I lost my cool yesterday when I observed that by and large the church has abandoned inner city ministry and rural ministry, and moved it's parishes and infrastructure to the 'burbs, a more affluent region. I got told I might as well be Obama and support a class war. I'm still more than a little steamed.
First, just a little bit of thinking. Saying that the inner city has few Catholics, or that the rural areas have few Catholics isn't a valid reason to abandon these areas--it's the result of being abandoned. It's hard to maintain your faith, or to proselytize if there are no churches there to serve the need. Second, the reality of the situation is this--there is more money in the 'burbs. We followed the money, and despite our faith saying there must be a preferential option for the poor, I don't see us doing very much to evangelize them. Provide social services, yeah, we do that. Save their souls, not so much. Sorry, that's the reality on the ground I've seen in every diocese I have lived in in the US.
I am tired of the assumption that being a Liturgical conservative, a Moral conservative and a Theological Conservative means that I just buy off on the goals and ideology of the GOP--I don't. At all. I simply consider the Republican Party to be, at this moment, to be the lessor of two evils. It's still evil. It hasn't done me any good personally since 1988. It hasn't done much for the Republic either. I can't reconcile the Republican actions with the Catechism, Scripture or the things that proceed from these two sources logically. I am not a Republican.
But as to the GOP and conservatives waving the banner and crying out against "Class War", they need to shut the hell up: We are in a class war, one that has been raging since I was a kid, and one that is being waged against the working class. Don't believe me? Look at congress, please. How many plumbers to you see sitting in the hallowed halls? How many nurses? Any cooks?
We haven't had a president with out a University degree wince Harry Truman--and the biggest predictor of who will earn a Bachelors Degree isn't academic talent, it's not intelligence and it's not incredible drive, it's whether or not your parents are in the top 50% income bracket. You can go look that up. The dynamic isn't just the cost of school, it's the social aspect. I have watched poor kids in college, and watched them be shunted off to the side and marginalized by the culture of the University. When the food courts are dominated by National Brand fast foods, and the other offerings on campus are designed to appeal to the top 50%ers, Working class kids can find themselves unable to participate in many social activities and programs. Add in to that the disdain that they are held in by their fellow students, and they leave. Not to mention the fact that many of them are more realistic about the nuts and bolts of life, and have doubts about trying to get an entry level job burdened with five and six figure debts for an education that often only get's them a cubicle job that pays the same as a labor job, (without the debt added) and they don't see the point. They are frozen out.
But there's more to this. With most members of Congress being wealthy--it's really a millionaires club--they cannot be expected to have the welfare of the working class at heart. The programs implemented seem so often to hurt us. We suffer from real wage contraction, when one allows for inflation, we've lost a large portion of our manufacturing jobs--yeah--the County Seat of the county I come from is a rust belt town now.
Then we are divided by policies. The labor movement is part of the problem. A big part of the problem. Have you seen pickets at construction sites, because the contractor hasn't got a contract with the union? It's an attempt at intimidation. It's designed to interfere with people having jobs, because the union wants the power over labor--not because these jobs are unsafe, or exploitative. And the unions have outlived their usefulness. They are now fund raisers for the Democratic Party, a party which is killing jobs, or blocking their creation. They are hurting the workers, whom they say they champion. I see these pickets in front of businesses that used non-union contractors to set up there premises--an attempt to make these businesses fail, to destroy the jobs that exist inside of them. At the same time, workers are bombarded by Republicans with various distortions of the facts, and scare tactics designed to get them to support a party that has more to do with the Propertied Class than with caring about workers, or how they live. Xenophobia is invoked to set us against other workers, who come from somewhere else.
Our President has received more than 42 million dollars from Wall Street firms for his last campaign. More than any president in history. And he gave them billions in our money to bail them out of a hole of their own making. He gave millions in "stimulus funds" to so called green companies that are failing, and which coincidentally either gave large sums to his campaign, or who have principle owners who gave large sums. His administration has attempted to block corporations from opening new facilities where it makes the most sense to do so, to keep the expansion under the thumb of the unions--which give his party millions and millions of dollars. This would inhibit the economic improvement, because it would mean a less profitable enterprise, and loss of business due to higher prices. It hurts workers who would work at the new plant, and the loss of wages from that inhibit every other class of worker and service provider in the region. The Democrats don't care about us in the bottom 50%.
But they want our votes, so they concentrate on the very lowest, and give them all sorts of things. Things that do not help in the long term, but lead to dependence and a guaranteed base, because they have become addicted to hand outs and ineffectual band-aid solutions to systemic problems.
The Republicans have managed, several times, with their Democratic partners in the looting of the American Worker to pass laws that have nearly destroyed the family farm, led to less diversity in cultivars, Genetically Modified Foods whose long term effect are unknown, or just becoming known, the rise of "factory farming" the prevalence of 'soil mining" in large scale agribusiness and even an attempt to outlaw saving your own garden seed, or giving produce from your garden to a neighbor.
