By Michael Albert, teleSUR
teleSUR
Sunday, Apr 26, 2015
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A campsite at a homeless tent city in Sacramento California March 15, 2009. | Photo: Reuters.
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The U.S. capitalist model continues to serve a tiny elite at the expense
of the living standards of millions.
Amidst the usual self
congratulatory palaver that crowds out reason in U.S. media and
academia, a recent essay by Paul Buchheit in AlterNet (a source I admit I
very rarely consult) conveys some very striking information.
Here are
some excerpts:
"America's wealth grew by 60 percent in the past six
years, by over $30 trillion. In approximately the same time, the number
of homeless children has also grown by 60 percent."
Shouldn’t that one
fact be enough evidence - yes, just that one fact - to convince everyone
that U.S. institutions are barbaric? Or perhaps that is too extreme a
reaction? Maybe it is nasty naysaying as compared to righteously
celebrating the new model iPhone while ignoring homelessness?
Buchheit
continues:
"Financier and CEO Peter Schiff said, 'People don’t go hungry
in a capitalist economy.' The 16 million kids on food stamps know what
it's like to go hungry. Perhaps, some in Congress would say, those
children should be working. 'There is no such thing as a free lunch,'
insisted Georgia Representative Jack Kingston, even for school kids, who
should be required to 'sweep the floor of the cafeteria'."
When you
study much earlier times, and you find horribly harsh formulations, at
least you can note that in many cases they arose when there was
generalized ignorance of related issues. Now, however, we all know what
is right. But we are pressured to do what is wrong - and to then
rationalize it.
"Teacher Sonya Romero-Smith told about the two little
homeless girls she adopted: 'Getting rid of bedbugs, that took us a
while. Night terrors, that took a little while. Hoarding food'."
Our
country spends fortunes every year ostensibly to defend itself (against
imaginary threats) but really to profit war mongers and shore up
repressive elites as well abroad and at home - and, at the same time,
the country being "defended" is despicable. Is that also too harsh?
Maybe I need counseling to tone down my anger?
"UNICEF reports,
'[Children's] material well-being is highest in the Netherlands and in
the four Nordic countries and lowest in Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and
the United States.'"
The U.S. patrols the world to extract wealth from
virtually every corner. Where does the wealth go if not to children? To
Moneybags, of course. And what does this warrant from us as Moneybags
hunkers down in his private jet flying off to Washington to broker some
lucrative policy into the books? Should we analyze? Be angry? Something
more? Or maybe just take a pill?
"Over half of public school students
are poor enough to qualify for lunch subsidies, and almost half of black
children under the age of six are living in poverty."
Why wouldn't
these facts, too, engender outrage and action? Imagine if someone told
you that in Greece, say, or in Venezuela - such poverty was present. You
might say, how horrible. We need to do something. You might ask, why
don't they do something? Of course, the place the claim is actually true
of, and the place with the least excuse on the whole planet (we are a
humongous outside force subverting Greece and Venezuela but there is no
outside force even able to subvert us), is right here. So what should we
do about the horror of kids living in poverty right here in the good
old USA?
"Nearly half of all food stamp recipients are children, and
they averaged about $5 a day for their meals before the 2014 farm bill
cut $8.6 billion (over the next ten years) from the food stamp program."
Would the legendary villain Scrooge do these things? What is
particularly horrifying is that it isn't Scrooge-like characters
secretly subverting life with nefarious nasty slyness, nor is it such
characters who abide the horrors perpetrated against children, and
really, against all the poor, the disenfranchised, etc. No, it is those
who pull the levers and make the choices. In other words it is not
people secretly and fraudulently running off with society's options
doing the harm, but people openly implementing our society's underlying
logic totally consistently with our society's structure and history.
And, on the other hand, it has to be said, it's the rest of us who know it
is happening but who haven't the strength, will, or hope to oppose it,
who abet it happening, often even against our own interests.
"In 2007
about 12 of every 100 kids were on food stamps. Today it's 20 of every
100."
What a nice growth rate for poverty. Instead of poverty reducing
by half every eight years, on a road to sanity - it rises by two thirds
in that same time span. What a wonderful societal trajectory. We are on
the Titanic of all Titanics. Some ultra rich and powerful owners are
steering toward the icebergs. Some merely rich and powerful managers and
intellectuals and lawyers and otherwise empowered citizenry are
watching it unfold, nervous and even at times horrified, but also (quite
stupidly as well as immorally) satisfied with their way above the
waterline berths. And then there are a whole lot of us, moving around
deck chairs in a moderate bliss, rarely, or more often in a kind of
walking sleep trying for momentary pleasures, yet at some level knowing
the icebergs are out there, and indeed already scraping us to
smithereens. And then there is the biggest group, the rest, horrified,
already suffering in diverse ways, but lacking coherent plans to do
anything positive.
"On a typical frigid night in January, 138,000
children, according to the U.S. Department of Housing, were without a
place to call home."
Think about that. Really. Envision it. If it
doesn't make you ill, why not?
Suppose an alien spaceship came into the
U.S. and took 2,500 kids on average from every state - more from more
populated states, less from less populated ones - and made all the kids
live outdoors, with no place to call home? Would we just say, "ah well,
that is how it goes. Never mind. Don't bother me about that, there is
nothing to be done?"
Or would we go utterly and totally ballistic,
including doing whatever was required to save the kids, save the kids,
save the kids? And then, even more so, with the kids rescued from
homelessness, wouldn't we also focus on getting the aliens out of our
world?
Okay, so the aliens aren't little green creatures. They are
institutions that make child poverty and deprivation, not to mention
adult poverty and deprivation, inexorable byproducts of business as
usual. So, shouldn't we be saving the children, in the short run, and replacing
the institutions, in the long run?
Is there any fancy rhetoric or
complex sociological or economic theory that can even address much less
overcome this simple proposition - we need mitigating change leading
into revolution that alters our defining institutions - without
demonstrating a level of inhumanity that is…alien?
Returning to Buchheit:
"Only two nations still refuse to ratify the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child: South Sudan and the United States. When President
Obama said, 'I believe America is exceptional', he was close to the
truth, in a way he and his wealthy friends would never admit."
So what
prevents insurrection? I submit that the answer is hopelessness. A
belief that there is no better option out there to be had, and, even if
there were such an option, there is no way to win it.
Such views are
poppycock, of course, but of a very deadly and suicidal kind.
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