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Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt
And for all the little piggies
Life is getting worse
Always having dirt to play around in.
Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to play around in.
In their sties with all their backing
They don't care what goes on around
In their eyes there's something lacking
What they need's a damn good whacking.
Everywhere there's lots of piggies
Living piggy lives
You can see them out for dinner
With their piggy wives
Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon.
--Piggies, by George Harrison
My grandfather was 4 years old when his family came to the United States in 1879. They came to escape the poverty in Ireland that was imposed by another people. In the US, my extended family worked on the railroads. My father was making a good living, until there was a change in the economic system that resulted in the railroad he worked on going bankrupt. I was born a short time later, the youngest of five children, and although my father worked hard every day of my childhood, we were always poor.
Two of the things that stood out in my childhood was wearing hand-me-down clothes and never having enough to eat. The only real possession that I had was a large chip I wore on my shoulder. I fought for everything that I had, and I fought for everything I didn’t have. A couple times, older kids would laugh at the shabby clothes I wore, and I would fight them. But that chip on my shoulder wasn’t a blessing, and as a teen-ager, it resulted in my being homeless and dead broke. I can say that I did not survive by obeying the law, or being a good citizen.
Quite a few of my relatives who worked the rails had boxed, and my brothers and I boxed, too. As a young adult, I used some of the self-discipline I developed in that sport to try to scratch out a living. There were times when I worked two full-time jobs, more times when I worked one full and one part-time job, and was usually able to make ends meet. I worked my way through college, because I recognized that there were advantages in my being an educated fool, rather than a mere common fool. And I went into human services, because I thought I could do some good as an advocate for those families that were dealing with the problems that are often associated with not having enough food or clothes, or being homeless, or having a chip on one’s shoulder that makes one prone to being angry and lashing out in a destructive and self-destructive manner.
My children have always had good clothes and enough food to eat. Sometimes they laugh at me, because some old habits die hard, and they think I still wear old shabby clothes. My wife threw out a sweat shirt that my grandfather gave me for Christmas, and it bugged me, because it was only 26 years old.
Now, I’ve said all that to say this: I am not an economist, and I do not pretend to be. That is but one of the many areas where my formal education is lacking, and more, an area where my life’s experiences have not resulted in my having enough money to allow me to pretend that I do understand "economics." But, to borrow a phrase from Malcolm X, I do believe that I have my street degrees: a bachelor’s degree in poverty; a master’s in the problems associated with being poor, and a Ph.D in witnessing how some people capitalize on the pauperization their fellow man. Now, if that ain’t being educated, then there are no swine in Washington, DC.
But there are human swine in Washington, DC, and on Wall Street. We are seeing the results of their hoggish gluttony today. The Congress is unable to institute a meaningful approach for dealing with the problems that piggy greed has caused in the current financial crisis. Part of the problem was detailed in the 2006 book "The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track," by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein. Yet most people understand this problem without having to read a text book.
It is a matter of character, and of the utter lack of it. In our country, it is considered legitimate for a US Senator or Representative to be a hateful, egotistic, cruel, and malicious swine …..and those who are not are labeled as "oddballs," and kept on the margins of power. This country elects a group of people who do not represent us or our values, and who should – were the system just – be incarcerated to pay their debt to society.
My father used to tell me about "character," and the value of hard work. I was thinking about this the other day, when one of his old friends who lives in my neighborhood was out on his tractor. This man is in his early 80s, has cancer, and only has one lung. But he was out there, wearing a mask for oxygen, baling hay. He’s a republican, and used to serve in local politics, but I suspect that his good character kept him from moving up the ladder. In my opinion – and I say this as a Democrat – he represents the type of person who is supposed to be serving this society in office, rather than those pigs who are serving themselves.
I’m not pretending that I have any idea what the immediate solution to this economic crisis is. But it outrages me to listen to the morning news, and hear some pigs blaming Jews for wanting to participate in religious duties, or Obama for not getting all the black members of Congress to fall in line. Equally offensive was a woman saying that Americans need to make more sacrifices to shoulder the burden, as if the poor and middle class are behaving in an unpatriotic, selfish manner that has caused these problems. No. While I think that my family will be okay – just as past generations were able to survive harsh circumstances – I see enough hardship and suffering in the individuals and families in this area that are having real problems making ends meet. They are not the problem.
Thank you for reading my angry morning rant. Perhaps I was not fully successful in my efforts to remove that chip from my shoulder.
H2O Man
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