This week's popular diversions--an airline crash, a murder trial--led me (and I suppose a multitude of others) to pass over the latest outrage committed by House Republicans, until I read the lead editorial and the Gail Collins op-ed piece in today's New York Times. They went through the annual ritual of passing the farm bill--the one that hands out $195.6 billion to Big Agriculture--but not before stripping it completely of its much needed companion piece, the food stamps program--the one that helps keep the wolf from the door of 47 million Americans.
Will they stop at nothing? Have they no shame, these people who have the gall to hide beneath the mantle of conservatism? It would be only slightly less outrageous if they applied their supposed budget-cutting zeal with equal ferocity to rich and poor alike. They don't. There are countless examples of their zealotry yielding in the face of wealth and power. To steal from the poor in order to hand out generously to the rich is to reverse the Christian principles to which they purportedly adhere.
Will their mean-spiritedness and hypocrisy be properly rewarded at the next election by their ouster? Some hope! Congressional districts have now been gerrymandered to give virtual assurance to their re-election. It will likely take more years of their oppression before we all come back to our collective senses. For the moment, we seem bent on following the historical path of all great powers, into decline and eventual irrelevance. A friend wrote yesterday from Europe, noting that the days are gone when one could travel as an American with a sense of pride in our generosity of spirit and our democratic ways. Now the world looks at us askance, and wonders how the American dream became the nightmare that it is for the increasing numbers of the unemployed and the poverty-stricken.
What happened, we may all wonder, to the Big Heart upon which we once used to pride ourselves? It seems to have stopped pumping the lifeblood that once flowed through our arteries, creating our vitality and strength. It is becoming a mean and shriveled thing, and heading rapidly toward inertia.
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2 comments:
Yes I agree 100% Peter.
Add to this a shift away from help thy neighbor by Republicans in the Texas Legislature who passed an omnibus abortion bill that is one of the most restrictive in the nation. The bill, which will ban abortions after 20 weeks, require abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and require all abortions take place in surgical centers flies in the face of reason.
Where is the passion for equality and justice that this nation so proudly established 200 years ago. During the second world war my father ran a P38 line at Lockheed and grew vegetables and chickens in our back yard so he could feed the poor. He fed 8 families for 4 years. It caught on and by the end of the war 17 families on our block were doing it feeding 130 poor families who joined in the tending of the gardens. Where is that spirit now?
The growing gap between rich and poor is driving classes of people apart exponentially. The internet is exposing it every day. My family is now shopping at food banks since a tragedy struck our youngest son who is recovering from a fall of 24'. We are grateful that he has no nerve damage to his spine. All his limbs which are broken. We are not able to receive welfare because we make $87 too much each month from SSI. We have a food garden in our small backyard that really assists our food expenses.
The Tea Nuts and greedy entitled persons that are blind to the value of a healthy and productive population are still holding sway. It has to stop or there will be a revolt in the streets that will rival any yet seen is our history. I'm 70 this August and I've NEVER seen such a creepy divisive atmosphere in the Senate and House!
"America the stolen" your words Peter, in "Bob Went Home", by Peter Clothier and Gary Lloyd constructed/self published in 1974, print, mixed media, illustrated book.
Thanks, Gary. Our agreement on this topic is sad, to say the least... Love to you and your family, P
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