Obama, Marijuana, Braces, and the Issues Voter

I was catching up on some of my favorite blogs today and ran across a friend's entry that really bothered me for a lot of reasons. First of all, it demonstrates one of the divides many of the comfortable middle class don't realize is a divide, and second of all, it furthers the message that only appearance is a valid measure of worth. Here's the shortened version of the story:

About three years one of my friends wanted to move from a neighborhood that wasn't a good place to raise her daughter. It was a serious downgrade from a house to a tiny apartment but it was a safe middle-income neighborhood with a good school and she felt it was worth the sacrifice.

There hasn't been any money for extras. My friend is too proud to ever accept any kind of public assistance. She shops at garage sales and thrift stores for school clothes each year. Her daughter always had a lunch to bring, even when dinner was Top Ramen and a box of frozen vegetables. They've managed to squeeze by in three years with their power being turned off twice, and their phone once. They've survived. And they feel safe in their home.

But something happened the other day that sent my friend into a depression that she's having trouble shaking. As I said, they moved into a middle-income neighborhood, the kind of place where the standard of living is just a bit above what my friend raising her daughter alone can afford. It was fine until her daughter started middle school this year and became quiet and even sullen at times. At first my friend thought it was just the normal adjustment period of a new school, but then she began to understand it was more than that.

Her daughter who never asked for anything, who never complained about having to wear used clothing and live in a tiny apartment, came home one day and asked if she could have braces. Her daughter's teeth are not horrible by any means. She has the engaging grin of a young, pretty girl. But her teeth aren't perfect and now it's an issue all of a sudden.

It shouldn't matter but suddenly it's a big deal because all her classmates have braces. And being kids, they make fun of her lack of them. They tell her she will always have ugly crooked teeth if she doesn't get braces NOW! They make this lovely young girl feel ugly because her mother can't afford to have her teeth straightened until they resemble perfect little white picket fences.

It was heartbreaking for my friend to have to tell her daughter she can't afford to buy her braces. It was heartbreaking to watch the previously confident girl with perfect grades suddenly lose all confidence in herself. And it was especially heartbreaking for both of them to realize that no matter how smart a girl is, no matter how much she sacrifices along with her mother so they can both have a better life, she has just received her first lesson that she will go through life judged on her appearance.

There is nothing that can be done to fix this. My friend does not have the money and her daughter's classmates will never understand how something they take for granted--their perfect teeth, will one day be a symbol of class division to those who grew up in homes where braces were a luxury their families could not afford.

It is my sincere hope that by the time my friend's daughter goes to college,  she will have learned her advantage in life is what lives inside her, not what others see and judge on the outside. But I also know she will never forget how she was judged by her classmates who simply didn't understand there were some things that not everyone could afford, and in many ways their very appearance was a privilege others didn't get a chance to have. This lack of understanding is just another brick in the wall that continues to divide the people in this country from each other.

My other issue today came after a discussion with a man who has several post-graduate degrees. He was a radical in college, always up on the latest world events, always engaged and aware of the issues. He went on to the professional career he always dreamed about. His entire adult life has been a comfortable one where he buys a new car each year, upgrades his home about every five years, travels, and has a secure retirement in his future.

But he hasn't read a book in years. He only reads the local Republican rag in his very Republican neighborhood and each year begins to sound more and more ridiculously conservative, spouting talking points that he would have laughed at just a few short years ago. He only uses the internet to check sports scores. He doesn't care enough about the rest of the world to even bother checking to see if it's still there.

The only thing he watches on television is sports. He hasn't even seen a movie in a couple years. He has no interest in anything but coming home from work, plopping himself in front of his TV and watching all the sporting events that dutifully recorded themselves while he was at work. And he smokes marijuana. Lots of marijuana. In his 50 some years of life, I don't think he's ever had a problem finding marijuana. After all, he's a respectable, white middle-class American. No cop has ever stopped him and harassed him for being high or getting high or trying to get high. He buys it from other white, middle class smokers like himself. There's no slumming needed to get his weed.

And yet, he refuses to vote for Obama because he's done nothing to legalize marijuana. Yup, that's his entire reason for not voting, even though nothing has yet to interfere in his desire to get high. He would rather stay home and risk a president getting elected whose religion won't even let him drink coffee, much less ignore people who want to smoke weed or drink,  and he thinks there is no difference between the candidates. This is your one issue voter from the other side, folks. This is your no information voter. This is who will never go to the polls because he won't even educate himself on this one policy that he claims matters so much to him.

And no, I don't believe it's the weed that made him this way. I believe it was working to accumulate all the toys he feels he needs to have on hand to impress people who don't give a crap about him. I believe it's because he quit reading books. I believe it's because he watches nothing but sports. I believe it's because at heart he is a selfish, callous shit with hardly any friends. The weed is just something he uses to mute the tedious boredom his life long ago became. And it's all Obama's fault that weed isn't legal. He says this all the time as he's toking on the other end of the phone, as he talks about the great bud he scored, as he defines his life according to the sporting events he watched and how high he was.

The thing is there wasn't that much difference between him and my friend's daughter. They both had the same beginnings. They were both brilliant with a great future ahead of them. The only thing that got in the way were things like braces, and summer camp, and vacations, and cars. It divided him from them just as my friend's daughter is being  divided from her life and theirs because of her imperfect teeth.

