Hello Joe,
Just today, I got out of the hospital. The fourth time since mid-June. I'm one of the "lucky ones" with health insurance through my husband. Sometimes I wonder if my illness isn't a manifestation of our national psyche. I feel a white-hot rage, but this rage has no place constructive to go. I occasionally write a letter. I go to the Democratic Township meetings. But with Diebold voting machines and jerrymandering, I wonder if there will ever be another real election. I spend most of my days pretending like I'm writing for a living as I read about ever more desperate reasons to move to New Guinea.
Both my husband and I have bachelor's degrees. He had been in corporate America for 20 years, then out of a job for one year, resulting in the loss of our modest home in the suburbs, and now he drives a truck all but five days a month. My children lost their father.
I've been working to the extent my health has allowed, writing for magazines, websites, brochures, etc., but I've been sick for the better part of six months. My son had to start school living at my parents' 90 miles away (inner ring suburban vs. rural and he blames me). And my daughter at 21, she's feeling orphaned, and virtually is, between my husband's job and my illness.
Long ago, I gave up heels and pantyhose, knowing corporate America was a recipe for death, at least for me. Now, we shop at Aldi, never buy clothes and live in a rental house a third the size of the one we sold (the proceeds paid off medical debt).
I feel unique among my peers, but suspect that I'm not. As you so aptly describe, the American Dream ain't what it used to be. So many of us struggle to live far below our expectations. When the levees broke in New Orleans, I keenly felt the despair of waiting for help that probably wasn't coming. I felt the fetid water rising up my neck. I still have a sense of the waters rising.
In the hospital, I was with people that in my early life I would have considered as "other," but now? Our struggle is the same. If a sense of brotherhood is the goal, the Republican Revolution has been successful. I have a fine fellow feeling, not just for Bubba, but for Ruby and Dwayne. The same needs and fears diminish us all.
Today, I wonder at the fetid waters I feel rising. I feel truly suspicious of my ability to finally provide for my family with some semblance of a secure lifestyle. As a girl, I envisioned adulthood as a bounty of free will and plenty, friends gathered in a yellow kitchen, bonhomie, well-adjusted children. I have none of that, and in all reality, shouldn't expect it either.
Until we have some equity, the unrest will rise. (I live in Missouri, where Governor Matt Blunt has eradicated any semblance of charity or fine feeling from government.) I've heard we're long past previous ratios of revolution-producing imbalances of wealth. A lot like you, I'm feeling the need to ex-patriate, and if not that, incite revolution.
Until (and I realize this is a cliche) the least among us is treated with dignity and care, all the wealth in the world isn't any kind of protection against a "hoard" that will one day rise up. As they say, "justice will out."
That our America has come to this is no puzzle. The decks have been insidiously stacked in favor of them what already has. All those folks who believe wealth and security is out there just for the price of a lifetime of hard work need the wool gathered from their eyes. Them what has gets, them what doesn't, well, woe be to you, until the uprising. Then who knows?
Ultimately, good must win. That means the likes of this bunch in Washington now will lose, someday, eventually. They are without equal in their perfidy, and when I consider the misery committed in my country's name, it makes me bow my head in shame. That any of us, Americans for God's sake, can actively condone such naked violence against others is a shame we may never live down. I can't imagine what it will take to redeem ourselves, but I do know it isn't even a glimmer in the eyes of our leaders. I fear the USA as we've come to know it is sunk forever. The poison has been too widespread, through too many levels of our government, through too many parts of the world. George Bush and his ilk may well be America's Caligula.
All empires end, but to have done it in so short a time is nothing short of stunning.
I can't afford college for my children, except a semester here and there, and my youngest says he won't even go. I just hope we can all afford the fare to New Zealand, or wherever, before the blood bath starts.
Jill
St. Louis, Missouri.
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Dear Jill,
You speak for millions in this country. There is nothing I can add.
In brotherhood,
Joe