When I was a kid, a man could get a job, support his family, be able to get a decent vehicle, while allowing his wife to stay home and be a wife and mother, if she choose. Now it's virtually impossible, and we have to send kids to daycare--which is proven to have deleterious effects, increasing the likely hood of behavioral problems in early adolescence. We were a nation where people aspired to be, and became homeowners. We had the expectation that we had a good shot at being at least as affluent as our parents were. Most of that is gone.
We vote, and all we get a choice for is who is going to loot us for taxes to distribute to their favorite base members. Our unions no longer really serve us, but instead become an extra-governmental tax apparatus for the Democratic Party. We work more for less. We have less. Our families are becoming destabilized by economic and social forces instigated by our government. Mr. Hayak had it right--we are on the road to serfdom, while the upper classes, spouting all sorts of things, grows ever more powerful, ever more rich and ever more contemptuous of us.
The next person who tells me I am spouting class war is going to get a copy of De Tocqueville. I'll highlight the section where in the 1840s America, nobody minded if you got rich, but no one let the rich dominate their society. (That my friends, came about after the Administration of Andy Jackson, and the beginning of industrialization by steam in the US. It was abetted by the US government through grants to the "rail barons" and preferential treatment for Industrialists and Marketers...and had a lot to do with the Civil War.)
Look at a lot of the places we live. Especially those of us who are rural. Where's the county dump at your place? It's not anywhere near an upscale subdivision. Wheres the sewerage treatment plant? It's not near that really estate, is it. Where are the mines? Oh look--the holiday retreats for the upscale are not being impacted. Too bad about the sulfur contamination in your surface and ground water though. But hey--if you complain, that's class war. In town? Gee, look how well paved the streets are in the upscale areas, then go over to the neighborhood you avoid--see all those potholes? Oh look at the houses--kinda dilapidated, aren't they? Why don't these people keep their homes up? Because they don't own them, and the land lord doesn't want to spent the money on repairs. Been there, done that, got the city involved, ended up in court--I won. Then I couldn't get a lease approved by the land lords and rental companies in town. I ended up renting from a woman who lived seventy miles away, and didn't know I had stood up and said "I see daylight through my wall!".
We Americans are a notoriously cantankerous and hot blooded people--and sooner or later the class war will emerge from back room deals, obfuscating rhetoric, and confusing, corruptly written laws and into the streets. It will be ugly, because the exploited working class, tired of shouldering the costs and impact of programs that do not help us, but hurt us, will also be engaging in strife against elements with in it that think the Government has the right of it, because their special interest will be catered to. But to those who persist in thinking that there is no class war, and that the Democrats are trying to start one are wrong. It's been going on most of my life, and we're losing.
First, just a little bit of thinking. Saying that the inner city has few Catholics, or that the rural areas have few Catholics isn't a valid reason to abandon these areas--it's the result of being abandoned. It's hard to maintain your faith, or to proselytize if there are no churches there to serve the need. Second, the reality of the situation is this--there is more money in the 'burbs. We followed the money, and despite our faith saying there must be a preferential option for the poor, I don't see us doing very much to evangelize them. Provide social services, yeah, we do that. Save their souls, not so much. Sorry, that's the reality on the ground I've seen in every diocese I have lived in in the US.
I am tired of the assumption that being a Liturgical conservative, a Moral conservative and a Theological Conservative means that I just buy off on the goals and ideology of the GOP--I don't. At all. I simply consider the Republican Party to be, at this moment, to be the lessor of two evils. It's still evil. It hasn't done me any good personally since 1988. It hasn't done much for the Republic either. I can't reconcile the Republican actions with the Catechism, Scripture or the things that proceed from these two sources logically. I am not a Republican.
But as to the GOP and conservatives waving the banner and crying out against "Class War", they need to shut the hell up: We are in a class war, one that has been raging since I was a kid, and one that is being waged against the working class. Don't believe me? Look at congress, please. How many plumbers to you see sitting in the hallowed halls? How many nurses? Any cooks?
We haven't had a president with out a University degree wince Harry Truman--and the biggest predictor of who will earn a Bachelors Degree isn't academic talent, it's not intelligence and it's not incredible drive, it's whether or not your parents are in the top 50% income bracket. You can go look that up. The dynamic isn't just the cost of school, it's the social aspect. I have watched poor kids in college, and watched them be shunted off to the side and marginalized by the culture of the University. When the food courts are dominated by National Brand fast foods, and the other offerings on campus are designed to appeal to the top 50%ers, Working class kids can find themselves unable to participate in many social activities and programs. Add in to that the disdain that they are held in by their fellow students, and they leave. Not to mention the fact that many of them are more realistic about the nuts and bolts of life, and have doubts about trying to get an entry level job burdened with five and six figure debts for an education that often only get's them a cubicle job that pays the same as a labor job, (without the debt added) and they don't see the point. They are frozen out.
But there's more to this. With most members of Congress being wealthy--it's really a millionaires club--they cannot be expected to have the welfare of the working class at heart. The programs implemented seem so often to hurt us. We suffer from real wage contraction, when one allows for inflation, we've lost a large portion of our manufacturing jobs--yeah--the County Seat of the county I come from is a rust belt town now.
