November 5, 2021
Dear Interested Readers,
Have You Ever Been Broke?
The newspapers are pointing out what a difference a year makes. According to the speculations in an article by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns published in the New York Times on Wednesday, the day after Tuesday’s big victory in the Virginia election for Republicans, there is trouble ahead for the Democrats if they can’t get on track toward the resolution of the post-COVID economic doldrums. Martin and Burns write:
The scope of the party’s setbacks illustrated that voters were fatigued from the demands of the still-continuing coronavirus pandemic and angry about the soaring prices and scarcity of goods they were confronting every day. While Democrats’ strength in cities and some large suburbs saved them from even deeper losses, their electoral coalition showed signs of fraying as voters vented their unhappiness with the party in power.
The past few months have been tough for the president as the divide within the Democratic Party between progressives and moderates is creating a moment of opportunity for those who do not want to see the enactment of his program of progressive policies to combat climate change, deteriorating infrastructure, healthcare disparities, and economic inequity. Further along in the article Martin and Burns quote Representative Abigail Spanberger a Virginia Democrat who can envision her own demise in next year’s midterm elections because of the failure of the president to “get things done.”
“Nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos,” she said, alluding to the sweeping agenda the president is seeking to enact with the thinnest of legislative majorities.
There is an implication from some disgruntled and frightened Democrats who fear what will happen to them and the party in 2022 that the president’s mandate was limited to “not being Trump” and that the progressive wing of the party misinterpreted the voters’ COVID fatigue and fear of more Trump into a request for a sweeping legislative agenda when in fact all they wanted was a “return to normal,” whatever that was.
That is the obvious side of the analysis. There is more to consider if you take a deeper dive into the implications of the election results. In a guest essay published in the Times yesterday by Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson, the authors suggest that if the Democrats want to avoid more Virginia-like debacles in 2022 they will need to learn how to more effectively respond to the racial “dog whistles” of Republicans. Those “dog whistle” strategies go back to the time of political strategist Lee Atwater (who shared many of my roots in Columbia, South Carolina). Over several decades of practice, the Republicans have learned how to play the race card to appeal to a White racist base without incurring the backlash and rath of many White independent voters and even some minority voters. The authors further imply that the Democrats foolishly think that they can be elected by pushing their policy solutions to our pressing problems which they don’t present well to the electorate rather than effectively confronting the darker side of our national personality.
My frustration arises from my worries about what effect future Democratic election failures will have on efforts to improve the social determinants of health for millions of Americans. Of equal concern is what Democratic losses will mean to the protection of the environment, and improvements in housing, education, and job opportunities. These structural concerns are magnified by the public health challenges of historically unprecedented numbers of guns in our society and the deaths they cause in our communities and the human losses from opioid use that seem connected to the despair arising from our inability to equitably distribute the benefits of our society.
I confess to harboring a personal opinion that what so many people like those who elected Glenn Youngkin as the next governor of Virginia yearn to return to is a creeping national decline that is camouflaged by transient personal comfort that is unlikely to be sustained by those who enjoy it now. We love the myth of American exceptionalism. We love to believe the anyone who is willing to work hard will certainly be successful. Ironically most of us who become successful don’t trust the permanence of our success. Our worries about our own plight leave us little energy to realize that the myth of universal opportunity for those willing to work has contributed to an increasing number of neighbors who really have nothing to look forward to but more unmet needs as they age and the experience of little or no opportunity. The challenge is even greater for a growing number of Black and Brown Americans and an increasing number of despairing younger White Americans who are drowning in the debt they acquired trying to finance their own education.
Republicans seem delighted to ignore the manifestations of poverty and inequity in the lives of poorer Americans. They essentially replace the discussion of the problems of economic and social disparities with inflammatory cultural issues, calls for law and order, and lies about the legitimacy of elections. The persistent political divisiveness they foster by employing the legislative strategy of always saying “No” to any progressive proposal keeps the champions of the status quo in a position to protect their own concerns.
Political polarization is an offensive weapon that temporarily protects wealth and threatens democracy while it perpetuates the economic decline of a growing diverse economically challenged majority who are suffering from evictions, defaults on mortgages, growing personal debts, increasing healthcare costs, unmanageable and increasing childcare costs, enormous amounts of student debt, and a host of other problems that are etiologic factors in their growing despair.
