David Glenn Cox -- World News Trust
Jan. 20, 2011 -- Sometimes you just can't sleep at night.
We ask ourselves questions and throw ourselves into a national tizzy when a mentally ill man sprays a crowd with gunfire. That is bad enough, the shock value is there, good fodder for the TV news teams. But that's not what was keeping me up. I read in the local Gazette here tonight in my undisclosed location, of a quiet tragedy.
It keeps me up nights because, although I did not know this person, I had an affinity with her.
One more tragedy in the land that doesn't give a damn. The newspaper didn't say much, it didn't have to. The story writes itself. A 47-year-old woman drove more than 1,000 miles to strange town on a river junction. She was staying with family. Divorce perhaps? Lost her job and her home or apartment and drove 1,000 miles for a new start?
We all know this story, you'd have to be pretty isolated not to know about this story for yourself. Not to know someone who has lost a home or a job. To have had their security and dignity ripped out from beneath themselves and to live in fear of the mailman or the telephone. To be beat upon by corporate bullies, to have $200 in bank fees turn into $2,000 in a few weeks. They call on the phone and threaten, or send letters with ominous implications. They are thugs, they operate just inside the law and sometimes with their toes just outside the law, because they know you don't have the money to defend yourself.
For millions of us this is new territory, we've always paid our bills in the past. We try to do right and explain the situation honestly. Then the collection calls begin anew tomorrow and we must tell the story all over again, until we find ourselves in an emotional fetal position where we just can't answer the phone anymore and we can't open the mail.
There is no respite or reprieve. The collectors will call your neighbors and your relatives, anyone who can make you take their phone calls. Despite having explained 100 times before that you can't pay them because you can't find a job. Their remorseless hammer blows are designed to beat you down into submission, to harass and to maul you. Their monolithic purpose is to collect and nothing else matters.
In a real country outside of TV land, there would be a government to protect you, a government that would be concerned about the well being of the millions of its citizens losing their jobs and homes. A real government would do something about it rather than to just bribe big business with tax cuts to do something about it. A real government would take the bull by the horns and take over the mortgage crisis themselves. Robosigning? Robosigning guarantees that this issue will be with us for decades.
Why do banks use robosigning? Because they know that if you don't have the money to make your house payment then you don't have the money to fight back against them. You don't have a *ucking friend in the world and they know it. The bank has all the friends they need, a battery of attorneys and a big rubber stamp. In a real country somewhere, someone would protect you. But this isn't a real country. This is imagination land.
Our government appoints a Mr. Wizard to sit in the basement of the Federal Reserve building and rule over the imagination nation of consumer protection. With full powers to make recommendations! If, of course, those recommendations are ignored then Mr. Wizard has full powers to sit quietly. Like everything else in this country it's showmanship and salesmanship.
The President elected on “Hope and Change” doesn't change much. He passes Richard Nixon's health care plan, then opens the Gulf of Mexico up for deep water drilling after a 41-year ban. He plans to build nuclear power plants and ratchets up the wars. All that's missing is John McCain shouting, “Hey, you kids! Get off my lawn!”
The new Congress offers... nonsense, the royal nonesuch come to flesh. The Earl and the Dauphin do a dance, but for a 47-year-old woman who drove 1,000 miles to make a new start they offer... nothing! Nothing to hold onto, nothing to hope for, nothing good to eat and nothing to stay warm with at night. She is forgotten, we are forgotten!
Turned over to the corporate dogs to chew upon our marrow, forget citizens united. Forget Afghanistan. They are harassing the weak and the poor and the defenseless and your government just nods and smiles. Is that American justice? Is that American fair play? To be backed into a corner to be poked and prodded with a corporate stick? To use the government court system as an arm of the collection agency, a system that knows only judgments and liens without justice and leniency?
Cerebrally, I knew this woman, her and many others like her, men and women who no longer have careers. Careers they spent years building and years paying off student debt. Only to be told at age 47 or 57 or even 37 that next week is your last week, your last check.
To then sign up for the government's unrealatorium, unemployment and food stamps. To live in fear of the government form. To receive forms in the mail from government agencies, my latest food stamp form was yellow, while all the others were white. What does that mean? No explanation enclosed, only a phone number. Am I about to lose my benefits? Why are they asking about Medicaid? I don't want to sign up for medicaid but if I fill out the form incorrectly, will I still be able to eat?
It fills your days and nights with angst, you toss and turn and fear what's next. You wonder if you even know how to have fun anymore? What is fun? What is entertainment? Millions of Americans, living like this, in an economic pressure cooker while the President and the Congress twiddle their thumbs saying, “The economy should be better in a year or two.” That's heresy, that's a crime against humanity! It's inhuman to tell the American people, “that's just tough for you, so deal with it!”
To hold on to a coarse rope while being pulled towards the abyss, knowing that with each tic of the clock it brings you closer to the time when your benefits end. To the time when a 47-year-old woman drives 1,000 miles for a new start, then climbs the superstructure of a 100-year-old bridge and dives off the edge. A hundred-foot fall to rock hard jagged ice and frigid water, just another suicide in the land that doesn't give a damn.
I've been there, I've been on that edge. It's a suicide all right, but it's an assisted suicide. She was pushed up on to that bridge. Each collection call was a shove! Each threatening letter was a shove! Every unanswered resume's was a push up on to the bridge. When the politicians say, “perhaps the economy will get better in a year or two.” They are walking you up the bridge. This isn't TV. This isn't a government form or a statistic. This was a flesh and blood woman pushed over the edge. Rather than spray a crowd with bullets she jumped off of a bridge into a frozen river. Dead is dead, this was someone's daughter, someone's mother perhaps.
How long are we going to tolerate a government that plays games and does nothing to help us? A government that thinks we can return to prosperity if we just lay off a few hundred thousand more people. A government that offers tax cuts for corporations, loans for banks and a blind eye toward the suffering of its people. How many thousands more homes will be foreclosed and families put out into the street to protect the bank and ignore the families?
What kind of country is this really? What kind of government is this, that thinks only of itself and its own survival? If a government's role isn't the protection and preservation of the weak and those in need, what is its purpose? To aid corporations? To build war machines? To enforce the laws that put people out into the street? If so, that's not a government, that is a tyranny, a minder to protect the corporations to big too fail. An agent of enforcement against those too small to live. A monolith of show and glitz and promise and bullshit. Corporate fascism with a smiley face, where you clock out with a splash.
How do they sleep at night? How do they not hear the sound of the bodies hitting the water? How do they not count the toll?