Then we are divided by policies. The labor movement is part of the problem. A big part of the problem. Have you seen pickets at construction sites, because the contractor hasn't got a contract with the union? It's an attempt at intimidation. It's designed to interfere with people having jobs, because the union wants the power over labor--not because these jobs are unsafe, or exploitative. And the unions have outlived their usefulness. They are now fund raisers for the Democratic Party, a party which is killing jobs, or blocking their creation. They are hurting the workers, whom they say they champion. I see these pickets in front of businesses that used non-union contractors to set up there premises--an attempt to make these businesses fail, to destroy the jobs that exist inside of them. At the same time, workers are bombarded by Republicans with various distortions of the facts, and scare tactics designed to get them to support a party that has more to do with the Propertied Class than with caring about workers, or how they live. Xenophobia is invoked to set us against other workers, who come from somewhere else.
Our President has received more than 42 million dollars from Wall Street firms for his last campaign. More than any president in history. And he gave them billions in our money to bail them out of a hole of their own making. He gave millions in "stimulus funds" to so called green companies that are failing, and which coincidentally either gave large sums to his campaign, or who have principle owners who gave large sums. His administration has attempted to block corporations from opening new facilities where it makes the most sense to do so, to keep the expansion under the thumb of the unions--which give his party millions and millions of dollars. This would inhibit the economic improvement, because it would mean a less profitable enterprise, and loss of business due to higher prices. It hurts workers who would work at the new plant, and the loss of wages from that inhibit every other class of worker and service provider in the region. The Democrats don't care about us in the bottom 50%.
But they want our votes, so they concentrate on the very lowest, and give them all sorts of things. Things that do not help in the long term, but lead to dependence and a guaranteed base, because they have become addicted to hand outs and ineffectual band-aid solutions to systemic problems.
The Republicans have managed, several times, with their Democratic partners in the looting of the American Worker to pass laws that have nearly destroyed the family farm, led to less diversity in cultivars, Genetically Modified Foods whose long term effect are unknown, or just becoming known, the rise of "factory farming" the prevalence of 'soil mining" in large scale agribusiness and even an attempt to outlaw saving your own garden seed, or giving produce from your garden to a neighbor.
When I was a kid, a man could get a job, support his family, be able to get a decent vehicle, while allowing his wife to stay home and be a wife and mother, if she choose. Now it's virtually impossible, and we have to send kids to daycare--which is proven to have deleterious effects, increasing the likely hood of behavioral problems in early adolescence. We were a nation where people aspired to be, and became homeowners. We had the expectation that we had a good shot at being at least as affluent as our parents were. Most of that is gone.
We vote, and all we get a choice for is who is going to loot us for taxes to distribute to their favorite base members. Our unions no longer really serve us, but instead become an extra-governmental tax apparatus for the Democratic Party. We work more for less. We have less. Our families are becoming destabilized by economic and social forces instigated by our government. Mr. Hayak had it right--we are on the road to serfdom, while the upper classes, spouting all sorts of things, grows ever more powerful, ever more rich and ever more contemptuous of us.
The next person who tells me I am spouting class war is going to get a copy of De Tocqueville. I'll highlight the section where in the 1840s America, nobody minded if you got rich, but no one let the rich dominate their society. (That my friends, came about after the Administration of Andy Jackson, and the beginning of industrialization by steam in the US. It was abetted by the US government through grants to the "rail barons" and preferential treatment for Industrialists and Marketers...and had a lot to do with the Civil War.)
Look at a lot of the places we live. Especially those of us who are rural. Where's the county dump at your place? It's not anywhere near an upscale subdivision. Wheres the sewerage treatment plant? It's not near that really estate, is it. Where are the mines? Oh look--the holiday retreats for the upscale are not being impacted. Too bad about the sulfur contamination in your surface and ground water though. But hey--if you complain, that's class war. In town? Gee, look how well paved the streets are in the upscale areas, then go over to the neighborhood you avoid--see all those potholes? Oh look at the houses--kinda dilapidated, aren't they? Why don't these people keep their homes up? Because they don't own them, and the land lord doesn't want to spent the money on repairs. Been there, done that, got the city involved, ended up in court--I won. Then I couldn't get a lease approved by the land lords and rental companies in town. I ended up renting from a woman who lived seventy miles away, and didn't know I had stood up and said "I see daylight through my wall!".
We Americans are a notoriously cantankerous and hot blooded people--and sooner or later the class war will emerge from back room deals, obfuscating rhetoric, and confusing, corruptly written laws and into the streets. It will be ugly, because the exploited working class, tired of shouldering the costs and impact of programs that do not help us, but hurt us, will also be engaging in strife against elements with in it that think the Government has the right of it, because their special interest will be catered to. But to those who persist in thinking that there is no class war, and that the Democrats are trying to start one are wrong. It's been going on most of my life, and we're losing.