Rather than talking about the issues that undermine the health of the nation Republicans push cultural issues that appeal to the religious right while capitalizing on the fears of those White Americans who fear that they will have little opportunity in an America that suffers from an onslaught of illegal immigrants and terrorists as it slides into socialism on its trajectory toward communism. By fostering and appealing to inherent biases, Republicans have brilliantly succeeded in becoming a controlling minority. Telling lies about elections and about how disadvantaged people are suffering from their own sins and laziness has proven to be a road to political success.
The new issues that may contribute to our national turbulence and are advantageous to future Republican success are the fears associated with the dangers of COVID vaccination and the teaching of “critical race theory” in public schools. They prefer that their children never learn what they themselves have never learned or admitted which is that much of the foundational wealth and success of this country is easily traceable to slavery and since the Civil War to racist policies which have excluded a third of the population (14% Black, 18 % Latinx) from full participation in our national prosperity. We are a nation with a caste system and if you are going to be poor it is better to be poor and White than be poor and some form of “other.”
I have been startled over the past few months by a few conversations with people I have known and respected for years. These individuals are well educated and affluent as measured by any professional, financial, or social metric. They are comfortable members of the 10%. Compared with 90% of other Americans who do not have their wealth and access to family supports they should not have any sense of economic vulnerability, but it seems they do and they are plagued by a sense that they will lose what they enjoy to the growth of social programs that will benefit people whom they view as lazy or illegal. Their saint whose message they continue to worship and hold in reverent awe is Ronald Regan who knew how to make them comfortable with their disdain for their neighbors.
Moving from being a member of the economically secure and self-sufficient segment of the population to being considered a welfare “taker” is easier than most of us want to admit and may explain why so many people don’t want to have their resources reduced by taxes that might support “unworthy” recipients. Ray Suarez who for years was one of my favorite NPR “voices” became unemployed in 2016 when Al Jazeera, his employer at the time went out of business. At first, he thought that there was no problem. He had been a successful journalist, author, and broadcaster for over thirty years, but there was a problem. Suarez was in his late fifties. When he lost his job he was suddenly educated by personal experience to the problem of “ageism.” He not only could not find a job; he could not get a callback. After losing his job, he lost his health when he was diagnosed with cancer and required multiple surgeries and extensive chemotherapy. His circumstances launched him on a path that was not a manifestation of any personal failure, but never the less he was “Going For Broke.” He remained unemployed or underemployed for five years until this year when he became the voice of a new podcast from The Nation — Going For Broke. On the website we read:
Going for Broke with Ray Suarez is about Americans on the edge. On this show, we talk to people who have lost jobs, lost their homes and sometimes lost the narrative thread of their lives. But with those hardships, they’ve gained valuable insights into the problems facing millions of people in this country. On Going for Broke, we hear about the struggles they’ve been through, and the solutions they want to see become reality. Going for Broke, hosted by Ray Suarez, launches October 18 from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Nation. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
There are now four segments of Going for Broke with more to come. They run between twenty and thirty minutes. If you access them through the link above rather than through your usual source of podcasts like Apple or Spotify, you can also read the transcripts. If you have only twenty minutes to invest, I would recommend the second podcast where Suarez tells his personal story. Each podcast finishes with an “expert” on the subject reviewing the theory that the podcast is meant to demonstrate.
In the fourth segment which was out on Monday, there is an audio clip from Ronald Reagan that demonstrates in just a few words the combination of an inherent bias and a “dog whistle” that has been the backbone of Republican election success over the past forty years. You hear President Reagan’s very professional actor’s voice as he says:
I’m afraid that several members of Congress have suggested some proposals that while claiming to require work-related activities, would make staying on welfare more attractive. Their misguided compassion would only bring more people into the welfare system, encourage them to stay on the welfare roles longer, and discourage work.
We are hearing that same sentiment now coming from the political heirs of the fortieth president. Those “friends and acquaintances” who surprised me recently with their thinly veiled biases got much of their attitude from the bias that the Reagan quote summarizes. The unspoken bias that they are drawing on is that people get what they deserve. It implies that if you are poor it is your own fault and the rest of us don’t owe you anything. The bias also includes the corollary that if we do create a program of assistance we better monitor it carefully for “cheaters.” That attitude is written into the benefits that do exist and creates enormous problems, delays, and frustration for those that the programs should help. A desired outcome is achieved because the administrative hurdles frustrate potential beneficiaries who then go away without the help they need. With one of his most effective “dog whistles,” Reagan called some of the supposed cheaters “welfare queens.”
