Skip to main content

Dog eat dog: how to be a cannibal.

.
Now the Republicans are lining up to argue that unemployment benefits encourage unemployment.  The theory seems to be that hunger and homelessness are really a way to encourage people to apply for a job at Chrysler Corporation, where all the jobs are.  Right?  Sleeping in a car is a grand way to encourage job creation!

Is something bass-ackward here, or is this the most callous disregard for human well-being we have heard in a long while?

It is something like arguing that madness is inherited.  You catch it from your kids. 

I am shameless, so I shall say that once upon about fifty years ago, I was a parish pastor in California.  I wanted to join Social Security, but there were just a fine, large number of religious people who thought that any form of such insurance was an admission that God would not take care of his children when they became old and poor and badly in need of health care, so special provisions had to be made for people like me who dearly loved the Lord, but who dearly hated the idea of being old and poor and sick and homeless.  So I was able to "buy in" while the church closed its eyes. 

Something like that. 

This madness is inherited, but not from our kids.  We inherit it from the people who think we are not all in this together.  Screw the poor!  They aren't trying hard enough!  If you feed them, they will not feed themselves at our cost!  When they come to apply for a job, tell them that these are tough times, and that they have to pull themselves together. 

In some wandering way, human history is a story of how we have recognized that it is not simply about ourselves, or our family, or our clan, or tribe, or nation, but that we are all in this together. 

Teilhard de Chardin once said that we have come to the point where we look up and see ourselves coming over the horizon, toward us.  They are what we are.  The enemy is our relative.  The relative is not our enemy.  The human race has come to face itself. 

How can our politicians suggest that those without work are at fault?  How can they say that they must pay the price?  It is our system!  And, if in the system we have devised, while some are hurting, how can we say that offering help is a stupid mistake? 

Maybe Darwin was wrong.  Maybe the fittest are the people who care the least, or who think in shallow pools.  Maybe not giving a damn is the way out of hunger.  Maybe we are not all in this together. 


A strong nation feeds its people, educates its people, tends to the old, the sick, and the helpless.  A strong nation cares for its people, because if it does not care, it is sick and rotten at the core. 
.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more