Neither of those are things I can do anything about. Both fall under the this is the way life is category. I can't say my daughter's friend will end up like this man just because of her teeth, but if there's one thing that can stifle her as a human being, it's that pain of realizing that no matter how smart she is, how educated she becomes, until she deals with that horrible pain of childhood, that pain of being excluded because of something beyond her control, her personal growth becomes stunted forever.

 

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Obama, Marijuana, Braces, and the Issues Voter

Jingle Mail

I read about a new term today "jingle mail." It means putting your house keys in an envelope and dropping them off at the mortgage company. It's hard to imagine a worse situation than someone who has put all their money and time and dreams into their home, and then has to walk away because they can't make the payments and have no more equity to borrow against. It's even sadder when you consider that many of these people lived on what they were able to borrow against their homes. Now that their extra "income" has dried up, the next defaulting will be on credit cards, car loans, department store credit accounts. People will end up walking away from it all, especially since the cushion of bankruptcy was taken away by corporate donations given to Republicans to make sure that cushion was ripped to shreds.

Jingle Mail

Flies On The Wall #20

Flies On The Wall #20

How America Treats Its Elderly

George Bush has brought shame to this country in a lot of ways, and if anyone doubts that rot starts from the top down, all they have to do is take a look at how America is treating its aging population. As the days go by now that Christmas is over and the mean people are back in charge, look for more homeless on the street, more utility shut-offs causing more old people to freeze to death, more hunger that stays hidden because the former middle class, the aging boomers without retirement accounts or financial cushions are too proud to go to food banks or beg for a break from banks, credit card companies, and other poor people's traditional means of being propped up in lean times.

We've been hearing a lot lately about the sub-prime mortgage mess. There's a reason for it, not the least which is to build a sympathy buzz to bail out the mortgage lenders to keep them from eating the cost of their greed. After all, during the first Bush administration, daddy bailed out Neil from the Savings and Loan scandal. Which Bushie is going to get his or her butt saved this time? I'm sure it's not the poor suckers who fell for those loans so they could fantasize the American dream was really and truly within their reach. They're just the smokescreen to keep us from looking too closely at what's happening to our own neighbors.

It starts simply enough as it did to my own neighbors. For many years they worked in the social services, the lower end of the middle class. They struggled to pay their bills and maintain a decent credit rating because without it they were out on the street. They worked hard and got by. They were the real foundation of America. Not the super rich. Not the very poor. Not the solidly middle class professionals.

Six months ago the private care facility they both worked for shut down because the funding dried up. The patients were sent to various institutions run by the state that received the minimum of public funding to say open. And my neighbors went on unemployment.

But they were smarter than the average rat and started their own business. It started slow and for months they relied on their good credit history to get by during the months that sales were quite enough to pay expenses. They had worked hard for twenty years and they had excellent credit with their bank. They were given enough overdraft protection to get them from month to month. At first.

The third month their protection was lowered to half of what they were used to. But they knew they would survive because business was finally booming and by the beginning of the new year they could get caught up and not have to rely on the overdraft protection to get them through the month. They always covered the amount within the 30 day period. They were never overdrawn for more than a week. They blessed their good credit that allowed them to survive and they splurged for the first time in months on a bottle of wine to celebrate the huge check coming next month from Christmas sales. It was a victory they achieved from 12-14 hour days putting together the product they sold in astonishing quantities. They began to look forward to a better life and leaving the bad times behind.

But today, with three weeks to go before they get their hard-earned check, their bank cut off their overdraft protection. It didn't matter that they have all this money coming. It didn't matter that they made sure to pay all their bills. It didn't matter that not once did they violate the rules. The bank didn't care. It had an arbitrary time limit where such "help" could be provided. And that limit was reached the day after Christmas, today. And there was no use in trying to talk to the bank. As my neighbor told me sadly, banks don't care unless you have a huge amount of money. Then they care. They care when your name is Bush and you've screwed thousands out of their homes. They care when your name is Halliburton and you've stolen more in a day than most people will ever earn in a lifetime. But the average person who plays by all the rules and needs a small break, that person can rot for all the banks care.

I emptied out all the food I had in the cupboards and gave it to them. I maxed out a credit cared to get some cash so they could at least keep their heat on. And I know they will pay me back when they get their check next month because they are those kind of people, the working class people that make up the myth and culture of America. It's too bad that the only people who care whether they live or die are other poor people, other people like me living from check to check and hoping no one gets sick. I also know they will succeed because they have a good product, a strong work ethic, and people who care whether they live or die.

To keep them in the focus and to help other people with their same story and keep the truth out there that gets buried by the heartless many who are the gears of these callous institutions, I'll be using THE FLIES ON THE WALL t0 tell the story of an elderly couple who got evicted on the day after Christmas.

I don't personally know these people, but they are a composite of many working poor, especially in a town like Bellingham, Washington--a town that prides itself on being an All-America city winner, but is probably the cruelest and less compassionate toward the poor and working poor than any place in this country. The only medal this place deserves is for being the most shallow as they perfect the ability to talk out of multiple sides of their mouths and asses. Stay tuned. It will be an interesting ride for the flies.

How America Treats Its Elderly

Flies On The Wall #19

Flies On The Wall #19