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This is what happens when there's no safety net. This is what happens to the people the Republicans don't want to think about, who are so estranged from their families that they may as well not have them. This is what happens when you don't have rich friends, or any friends who aren't doing more than barely better than you. This is what happens to people in this country who can't drive, couldn't afford a car if they could, and have the bad taste to live outside of the few cities in the U.S. with decent mass transit. This is what happens to poor people in the US.
It's obvious Dallas wasn't a perfect man. It's also obvious that he contributed to his own problems as much as anyone else did. But it's also obvious that he tried, he tried like hell to take care of his boys. He tried like hell to ensure that they knew right from wrong, even when it was inconvenient.
I don't often really talk about what it was like for me growing up. That's all decades done, time-wise. Memory-wise, not so much. We weren't, perhaps, dirt-poor. But there were too many times when the only thing between my family and no food in the house were food stamps. Food stamps are easy to poke fun at, as are the people who sometimes abuse them. But for the people who need them, food stamps mean that tonight you can get fresh fruit, not the shit in a can bathing in syrup, with all the nutritional value of cardboard. Food stamps mean you might have some extra money for "nonessentials", like an eyeglass prescription that is strong enough to work. Food stamps mean food in amounts that make you feel rich, because you have a grocery cart full to bursting of food, not just the kiddie carrier, and a gallon of milk in the main cart. Sure, you have to lug the shit home, and you don't have a car, and you're so very glad that the store manager never seems to notice that you take a couple of days to return the cart to the carrel when you leave. But it's food, and in quantity. Not being able to sleep because you're too full is always better than the other option.
There were too many times when we didn't even have that, and we were so grateful that a bag of rice was cheap. There were too many times when I was grateful that shitty work pants from Sears were only ten bucks a pair. Sure, they looked like shit, but they were clean. That was something. There were too many days that the words "A package from Aunt Mary" meant I had actual new clothes that I might want to wear. There were times when my mom would sit on the couch, the bills she couldn't pay in front of her, and just cry, because that was all she had left. My dad couldn't work due to an auto accident that left him with a permanent limp and took a guy who was a lot of fun to play football with, and turned him into a slow-moving sideline watcher. There were days I wish the car would have finished the job, it would have been kinder. I think that, more than anything, was why they fought so much. Because they both had been so far from where they were, and now, they were barely out of a shelter.
Being poor, that level of poor...I can't describe what it does to your soul and your spirit. Even now, when I'm making what was, by my standards then, an incalculable amount of money, I still can have these spasms where I feel that old fear, that somehow, I'm going to slip up, and my son will have to go through what I did in high school. When you're that poor, and you've finally snapped, and shot the shit out of your smoker, and the cops are there, and you realize that all you have to do is lift your hand, and you'll never be poor again, and maybe, just maybe, your boys really will be better off without their loser father in their life, dragging them down...
If you ever wonder why I talk about the Air Force with the...respect and reverence I do, it's because beyond all the stories, and all the humor, the decision I made to join the military is what perhaps kept me from continuing on the only path I knew. So very much of my success is due to the USAF, the people I worked with there, and how they all conspired to turn me into something that can be called a success...I really don't have the right words, you know?
When the Republicans talk about being unable to afford to support the poor in this country, and "tightening our belts", Dallas is who they're talking about. Dallas, and millions of others, who don't have a belt to tighten, and if they did, it's as tight as it will go. People like Dallas who maybe have a bit too much pride to ask a stranger for help, and so suffer more than they should. People like Dallas who aren't gaming the system, but just trying to keep their family going for another day, another month, another year. It's easy to castigate him for buying trivial things every time he had money, but that's what you do when you're poor in a rich country. Any chance you get, you buy stupid shit, because, even if it's just for a moment, the chance to have something shiny, new, and as nice as, maybe even better than what your neighbors have is a chance to get your pride back. If everyone around you is poor, it's easier, in a way. But when you walk to school, in old clothes, and you see your classmates pulling up in Mercedes and the occasional Ferrari, it burns, and it hurts, and you'll do almost anything to have something shiny, and pretty, and new. Even if it means you're stupid about money sometimes, and you buy a smoker instead of a short-term CD.
