WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE

• Who are these people? Where did they come from? Did they go to the same American churches and schools as I did? Did they truly listen to the sermons on Christian charity or the read the Talmud’s mandate to do good works? Did they study American history and world history in high school or college? They are the sons and daughters of immigrants who despise and ridicule any other new immigrants to this country. They rail against government control and creeping socialism but come from families that were literally rescued from starvation by the big federal social programs initiated by FDR during the Depression. They warn against “government welfare” but readily accept their Social Security check each month and are not hesitant to flash their Medicare cards at the Doctor’s office.
• Who are these people? They live in middle class homes just like I do, eat at the same restaurants and root for the same sports teams as I do. Yet they support political lightweights who preach America first and do everything they can to sabotage any attempts to protect our American environment. At the same that their self righteous calls for “family values’ leaves their lips, they hold the airplane tickets for South America to meet their mistress.
• Who are these people? They proudly belong to the business class but they are engaged in what Dorothy Thompson once called “doubling”. Thompson used the term to describe the Nazi concentration camp officers, who join with neighbors and their children in singing Christmas carols at night and go on to gas Jews during the day. In the Godfather movie, Tessio tells Tom Hagen “tell Michael it was only business” to explain why he set Michael up for assassination. Each day these business professionals leave their suburban homes or urban coops in the morning for work, kiss their wife and children and wave “hello” to their neighbors. They are respected and gracious members of their community who will readily help a neighbor in distress. Then they go to business where an entirely antithetical set of values prevail. They cheat their partners, they steal sublegally, they gamble with other people’s money and they accept unconditional bonuses from their buddies. Then they go home and dress up for church.
• Who are these people? They work hard all of their life in blue collar jobs and often subsist on the margins of poverty. They are like my father and uncles who paid too much for their health care and got themselves into debt to send their children to college. Yet, they continuously vote against their own interests. They stand by quietly in denial while their political heroes decimate their unions and systematically lower taxes for the rich from a 90% rate in 1954 to a 33 % rate under Bush in 2002. They are so easily seduced by the so called American promise of prosperity, while their odds of ever becoming rich are about the same odds as hitting the lottery.
• Who are these people? In this terrible recession, they have jobs, homes, medical insurance and children in college. Yet they refuse to pay even a small increase in taxes in their state and towns to provide for those who have lost all of these to the recession. They compromise their own local educational systems by failing to support a budget that will prevent the hiring or cause the firing of good teachers. By doing this they foolishly lower their own real estate values by living in a state or town that has a poor reputation for its schools. They replay the classic Shakespearean tragedy over and over. They cause their own downfall.
• Who are these people? They come from ethnic groups that in earlier generations were vilified as Greaseballs, Micks and Huns. Some even come from a race that was almost wiped out during World War II in Germany just for being who they are. Yet they resent and despise the African American man in the White House and carry around graphic posters with lipstick smeared photos of him painted as Lucifer or Hitler. They listen to demagogues on the radio who call him “uppity” and politicians who euphemistically call him “arrogant”.
• Who are these people? They call themselves Christians and carry their bibles proudly to church where they join with others to hear “the word of God”. I guess they never turned to the many, many different times and different ways Jesus preached that we are our brother’s keepers. They skim past account of where he got so angry that he physically chased the money changers out of the temple. And how about “render unto Caesar,etc” which set the foundation for the separation of Church and State. And how about the beatitudes---“Blessed are the merciful etc” How about those beatitudes. And BTW, where are their ministers, priests and rabbis who don’t have the courage to confront their own congregations about social justice.
• Who really are these people who can sit by silently while thousands of children in their own affluent country die from semi-starvation or inadequate healthcare? What do they do with their conscience when they see photos of children in Appalachia, Newark or Native American Reservations living in dire poverty? How can they fight against universal healthcare when they see those long lines of their fellow citizens waiting in the bitter cold outside of those free health clinics?
• While we are on the Bible “He who is without sin, cast the first stone” Who the hell am I to lecture on this and go on like one of those street corner preachers. Who am I? I’m flawed and selfish and self absorbed like everyone else. I’m certainly not in the mold of St. Francis of Assisi who took the clothes off his back to give to the poor. I didn’t rush off to Haiti to work with the earthquake victims I don’t give to charities nor go to church nearly enough. I walk by the homeless poor in Grand Central Station like everyone else and am often in denial about my own part in all of this. But I realize this one thing ----when I do look at them, I realize “There for the Grace of God go I”---and the ones I love.
  
  JVP