It did not take long for me to discover in the conversations with my “friends” that the attitudes which they held so firmly would never be dislodged by any data set or analysis that I could offer. My strategy to limit my discomfort was to extricate myself from the conversation as quickly as possible. It was clear to me that in the future I had two options. I could look for some other common ground that might support a positive relationship with them, or I could decide to avoid them as much as possible in the future.
I believe that there is a healing and informative benefit to writing and to art. In May of 2019 while writing another piece about the negative impact of poverty on health I reviewed several books that were written from the perspective of the author’s personal struggle with poverty. One of those books was MAID: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive by Stephanie Land. Recently, I was delighted to see that the book has been turned into a mini-series by Netflix. The Netflix presentation has a few deviations from the storyline in the book which usually happens when a movie evolves from a book, but the picture of all the barriers that a person in poverty faces as they struggle to survive and perhaps thrive against a combination of biases and administrative burdens still comes through. The lead is beautifully played by Margaret Qualley and the role of her eccentric mother is played by Ms. Qualley’s real-life mother, Andie MacDowell.
Stephanie Land was hardly a “welfare queen.” On the surface, it seems that she did succeed in doing what the biases of conservative politicians suggest is the right way out of poverty: pull oneself up by tugging on your own bootstraps. A closer look reveals that she made it by coupling her own spunk with the help of a few caring people and the marginal help she gained from social agencies and a distant government. She succeeded against the disdain of many and the infuriating barriers constructed to prevent “cheating.” What is left for our imagination is the size of her cohort who tried just as hard as she did and did not experience the success she had. They remain with their children on the fringes of our society. One asset Ms. Land enjoys that should not be discounted is that she is White.
At the end of his own story which is the second segment in the Going For Broke series, Suarez and the commentator, Allisa Quart, have the following exchange after she asked him about the response he got to his Washington Post op-ed piece about his own descent into economic uncertainty:
RAY SUAREZ: The response was fascinating. It was like a macro Rorschach blot where I got back sympathetic responses. I got back lovely notes from people who had enjoyed my work and valued my work over the years on radio, television. People who have read my books. Angry, invective-filled, judgmental letters from people who were clearly some of the walking wounded. Some of the fellow disappointed, some of the people who were suffering some of these same downdrafts who couldn’t find it in themselves to be at all sympathetic, and instead assumed that a lot of this was a problem of my own making.
ALISSA QUART: This is part of the culture of blame and if we’re trying to find a solution, Ray, that’s not just policy, but is around messaging, and the ways that people think about themselves and narratives they tell about themselves in this country. I think one of the most toxic ones, the one that we need to [make] PSAs [public service announcements] and whole campaigns about is against bootstrapping, against this idea that everybody’s to blame for their own economic condition… to blame each other, to blame ourselves, and to not really help each other. What I’m hoping is the legacy of the pandemic will be more mutual aids and more workers cooperatives, and more assistants that when people are in trouble medically in their communities or need help, their neighbors will show up…that starts with people stopping blaming each other.
Her syntax is a little clumsy, but my takeaway is that she is trying to say that we need to stop blaming people for their poverty. Suarez and the pandemic are perfect examples that should be a message to many of the affluent 10% who should recognize that except “for the grace of God” or an accident of birth they could also be part of the growing number of people who find themself in the need of help.
I have said before that the first time I visited the building that houses the offices of our Department of Health and Human Services in Washington that is named for Hubert Humphrey, I was emotionally moved when I read a quote from Humphrey that was carved into the back wall of the lobby:
“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”
Reflecting now on that quote I realize that what is vague within the quote is the concept of what population is “needy.” Are the “needy” the few people who are in need and match some very conservative image of virtue and can’t be accused of lacking the gumption or character not to be “needy?” Or do we support a sense of need as usually arising from circumstances that could befall any of us, and those that aren’t needy and have little chance of ever being needy have that immunity from some benefit that was given them by some combination privileges for which they should feel blessed? Many of us have been sustained and advantaged by family wealth. I had the double benefit of some family resources and the good luck to come of age in the era of the War on Poverty and The Great Society when there were enormous public supports for higher education that limited my debts. Is it possible that we will ever realize that we would all be advantaged if we would once again try to use our collective national wealth as a form of collective “family wealth” that could reduce the number of the “needy?”
It is a fact that collectively we have the capability to offer every American the security of knowing that their basic needs will be met and that they can live in dignity. It is mind-boggling to try to imagine what a wonderful world it would be if all the negative energy of poverty could be negated by policies and attitudes that support personal achievement rather than forcing the poor to use all of their energy to secure meager welfare benefits from a system that does not trust them and blames them for their need.