The next time someone tells you that we don't need the government to provide a safety net, that private industry and private charity will always fill the gap, remember that no, it won't. Just ask Dallas.
Posted by John C. Welch at 22:25 | Permalink
Comments
Well-put. I still live with a low-level fear of poverty, having seen my mother struggling to make a go of it, alone in a strange country, with a kid to feed, after my father was permanently hospitalized.
That fear still affects much of my decision-making It also feeds my anger at the people who have always ignored those not born into privilege.
Posted by:
Moeskido 
|
July 27, 2008 10:48 PM
Thanks for sharing John.
In The Netherlands the powers that be are rapidly and religiously commercializing all former state safety nets, plus also the entire health system and education. So everywhere commercial managers move in like Ed Vogler moved into House's hospital. They are however either former politicians or managers who flopped at real companies. George Carlin characterized these people (and their overlords) exactly right: "They want more for themselves and less for everybody else." Especially that last bit appears to be the crux for these people.
We now see the results: many of these new companies are going bust, leaving a few monopolists who behave as such. Only a few companies who use commerce as a means to achieve their goal of doing something useful appear to be successful independently. All others leech off state money for financing their continuous stream of big mistakes and boatloads of highly expensive managers with big cars and offices and oversized staff that contribute little to the work that has to be done in the end.
And the voters keep this profiteering in place by voting blindly and deafly for the parties they always voted for in the past.......
Posted by:
Planeten Paultje |
July 28, 2008 12:38 AM
Sigh.
I grew up poor. Possibly not dirt-poor either. I had free lunches until I graduated from high school, and there were food stamps too. New clothes came from my grandparents when the could manage. My parents never were able to get ahead, not when I was young. My dad was an EMT, and hurt his back on the job. We lived with my grandmother for a couple of particularly bad years after that.
But I made it through high school, instead of getting pregnant like most of the girls in my neighbourhood. I went to college on a combination of scholarships, federal grants, part-time or full-time jobs (I was an EMT like my father to pay for the first couple of years), and student loans. I got my degrees, and got a good job, and ... well, here I am.
When I went back to my high school reunion, I had more than a few moments of thinking, 'there but for the grace of god go I'. I have to admit that sometimes I look around me and wonder if everyone realises that I'm faking it and that I somehow don't deserve it. I'm not sure if that feeling of wondering when it will all disappear is going to go away.
Even with social services as bad as they were in the 80s (catsup is a vegetable?), I made it. I'm paying back into the system much more than it cost the system to get me here. What would have happened to me without free lunches and federal grants? It's impossible to be certain, but it seems unlikely that it would have turned out this well.
Posted by:
nadyne |
July 28, 2008 1:24 AM
John,
Thanks for exposing people to this story. I too grew up in a family that was one problem away from this sort of tragedy.
I think that it's even more important to contrast this with the smug, self-entitled jackass from the FSF replying a few posts away. When I see people like that, who honestly believe that "software freedom" is even worth talking about when we live in a country that is capable of letting people sink down as far as Dallas Carter it actually makes me speechless with rage.
Posted by:
Angry Drunk |
July 28, 2008 3:43 PM
I can't actually think about that comparison, because it's too sad and pathetic to think that someone is going to spend money and time to be a jerk at an Apple Store when there are people in his community who could use that time and money to maybe, you know, EAT.
If I were to actually ponder that, I think I'd need to find some heroin to calm down enough to not just kill people.
Posted by:
John C. Welch 
|
July 28, 2008 3:46 PM
Thanks for linking to this story, and sharing your story. I won't go into autobiographical detail, since you did it so well, except to say that I was living in my car for about a year there during the Bush I administration. The County program that helped me get out of that situation lost its funding immediately thereafter, though, and that was before the right-wing coup of November 1994.
I find it hard to fathom what's going through the mind of any non-billionaire who votes Republican. The pathetic delusion that if you remove any and every restriction from the rapacity of the cannibal vampire parasites that own these sock-puppets, they will somehow inadvertently let a few crumbs fall from their table for the rest of us--you know, the trickle-down theory that put Reagan in office--well surely, its bankruptcy must be obvious to all by now?
