I say somewhat because I do have fault lines and notions that are not strictly in line with left of center thinking in 21st century America. I've long questioned why Israel, after capturing land in wars that were not (arguably or not) of its own choosing would have to give back land it won? Applied retroactively it seems the globe would politically look quite different than it does today.
I think welfare is a last resort, not a first--that there are far better solutions for poverty than defining one's deviance from a list of must-haves and then plugging the holes with government cheese. I sincerely doubt that there are many people who are content to receive X dollars and do nothing else, but there are some, and their egregious vulgarity isn't a reason to not have welfare, merely an argument against having it as option one.
I woke early and sat up this morning between 1:30 and 3:30am, trying to find the best way to expel the phlegm that gets trapped in me with my bad drainage system, my perennially noisome sinuses, and my "princess and the pea" attitude to any sort of minor blockage to my deep, rhythmic breathing that marks the sleep cycle. I think that last part is a holdover from the ravages of childhood asthma, nights spent hunched over a steamer with bowls of Vicks Vapo-rub, wondering if my entire life would be a hell of not breathing and not sleeping. Not really and sometimes, as it turns out.
I try to make cancer my problem, not Scott's, but that's difficult in a somewhat small apartment in a city famous for cheek to jowl living. Much as I try to shield my crusty Midwestern conservatisms from the far more liberal people I enjoy hanging out with--and it's true: I don't want to hang out with conservatives. I don't like them. They pursue people's weaknesses with a finger pointed outward and an "ah-hah!" on their Scarlet Letter lips. That's not who I want to be.
Nor do I want to spend my time defending my thoughts on topics that aren't really liberal or conservative, but simply how I logically conclude my pondering on particular topics.
If cancer taught me anything beyond a certain hunger for authenticity, it's also interiorized a lot of my communications, and my process of experience. I use to be, like a lot of people I know, ready with the snarky comment on the parade passing before or beside me. Always something to note, always the comment, always the grasping of the bon mot. This is not so easy without a tongue, it's virtually impossible when your face is swollen, and in the absence of a phone or Ipad, it's blissfully impossible to be constantly on one's guard to say the biting thing.
It's rather a relief to not spend each moment competing for most clever motherfucker in the room, and the silence I'm finding is a higher quality commentary than anything I ever came up with on my own. I know that verbal functionality will return, at least to a level where parenthetical commentary is more possible, and I desperately hope to remember this important lesson.
Much of what I've been thinking about this morning was the silent march of thinking as I read an article in the NY Times today, written by someone about their youth in and the present state of Port Clinton, Ohio--one of several ravaged by change places throughout the Midwest. Detroit-ish, where a social order that wasn't so defined by economic class seemed to advance together more and where ostentation was less celebrated and less objectified.
In discussing the downward mobility of people who chose blue collar work, who didn't pursue advanced education over the past 50 years, the article raises what are typical points to be made in such circumstances: There is less stability, less cohesion, and less wealth brought forward through generations in such families.
All of those points are true--but never once in this article, or others I've read of places like Port Clinton, does anyone discuss what consumerism has done to nail poverty firmly to the cross of such lives.
In the days before the ubiquity of cellphones, I'll never forget the day I saw a woman in the parking lot of a Marsh Supermarket, pull out in a 25 year old junker car, cigarette dangling from mouth, exhaust pipe spewing the fumes of burning oil, and a late model Nokia held up to her ear, the mysterious grunts and the incredible noise she much have been sharing in that conversation.
In reading Port Clinton stories, I think of the number of times I've been in line in the same supermarkets behind people wearing clothes I can't afford who paid for their groceries with food stamps. The sunglasses I liked but couldn't buy at $259.00 looking jaunty as I thought they would on their heads.
I think of the fact that too many people who are poor still take cable packages that average $100-$150 a month, and wait in those grocery lines while pecking at smartphones whose data, text and voice packages are similarly priced--and that doesn't always include family plans
There's an astounding amount of people in such situations who believer that healthcare is a right that need cost them nothing. I believe that everyone should have access to healthcare, but everyone should help pay for it, too. In the six months of my primary cancer treatment, I've laid out at least $6000, and my insurance has laid out way, way more--I was lucky to have that insurance. My sunglass food stamp and smartphone neighbors may be lucky to have Medicaid, but that shouldn't be the answer.
Anything worth having, is worth paying for--freedom from cancer no less than 2 gbs of data on an Iphone per month. Why is it wrong to insist there is a necessity to pay for both things as one is able? Why, in assessing income, are we not asking for an accounting of how people spend their money?
If you are able to watch HBO, you are able to pay a monthly premium, though likely the premium will knock HBO out of your life--you will get by. There are still libraries, there are still books, and if you cannot bring yourself to re-engage reading, there are now DVDs galore.
I know that a lot of judgment stews behind what I'm writing, and I own that--but there is a point where suspending one's judgement is like giving up one's soul. Too, judgment to me is the nexus between a viewpoint upon what's right and what's fit and conversely what's not, that should inform the way one lives.
Easy for me--Scott makes a good living and I squeak by, and his butter hits my bread more often than not. Our lives, pretty thoroughly Middle Class, don't revolve around things. At worse, they are gadget heavy and data enriched to a silly point. Yet, those choices reflect just our dumb priorities--no one is buying our groceries, and his one pair of expensive sunglasses are for the running he does, which helps keep him out of the Inferno depths of the healthcare system.
I feel for Port Clinton and the population that feels stuck there, much as I feel for myself and the way I'm trying to detach myself from the grip of an unseeable force trying to eat me live. But to tell the truth of Port Clinton, it takes a lot ore than just bemoaning the dearth of factory jobs that spread stability throughout a community. Like cancer, it take a discussion of education, self-sacrifice, choices, and how one decides to live within the means at hand or not.
Occasionally,during chemo or radiation, I'd encounter another patient who smelled--no, reeked--of cigarette smoke--in fact, more than occasionally. In Port Clinton, how many Iphone 5 screens are glowing at night, in front of reruns of True Blood, in those double-wides?
Well said.
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