It's About Dignity-NOT "Class"

What the Hell do we mean by "Class" anyway?! You hear "middle class" here in America a lot. EVERYONE is "middle class". Okay, some are "working class". NOBODY, but NOBODY is "poor" or "lower class" in the USA, Even my family, my mother grew up without plumbing, without paved streets in front of her house.-but she's not "poor". No, she's not from a 3rd world country-just the deep south-maybe that IS the 3rd world! She always SAYS she's "poor" which interests me, because she's about the only person I know who regularly uses that word NOT describing some distant population that the speaker has no affinity with. But is she "poor", or even WAS she? After her early years, she moved into a suburban neighborhood in Oklahoma City with her mother and brother, when to a religious high school, when to college (first in her immediate family to do so, I believe) and the disappeared into the 1960's in an adventurous blur until I was born. She was on welfare when I was little but soon got a job and worked for 30+ years for the University of California. She's now retired and has bought a little house and has a pension. Is she "poor"? "Middle class?" "Rich?" I think we'd all agree, if she lived in Somalia she'd be rich. If she was in Haiti or Nicaragua we could say the same. Not calling my mother a lair, not at all, but we should look around before we start using labels like, "rich" "poor" even "middle class."

Most Americans come from peasant stock. Some may trace their ancestry to some Austrian bastard of aristocratic blood, or an "indian princess" but most are peasants. Indentured servants, slaves, folks that were either kicked out of their homeland, ran from war or famine or were dragged here in chains. Our distain for the current wave of immigrants has more to do fear of loosing "what we go" then how "un-american" these folks are. Almost all are Christians, for Christ's sake! This is supposedly a "Christian nation", founded by them anyway. Just listen to that moron on Fox News-God he's an idiot-his ancestors probably came over, half-starved, on a rat-infested steam ship. Now deep down he's afraid mexicans will take what he's "got" in the middle of the night. They're so "un-american" that without their labor states that have just passed draconian immigration laws are seeing farmers harvests rotting on trees because "real" americans don't get dirt on their hands anymore.

What is this all about? I think it's about dignity. We don't want to be associated with poor people because our own modest roots are so recent. Our grandparents worked hard, died better off than their parents-who died without health insurance, pensions or shit, just about ANY modern safety net. Our Boomer parents are better off than they were.... but BEFORE that we were all like these folks from Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvator that are cleaning our yards, picking our strawberries. Deep down we know we're just like them and don't want to be reminded of that, so we tell ourselves we're "middle class" even after we loose our job, the car's repoed and the house foreclosed. It was all a lie, the American Dream, and now we're back in the same state as our immigrant forebears and we're scared and our kids are scared. We tell them it'll be alright, that if we just make it through this rough patch, we'll make it.

We should look over to "poor" folks with a new respect, to the immigrant with understanding, after all we now see the world as they do, but NO. We don't see hopeful faces, people like us, just looking to LIVE IN DIGNITY. We see dirty hands, hands reaching out for OUR meager share, our kids spot in college, OUR job.

The hands that are rubbing together with satisfaction, the well-manicured hands that call their assistant to warm up the jet for a little jaunt down to St. Kitts for weekend getaway, those hands belong to the folks whose net worth has tripled in the last 30 years. But do they have more dignity? Is there dignity in the high walls covered with glass I saw in Central America years ago. No. There is fear. They're afraid, too. But they aren't afraid just of hungry immigrants who don't speak english.... they're afraid of YOU. People like us have been burning down castles filled with people like them for thousands of years, and they fear some old fashioned, medieval "wealth redistribution" is on the horizon. These people AREN'T just well off. They are KING wealthy. THAT is the 1% we are all chanting about.

Anyway, this is NOT about class warfare, as American maybe DOES become a Third World country, one like my mother was born into in the backwoods. But this one is of our own making, we LET THIS HAPPEN on OUR WATCH. We blame Congress, the President, the Tea Party or the Occupy Movement. It doesn't matter. The more we try to hold on to what we "have"-which we took, maybe not knowing or remembering- the more it slips- the more we all loose what we are really looking for-DIGNITY. Maybe it's not a right, after all, maybe it's not guaranteed by a piece of paper. But we all sure damn well want it.

V for Validation

Graduated from college: Check. Recession making it impossible to find work in my field: Check. Difference between 2011 and 19 years ago is there is a LOT more people in this situation, and their disillusionment has reached critical mass. Washington and people in power still think that it's business as usual and the "experts" on TV haven't got a damn clue. Still, there is something refreshing about so many people being truly fed up. It's about time. Where this goes from here is anyone's guess. Does Obama get it? It's hard to tell, as he seems to being playing politics with the whole thing as the FOX candidates call the protesters "mobs". I think that's what Iran's president call protesters in HIS country. Funny how THESE people are a "mob" and the "Tea Party" are "Americans". The bottom line is that the Tea Party was the establishment pissed off that Obama had been elected (right now I’ll refrain from calling them ALL greedy racists) and these are REAL people who are in REAL trouble, not some fabricated "movement".

I guess what I'm saying is: I feel for these protestors. Do they sometimes sound idiotic? Sure. Do they seem not to have a "clearly defined message"? Sure. But if you've been out of work for a year, or two (I have recently), you might not have a clearly defined message either. It's the politician's JOB, congress’ JOB to come up with policy. That’s what they are PAID and ELECTED to do. They've failed. The President, god love 'em, has failed too. He inherited an absolutely fucked situation. That's just fine with Right and the Banks and the 1%. He goes down and we go back to waging war on the world, bankrupting the country and leaving the poor, the young, the old out in the cold. What about the future? That was the arrogance of the Bushies: they never thought they'd get old and die.  The dictators around the Middle East thought the same. Look at Rumsfeld and Cheney. They STILL don't get it: they destroyed this country and we're standing around blaming each other.

-Unquiet