I don't know if anyone was paying attention to the elections the other day, I know I was only tangentially. It turns out that a democracy doesn't require its citizens to vote. It just needs to give them the option. Unfortunately, at least to my mind, the gobenatorial races and Senate seats went to people who are eager to cut portions of the Care act that help people who fall into the Medicaid gap.
I don't really understand our countries fascination with disenfranchising or blaming the poor for their predicament. In fact, it makes as much sense as blaming an otter for being cute. He doesn't really have any control over it, just look at his face? And yet, in our country, there is a large portion and a disturbingly large portion of self-identified Christians, who seem to think that paying higher taxes to help people who's lives are, beyond any reasonable doubt, fundamentally shittier on a day to day basis, is a ridiculous or somehow unAmerican thought.
At no time in our history has an ideal America existed. Those people eager to get back to the Constitution should remember that it was pretty much written by and for white male landowners. It is not some inviolate or particularly enlightened document by the standards of 2015. And yet, it's often held up as some sort of sinecure for all that ails us. I am troubled in many ways though and so I fear this piece of writing is about to go off the proverbial deep end, but stick with me.
Firstly, what standard of life is the American electorate so desperately clinging to? I'll submit that I'm not particularly happy with the state of life, but that particular predicament is existential more than anything else. My life is, by and large, pretty good. However, it is not so fundamentally wonderful that I am fearful of having some of "my" money given in tax dollars to help people who are in need. But perhaps my take on life is mistaken, and everyone else around me, on say, this plane, where an older woman has been scrolling through old text messages for the duration of this two hour flight, or perhaps the woman reading a Danielle Steele novel are fundamentally ecstatic about the state of their lives and perhaps, by extension, this fine country brought into being under the noblest of possible circumstances, getting rid of Native Peoples. If so, then I can see the resistance to proto-European models of government, higher taxes, affordable health care, kind of trades. If however, their life is as fundamentally rote, boring, and, in any sort of grand scale, as small as mine is, then who the fuck cares about giving up some small sliver of it?
I suppose I'd understand the motivation if the most important decision that people ever make in their life is choosing their parents. It is likely, that if you're born rich that you'll stay rich, and if you're born poor that you'll stay poor Imagining a world, which we kind of do, where every man can rise from being a shepherd to the King of Israel is a fantasy. But it's also a fantasy, and a deeply rooted one that people's hard work is what has brought them to a certain standard of life. I don't want to entirely dismiss the role of hard work, but I'd counter that the hoops people jump through in order to attain their goals are almost always already drawn for them. Yes. I went to college. Guess what? So did my parents, which makes me infinitely more likely to have done so. It's damn near impossible to climb the social ladder and just as hard to fall off it. In large part because we've structured our society around money, which is really best, in our current instantiation, at making more money. Cutting benefits, health care, food stamps, etc. is, without stretching your imagination, morally reprehensible.
I don't really understand our countries fascination with disenfranchising or blaming the poor for their predicament. In fact, it makes as much sense as blaming an otter for being cute. He doesn't really have any control over it, just look at his face? And yet, in our country, there is a large portion and a disturbingly large portion of self-identified Christians, who seem to think that paying higher taxes to help people who's lives are, beyond any reasonable doubt, fundamentally shittier on a day to day basis, is a ridiculous or somehow unAmerican thought.
At no time in our history has an ideal America existed. Those people eager to get back to the Constitution should remember that it was pretty much written by and for white male landowners. It is not some inviolate or particularly enlightened document by the standards of 2015. And yet, it's often held up as some sort of sinecure for all that ails us. I am troubled in many ways though and so I fear this piece of writing is about to go off the proverbial deep end, but stick with me.
Firstly, what standard of life is the American electorate so desperately clinging to? I'll submit that I'm not particularly happy with the state of life, but that particular predicament is existential more than anything else. My life is, by and large, pretty good. However, it is not so fundamentally wonderful that I am fearful of having some of "my" money given in tax dollars to help people who are in need. But perhaps my take on life is mistaken, and everyone else around me, on say, this plane, where an older woman has been scrolling through old text messages for the duration of this two hour flight, or perhaps the woman reading a Danielle Steele novel are fundamentally ecstatic about the state of their lives and perhaps, by extension, this fine country brought into being under the noblest of possible circumstances, getting rid of Native Peoples. If so, then I can see the resistance to proto-European models of government, higher taxes, affordable health care, kind of trades. If however, their life is as fundamentally rote, boring, and, in any sort of grand scale, as small as mine is, then who the fuck cares about giving up some small sliver of it?
I suppose I'd understand the motivation if the most important decision that people ever make in their life is choosing their parents. It is likely, that if you're born rich that you'll stay rich, and if you're born poor that you'll stay poor Imagining a world, which we kind of do, where every man can rise from being a shepherd to the King of Israel is a fantasy. But it's also a fantasy, and a deeply rooted one that people's hard work is what has brought them to a certain standard of life. I don't want to entirely dismiss the role of hard work, but I'd counter that the hoops people jump through in order to attain their goals are almost always already drawn for them. Yes. I went to college. Guess what? So did my parents, which makes me infinitely more likely to have done so. It's damn near impossible to climb the social ladder and just as hard to fall off it. In large part because we've structured our society around money, which is really best, in our current instantiation, at making more money. Cutting benefits, health care, food stamps, etc. is, without stretching your imagination, morally reprehensible.
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