The Difference Between Hope and Change

I didn’t cry, but just acknowledged that “things could be worse.”

I was encouraged early in the campaign, when Obama strongly criticized the old “trickle down economics.” This has been a disastrous strategy for the poor -to-middle classes.  Then, within a couple weeks of the election, Obama “clarified” that his social agenda for the poor consists of ... you guessed it, “trickle down economics.”

It makes sense, in a hopeless sort of way.  A whole generation has been born and reached adulthood since the Reagan years, when the campaign to raid public welfare funds began in earnest.  This generation has had it drummed into their heads that unemployment equals deviance, and that the poor are a subspecies.  We live in an era when there is no outrage about those small back-page items of “homeless man found beaten to death.”  Insanely, we even refer to being destitute as a “lifestyle choice”!

We’ve embraced a social philosophy very much like that of the Nazi era—the sole worth of a human is determined by his employment. Those who can’t work, or for whom there are no jobs at this time,  are something less than human, mere parasites.  No way do we see a connection between those revered international human rights protections and America’s
treatment of its poor.

And this isn’t going to change under Obama, and that makes me feel like crying.

Posted by dhfabian on Feb 14, 2009 at 5:44 PM