "survival of the fittest" mentality to one of cooperation and collaboration to make our country a good home for all its citizens.
The problem is only insurmountable when we keep doing everything the same as we did in the middle ages.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
Make love not war--a counterculture slogan from the 1960's--very hippy-dippy, very anti-establishment, very John Lennon. Images of graf...
-
We are currently seeing lots of change, lots of manmade change, change that is affecting the weather, the average temperature, the percent...