You defend yourself with hope, hard work and, for some, a helping hand. But these weapons grow dull in an economy on the verge of atrophy, in a job market tilting ever more toward the top and in a political environment that would sacrifice the weak to the wealthy.
The title is immediately followed by the words above. They are offered by Charles Blow in a New York Times op ed titled Them That's Not Shall Lose. It is a must read, by a man who knows whereof he writes:
I know the feel of thick calluses on the bottom of shoeless feet. I know the bite of the cold breeze that slithers through a drafty house. I know the weight of constant worry over not having enough to fill a belly or fight an illness.
Most of us do not know from experience as does Blow, but surely we should be able to understand.
I am up at this unlikely hour because I have a skin itch that is driving me nuts. I am able to get in my car, head to a nearby all-night pharmacy, and obtain something to ease the itching. I can swallow a few benadryl pills to combat the histamines flowing through my body. It is a cool night, so the windows are open, but were it not I could turn on the air conditioner. My pay may have been cut this past year, but I still have a secure job, not only paid decently but accompanied by benefits. Should my current allergic reaction become something serious there is a hospital in walking distance, and I have the insurance to cover my visit, as it has covered three prior visits for severe allergic reactions over the past 6 years.
What if I were poor, with several children? Could I afford even 6 dollars for things that will relieve the agony of my itching? What might I have to give up in return for that relief, a meal for me or for one of the children?
I am not poor. I have experienced little hunger, perhaps the worst occasion being when I was out of food, not being paid for three more days, but having a credit card and finally finding a store that would sell me some staples using that card.
Blow writes in the context of a government about to seek agreement on its finances at the expense of those who are poor. Medicaid cuts are basic to the negotiations in Washington. We are already seeing cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and to WIC (Women, Infants and Children), two programs that are essential to providing a minimally acceptable level of food support.
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” Blow begins with those famous words of James Baldwin, who used them in the context of being overcharged for inferior goods. Blow carries them further, in the sense of the psychological impact of poverty. Both men are correct, yet too many do not understand that the cost, the expensive nature of poverty, falls upon all of us.
It is part opportunity cost - we lose the productiveness of those unable to develop their potential.
It is also the moral cost to those among us who refuse to acknowledge our responsibility for the continuation of such poverty: some justify by making distinctions between worthy and unworthy poor. Others distort Christian teaching to rationalize protecting their own comfort at the expense of others - if there are inferior schools for the poor in inner cities or rural areas, rather than provide the resources to offer decent education we restrict opportunity and drill and kill for low level tests in a fashion that does not empower students but closes ever more doors that provide an escape from poverty. And increasingly in what services we provide we privatize so that the providers are more concerned with their profit margins than they are with helping the people they serve.
Too many in positions of authority neither have the experience of poverty or else they have erased it from their memories - and their consciences. Blow offers us data that should trouble us:
. . . according to the Center for Responsive Politics, nearly half of all members of Congress are millionaires, and between 2008 and 2009, when most Americans were feeling the brunt of the recession, the personal wealth of members of Congress collectively increased by more than 16 percent. Must be nice.
Why is it more important that the very wealthy and the corporations have lower taxes than it is that we provide for basic fairness for those the least among us?
How do we tolerate that over 1 in 5 Americans is now in poverty?
Why do we expect the more than 20% of our public school students who come from poverty to be able to "compete" academically when we still do not ensure that their basic needs are guaranteed?
In Matthew 16 (KJV) we read For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
In Matthews 25 (also KJV( we are reminded Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
Blow describes those politicians moving to balance the budget on the backs of the poor as pitiless Republicans accommodated by pitiful Democrats.
He is right in that blunt language
He would be equally right were he to acknowledge that too many of those who elect people have chosen to acquiesce as the progresses in the social safety net created in the programs of the New Deal and the Great Society and at other points in the past almost 80 years, and thus are also both lacking in pity for those less fortunate and worthy at least as much of our pity and our scorn for their refusal to recognize those who need assistance.
Blow remains focused on the politicians, concluding his column like this:
Until more politicians understand — or remember — what it means to be poor in this country, we are destined to fail the least among us, and all of us will pay a heavy price for that failure.
We the People of the United States are responsible for those elected to represent and govern us, to make laws for us in our name. If we remain silent we acquiesce, we agree by our silence.
Instead we continue to fight in Afghanistan, a country in which to operate we are now, according to words I heard this evening from retired Colonel Douglas MacGregor, paying $400/gallon for fuel for our equipment. To what end? At what opportunity cost to the unmet needs of the rest of our society?
Instead too many argue against restoring taxation to levels at which millionaires and billionaires were still accumulating an ever larger piece of our national wealth, but at least most of the rest of us got something, because jobs were being created - not always good or great jobs, but at least jobs that paid adequate wages and provided some minimal benefits.
America is increasingly becoming morally corrupt. Those who are wealthy and powerful are not even punished when they are caught - they are allowed to pay a relatively small portion of their ill-gotten gains and somehow keep the rest. Hello, Wall Street, and not just Goldman Sachs.
Poverty is brutal, consuming and unforgiving. It strikes at the soul.
And not just the souls of those we are condemning to remaining in poverty. It strikes at the very soul of the nation, and should strike at the soul of every person who is part of We the People.
That it does not so strike is to my mind a moral condemnation of America.
I will be reminded of this again in a few weeks, when once more I travel to Wise Virginia to volunteer for the huge free medical and dental clinic, when I again am confronted with the moral poverty of how we do health care.
But I need not drive 7 hours to the Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia. I can see it in neighborhoods only blocks from Capitol Hill, where the millionaire members of Congress meet to decide the fate of the nation, and of its people. Would that they remember ALL of the people, and not just those who are wealthy.
Perhaps President Obama should have foregone the round of golf with Speaker Boehner where the two of them negotiated about raising the debt limit. Perhaps instead they could have gone to an impoverished community and seen the lack of access to decent food at a decent prices. Maybe then our discussions about how to fix the financial problems of the national government could be done without ignoring the inconvenient truth that the wealth of those at the top is still at the expense of the poverty of those at the bottom.
I have no better words to offer to end this piece than those of Blow with which I began it:
Poverty is brutal, consuming and unforgiving. It strikes at the soul.