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If an American goes to bed hungry tonight, and ABC News decides to talk about Casey Anthony instead, does the hungry American still have hunger pains?
If a disabled American veteran comes home to find that his job has been shipped overseas and his house has been (illegally) foreclosed and the VA is too crowded to treat his medical problems, I would think long and hard before telling him “You have it a lot better than some other folks in history. At least you can sleep on your parent’s sofa. At least they feed you. Be grateful for what you have.”
Yes, I am sure that the veteran is grateful. Grateful that his parents have postponed their retirement to help take care of their grown kids. Grateful that he still has parents who care and understand, even when he wakes up at night in a panic, not sure if he is home or back in Baghdad. But, he would be a little more grateful if the politicians in Washington acted as if they cared and understood.
No man is an island. When one of us is in pain, we are all in pain. That’s why the press and the nation’s more fortunate have chosen to ignore the plight of the homeless, the unemployed, the uninsured, the hungry and the hopeless. If those is power close their eyes to the suffering around them, or---better yet---if they dismiss their pleas for help as the narcissistic whining of over pampered, over privilege Americans’ who do not understand that they are simply living at the wrong end of a bell curve, then they can also ignore the fact that someone’s sweat and labor paid for the $300 bottle of wine which they will enjoy tonight.
In some ways, wealth disparity is a worse problem than simple poverty. Medical studies have shown that people who live in countries where everyone struggles to survive have better self esteem and better health than those who live in a nation (like ours) where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening. Living in poverty in a wealthy nation means that you have been told by society “You don’t count.” Never mind how hard you have served your country as a teacher, soldier, construction worker. Being told “You don’t have it so bad. Shut up so the rest of us can enjoy what we’ve got” is just another way of saying “It is unpatriotic to complain.” And when you put the state or the party or the prestige of a corporate CEO before the individual, you get pretty damn close to fascism.
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