Some Nice Falls Days To Enjoy
You might have noticed from these notes that the big items of interest for me include exercise, the beauty of nature, and the weather. Several months ago I started reading The Nature Writings of John Muir at bedtime. I started reading Muir as a reaction to a terrible novel that I had been reading at bedtime that had no redeeming angle. I was tired of its gratuitous sex and violence offered up as literature worth my attention. Reading Muir is like reading the Bible. Three or four pages and I am sound asleep, but before I am gone I have a sense of having touched something important–if I can look past Muir’s occasional racist comments about Native Americans and just focus on his “woke” twenty-first-century sense of the natural world while cutting him some slack for his nineteenth-century biases.
Before I began reading Muir in July, the book had been sitting on my bookshelf since May of 2014 when we visited Muir Woods on our way back from Point Reyes where we had spent a few days with our son and daughter-in-law after I attended a meeting near Napa. Muir Woods was an easy stop on the way back to the home of our son and daughter-in-law near Santa Cruz.
I love the coastal redwoods. My son and his family live in a redwood grove. They have redwoods in their yard, and the entrance to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park which has one of California’s most magnificent redwood groves is a quarter-mile from their door. I have been to coastal California both north and south of the bay area more times than I can count, but I’ve only been to Muir Woods this one time. I was quite inspired by our walk through the woods and impulsively bought John Muir’s 800 plus-page Nature Writings on our way out through the gift shop.
When we got home to New Hampshire the book went where so many good books go–right to the big antique glass-fronted bookcase that occupies one end of our living room. The book sat unattended on those shelves for seven years. I confess that there are other unread books on those shelves that were impulsively purchased but have never been opened and are waiting their turn for my attention. From time to time, before I discontinued my disgusting book I would glance at Muir’s book as I passed by the glass-fronted bookcase. Perhaps you own some books that you have never found the time to read and can understand my sense of guilt.
The good news is that the exercise of reading Muir has been good for my soul and has opened my eyes to much of the world around me that I took for granted. It is great COVID reading because Muir leaves you with a sense that although the natural world changes it always survives and always contains beauty. The natural world was here long before we were and will certainly compost our remains no matter what we foolishly do to destroy ourselves. My only complaint is that Muir frustrates me by using the scientific name for every plant he encounters, and I refuse to look them up because I am in bed with a book, not a computer. I think that he is just showing off.
The book begins with Muir’s life as a young child in Scotland and then moves across the Atlantic to the farm he helped his father hack out of the wilds of Wisconsin as an adolescent before he went on to the Univerity of Wisconsin. The next section recounts his first adventures in the Sierra Nevadas in and around Yosemite, the place with which he is most connected, and a place for which I have great affection. One surprise for me was the fact that Muir discovered persistent glaciers in the Sierras near Yosemite that probably dated from the “little ice age” of about 700 years ago. His description of his discovery is an incredible read.
Having Muir as a philosophical guide gives me a great sense of wonder about the history and future of my own environment, this little corner of New England. I care more about our connectedness to the wider world and the challenges that face places I will never see. I am now more concerned about what I may be missing by rushing about without noting more of the beauty of the natural world around me. I now worry more about the rapidity of our destruction of that which we don’t bother to appreciate.
Because of my sciatic nerve injury from a fall on the ice last winter which resulted in a foot drop, I don’t walk as much for exercise now as I have over the past fifty years. The good news is that I can pedal a bicycle and that gives me the opportunity to explore a wider area of my local environment. I am frequently surprised by the beauty which I don’t notice from a car but can catch on foot or while riding a bike.
A bear crossed the road in front of me a couple of months ago about one hundred yards downhill from the scene in this week’s header. Even without the bear, the scene is beautiful. There must be a story to go with the old stone wall with its adjacent line of ancient eastern white pines (or as Muir would say, “Pinus strobus”), the mowed field rimmed by woods, the small barn, and Mount Kearsarge in the distance. It is good to realize that no matter what happens in our small lives, the land will endure and remain beautiful.
I hope that you will enjoy a great late fall weekend. I am headed to Brunswick, Maine which I am sure will be beautiful. My granddaughter’s team, the Bowdoin College polar bears, will be hosting the 2021 NESCAC Women’s Volleyball Tournament. Life is good.
Be well,
Gene