Posted by:
Gatesbasher |
July 28, 2008 5:15 PM
Well said John. Very well said. What this country needs is some empathy. When your head is shoved so far up your own ass its hard to remember what its like to be human. The Republicans claim (as one of their primary beliefs) that the people know how to better spend their money than the government does. Judging by the way things have been sliding over the last 2 decades, I beg to differ. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and middle class is rapidly disappearing, with a surprising few clawing their way to success and everybody else slips into the lower class. Its despicable.
Posted by:
peelman |
August 1, 2008 11:15 PM
Gatesbasher,
Whats going on in the mind of non-billionaire Republicans is the possibility that someday with hardwork they too will join the ranks of the wealthy. And part of not screwing that plan up is not taxing the wealthy so much that you start to make companies lay off workers because they can't afford to hire as many as they used to and also not appropriating the wealth that that not-yet-rich Republican may some day attain.
Any group of organisms, including humans, will have a number of people who don't survive. Its not a war crime to not get weepy over that.
Posted by:
NDPTAL85 |
August 2, 2008 7:47 PM
You have missed the point again John. The republicans don't mind safety nets for those that need them... like Paul, my brother-in-law who is afflicted with down's syndrome. Republicans simply feel that government is not human enough to distinguish between Paul and my deadbeat relatives in West Virginia who draw welfare from two different states and spend their afternoons planning for the day when they will "get their disability.".
Safety nets are fine. But those nets must include the kind of social pressure and stigma that makes a person fear using that safety net. This is America, I have a right to succeed and along with that right comes the right to fail. Don't steal my right to fail.
To our politicians (all sides) the "safety net" you are advocates is simply a means of controlling and maintaining power. You blast the republicans but should I then turn to the democratic party which is setting itself up to be led by a socialist?
My family visited China this year. Ask the Chinese about government safety nets ... oh wait they can't because they are too afraid.
Take a look at Europe guys and see America's future.
Posted by:
figment |
August 15, 2008 2:46 PM
You have missed the point again John. The republicans don't mind safety nets for those that need them... like Paul, my brother-in-law who is afflicted with down's syndrome. Republicans simply feel that government is not human enough to distinguish between Paul and my deadbeat relatives in West Virginia who draw welfare from two different states and spend their afternoons planning for the day when they will "get their disability.".
Ah, the classic, "Since we can't help those in need perfectly, we can't change anything until we do." What we have now is a *failure*. Period. And I will tell you right now, there is no system ever made that cannot be abused. Look at the US Government and how people with $$ abuse it at the expense of those without. Sorry, but the fact that you can't create a perfect system is not an excuse to do nothing to fix the current one.
You accept that no process will be perfect, and indeed, you can design one that accepts attempts at abuse, and can deal with them.
On the "stigma" thing...Dallas felt PLENTY of stigma about asking for help. How'd that work out for him. There is no shame, nor should there be shame in asking for help when one needs it.
THe problem is in this country, we do NOTHING worth mentioning to help people avoid needing help in the first place. Job training, financial aid for college, it's a fucking joke here. And god help you if you're like Dallas and a single parent sans family. You're fucked, because decent day care is an arm and a leg, and good luck with getting help on that.
We do nothing in the way of preventative care, then you say we should attach as much shame and stigma as possible to emergency care? Are you fucking serious?
To our politicians (all sides) the "safety net" you are advocates is simply a means of controlling and maintaining power. You blast the republicans but should I then turn to the democratic party which is setting itself up to be led by a socialist?
Translation: The Dems aren't saying "Fuck you poor people, just die quietly". Gimme a fucking break. The Conservatives have no problems with multibillion-dollar handouts to avoid paying for the local and federal infrastructure they use. Tax breaks nothing, I'm talking about 20 years of NO property taxes, and oddly, the overoptimistic "revenue increases" from customers never quite pan out, because those projections were made assuming perfect economic growth, not the reality of economic cycles.
Spare me the "O NOES, DEMS R SOCIALISTS". Considering the Federal Fellatio that Corporate America has gotten from the Republicans since 1980, we already HAVE socialism, you just have to be really rich to use it.
Take a look at Europe guys and see America's future.
Let's see, we'll compare the pound and the euro, relative strenghts of the economies, oh, and quality/affordability of healthcare and infant mortality rates.
yeah...europe isn't doing so bad there.
Posted by:
bynkii |
August 15, 2008 3:40 PM
