Ladies and gentlemen: War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children. (President Jimmy Carter, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 2002)
To this I would only add, feeling no risk of going out on a limb, that the one-percent's (and their lackeys') War on the Poor is simply evil, unnecessary and inexcusable, not to mention counterproductive, which matters little to those same one-percenters, whose insatiable greed blinds them to the connection between their accrual of wealth and the health of the nation (and planet) making their riches possible.
This child is a victim of war.
And just as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have burdened the U.S. with its dead and wounded, its traumatized warriors and their families, while decimating target nations, adding incalculable souls to their dead, wounded, and refugee populations, the War on the Poor will exact similar tolls domestically and abroad for generations to come. The same Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that afflicts our returning veterans punishes the nation's poor. One common cause that I hope all of us could rally around is that of fighting to end the suffering that wars in general create. Yet, regarding the War on the Poor, we can actually take immediate steps against some impacts via community action (first) and via the ballot moving forward.
Joblessness, hunger, homelessness and their consequent damage to the country are obscenely costly. A discussion at the RAND Corporation website, perhaps expectantly*, understates both the incidence of poverty-related PTSD and the magnitude of its cost to the nation's economy (10% of those experiencing traumatic stress developing PTSD "contributing to an estimated $3 billion or more in annual productivity losses" to the economy"). How does one, in fact, accurately measure the financial (or any other) impact of PTSD on those living in poverty, their lost potential to contribute, for example, the hungry and fearful children's becoming gradually and then increasingly disheartened in school, eventually perhaps dropping out due to diminished expectations? What impact might such children have or have had on the nation's GDP given a minute margin of the chance given to those fortunate to be born into some degree of wealth? How much of a burden do children we've failed become after they have given up?
I think data posted at the American Psychological Association (APA) under "Effects of Poverty, Hunger and Homelessness on Children and Youth" point closer to true impacts:
Psychological research has demonstrated that living in poverty has a wide range of negative effects on the physical and mental health and wellbeing of our nation’s children. Poverty impacts children within their various contexts at home, in school, and in their neighborhoods and communities.
• Poverty is linked with negative conditions such as substandard housing, homelessness, inadequate nutrition and food insecurity, inadequate child care, lack of access to health care, unsafe neighborhoods, and underresourced schools which adversely impact our nation’s children.
• Poorer children and teens are also at greater risk for several negative outcomes such as poor academic achievement, school dropout, abuse and neglect, behavioral and socioemotional problems, physical health problems, and developmental delays.
• These effects are compounded by the barriers children and their families encounter when trying to access physical and mental health care.
• Economists estimate that child poverty costs an estimated $500 billion a year to the U.S. economy; reduces productivity and economic output by 1.3 percent of GDP; raises crime and increases health expenditure (Holzer et al., 2008). Holzer, H., Schanzenbach, D., Duncan, G., & Ludwig, J. (2008). The economic costs of childhood poverty in the United States. Journal of Children and Poverty, 14, 41-61.
I wonder if even these data understate the cost of poverty to the nation. Additional data and commentary make clear that, not unlike government's response to human impacts on climate change, which is inconsistent or hamstrung by indifference, denial or even hostility, the problems grow worse without responsible governance:
Where is child poverty concentrated?
• U.S. Census data reveals that from 2009 to 2010, the total number of children under age 18 living in poverty increased to 16.4 million from 15.5 million. Child poverty rose from 20.7 percent in 2009, to 22 percent in 2010, and this is the highest it has ever been since 1993.
• Racial and ethnic disparities in poverty rates persist among children. The poverty rate for Black children was 38.2 percent; 32.3 percent for Hispanic children; 17 percent for non-Hispanic White children; and 13 percent for Asian children.
Parents and children waiting for shelter space in Arizona.
Of course, responsive government requires actual "public servants" who are inclined to support and respect the results of serious, non-partisan research on national and international challenges. Such
studies exist, in abundance actually, funded by agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, whose budgets (perhaps gleefully for many on the "right") get cut literally or by default through sequestration or not receiving enough funds to match inflation. In the study linked above one finds a clear case linking poverty conditions with PTSD symptoms (also noted
here,
here (yes, even at the RAND site), and certainly strongly implied at the APA site). But because its data are dependent upon the "PTSD Checklist–Civilian Version," and in so being cannot even approach PTSD's potential (or actual) impacts on younger teenagers and children, it and studies like it cannot even begin to measure the actual or potential damage PTSD will inflict upon children growing up in poverty.
Yet, every study I accessed noted that women and children are more vulnerable to trauma, as well as PTSD and its impacts, and among families living in poverty and/or homelessness, single-mother "homes" are most impacted by and increasingly represented among poor or homeless families. Moreover, as the aforementioned studies confirm, living in shelters or in the street exposes women and children, who are more susceptible to both abuse and its impacts, to greater risk of such abuse, even as governing by austerity persists in cutting access to housing and treatment for those in need. How so-called political leadership countenances such discrepancies in their fellow-Americans' living circumstances still amazes me. I know, a culture of mocking or blaming the victim helps the heartless to justify their callousness, but as I've read in posts here so often and elsewhere (recalling similarities regarding the eventual impacts of climate change), the nation ignores rampant poverty, homelessness and disfranchisement of millions of citizens at its own peril because the damages they inflict on the nation will finally undermine any pretense held (or propaganda proffered) by the one-percenters and the political class of one-percent wannabes who serve their interests that we live in a representative democracy.
Living in cars, for those who can afford it, beats the streets and perhaps even many shelters.
Individually, however, I'd like to believe that I can contribute to a solution. I was diagnosed with PTSD about three years ago, after way too long suffering its impacts. I know (just as many of the studies/sites linked confirm) that it is treatable, just as its causes are remediable. My diagnosis came over 40 years after the precipitating experience, after I'd become a drug addict by the age of 16, a runaway and homeless. Ironically, for me, my military enlistment might have saved my life, though I was again exposed to several harrowing experiences, three of which involved the deaths of fellow-GIs, in two cases men I knew personally. In one case, I had to help clean up a tank in which three GIs were blown up in a range firing mishap. After leaving the military, such experiences perhaps did exacerbate my PTSD, and I struggled again with alcohol and drug addiction for the next 20 years. I'm saying this only to say that the "road" toward relative mental health might be very difficult at times--but it is possible. It takes time and a lot of decent, caring, understanding help from people of conscience. And of course, to address root causes to prevent PTSD's incidence among those who suffer due to poverty will take much greater, systemic efforts (and caring political leadership). I do hope that such leadership will one day emerge.
Unfortunately, often, I doubt that many of our elected officials and those fellow-citizens to whom their misanthropy appeals, fit the profile required for caring. Therefore, those of us who value those attributes must continue to face the frustrating road ahead (together, preferably) and help our suffering brothers, sisters and children. It frustrates me as I know it does many of us to witness the bigotry, intolerance, and hatred that seem to animate so many in the "public sector" (as well as in our private lives--I see it in my own family all the time and it breaks my heart sometimes). But we must not let their attitudes and behavior deter us. In fact, I believe quite often that some among the haters deserve (or at least require from me, if I am to remain relatively sane) only pity. When I think of the "right" wing haters with whom we share space in this phase of our lives, I believe that they are becoming or have become exactly what they fear surrounds them--evil. They create a hell on this planet and project that hell toward creation, including those they feel so burdened sharing existence with. They remind me of a character in literature, from The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, in fact, by Christopher Marlowe.
FAUSTUS. Where are you damn'd?
MEPHIST. In hell.
FAUSTUS. How comes it, then, that thou art out of hell?
MEPHIST. Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it:
Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
In being depriv'd of everlasting bliss?
O, Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,
Which strike a terror to my fainting soul!
snip
MEPHIST. Within the bowels of these elements,
Where we are tortur'd and remain for ever:
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib'd
In one self place; for where we are is hell,
And where hell is, there must we ever be:
And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven.
But I will not let the haters' hard hearts infect mine. While I am still working, I've upped my personal giving (locally and nationally) the last couple of years and know that every act of kindness and decency ripples outward. Watching others in my field have to leave due to cutbacks made me more grateful to be allowed to receive a paycheck, so I believe I need to give more out of what I still receive. While my rickety pick-up truck keeps running, I can continue to carry food for several local distributors to our stressed-out pantries around the city. And I know, personally, though the sight of their suffering sometimes has brought me to tears, those who suffer truly are my family, as much as (or more than) those with whom I happen to be biologically linked whose intolerance I can no longer tolerate. Peace to all.
I want to believe there is hope if those of us who care can also act even in small ways.
*
Chalmers Johnson can be found doing an excellent skewering of RAND's past and ongoing agenda in this 2008 piece.
Thu Dec 05, 2013 at 3:34 AM PT: Wow. I didn't think this would get rescued. Thank you, Rangers.
Thu Dec 05, 2013 at 3:38 AM PT: I'm sorry I missed all the comments. I got called away yesterday afternoon and was doing service literally till almost 11:00 pm. Eastern Time. I wish I had know folks took notice and shared such amazing feelings/thoughts. I truly appreciate you all. d