There is a Russian joke my ex-husband once told me. He's the least racist person I ever knew, which was good for me, having made the mistake of being born in and growing up in the racist Deep South of the US.
I told it to some folks once online and prefaced it with "It's the only racist joke he ever told." After hearing it, they said "It's not really a racist joke. It's more like a joke about racism."
It is being included here to help paint a portrait because jokes typically contain some social truths about the time and place that gave rise to them. Here is a summary version of the joke, in part because I don't tell jokes all that well:
A group of people were milling about waiting for a grocery store in Russia to open. An hour after it was supposed to have opened, someone comes out and tells all the Jews to go home because there isn't enough food for everyone.
Throughout the day, about every hour, someone comes out and sends another group home. Finally, at the end of the day, they come out and say "There's no food" and they send everyone home. One guy who has been waiting all day turns to another and says "The Jews get the best of everything."
I also once read an anecdote in, I think, Reader's Digest during the Cold War. An American family was sponsoring a visiting Russian lady and they arranged to take her to tour some of the best factories and what not in their city.
Every single thing they tour, at the end she staunchly says "Is better in Russia." At the end of the first day of this, they throw in the towel on trying to impress her and take her grocery shopping. She stands in the produce aisle and breaks down in tears at the sight of the abundant, high quality food readily available to ordinary Americans.
During the Cold War, Russia increased its military spending from something like twenty percent of its budget to something like forty percent of its budget. This was, understandably, just KILLING Russia and ordinary Russians.
In contrast, the US increased its military spending from something like two percent of the budget to something like four percent of the budget and we were handily outspending Russia without breaking a sweat. We simply had more resources to draw on because of a healthy economy.
I'm not some kind of Social Justice Warrior. I'm pretty sure that's what people see when they "look at me" -- when they read my writing online, whether blog posts or comments on various forums.
I'm an ordinary American who grew up awash in the Post World War II abundance of the US and saw that disappear for me at some point. Having been fairly privileged in the past, thus fairly educated and well traveled and what not, I've spent my time in the dark underbelly of current American social ills trying to analyze not only what went wrong with my life in specific but what is going on systemically that, try though I might, I seem simply unable to fix my life in spite of having a long history of being The Best of The Best of The Best, sir!!
I was a good student. I have roughly six years of post-secondary education of various sorts. I'm not a drug addict or alcoholic. I have no criminal record of any sort. Etc. Etc.
Yet, my life remains behind the eight ball.
I write to try to cast light on the systemic issues as I see them. It's not because I am some bleeding heart who thinks you should virtuously care about The Little People (TM).
It's because I somehow ended up being one of The Little People in spite of graduating at the top of my high school class with accolades and winning a National Merit Scholarship to one of the top two universities in my home state.
I have a pretty good idea of what the road not taken looks like. I have a sister whose academic record in high school is very similar to mine who made different choices than I did and ended up with a serious career, especially for a woman.
But I wouldn't trade my life for hers. She has worse overall quality of life than I have in spite of having all the outward trappings of success, like a spiffy title and owning a big house.
It wasn't really the house she wanted to buy. Our housing policies are so fucked and have been for so long that even the "winners" like her are being screwed by it.
I lived a very private life for a lot of years, by which I mean I was a full-time wife and mom. I'm prone to telling personal anecdotes in part because that's how I know how to communicate and in part because that's sometimes all I've got to try to illustrate my point.
There's good points and bad points to that. Someone who is the closest thing to a friend I have had in a long time said something to me once along the lines of "Stop worrying about that. The personal is political because you are a woman."
Everything I do is "done wrong" in spite of me doing everything right according to everything I understand about how you are supposed to make your life work. My writing gets no traction. People think I am being intentionally inflammatory if I happen to describe my understanding of reality more effectively than usual.
I can't do this dance and make other people happy. I'm literally fighting for my life here. I'm struggling to survive and somehow turn the hand that was dealt me into something other than a death spiral.
I need to write. If you don't like what I have to say, don't read it. I'm someone the world has intentionally painted into a corner because I'm too smart and too upper class in social background and too stuck behind the eight ball of life.
It's disturbing. No one likes to see that maybe poor people aren't all junkies and crazies who made bad choices. Maybe there are systemic problems causing even "good people" who "made good choices" to be trapped and drowning.
I'm sorry that disturbs you. Rest assured, the whole drowning thing in spite of doing everything right is disturbing as all fuck to me.
Rest assured, no one fucking cares what I think and my writing will never make one iota of difference in this world. It won't get listened to or acted upon.
I'm very much the wrong kind of people. I'm dirt poor. I'm a woman. I'm rude, crude and socially unacceptable for being willing to speak the unspeakable.
And henceforth, I am going to find my voice. You don't have to like it.
I am not writing about how the little people are suffering. I'm writing about how our past abundance is slipping away and our economy has been destabilized because too much is designed for a middle class that has largely disappeared and an upper class that has become excessively influential and there is no floor anymore for the people whose lives once worked but who fell for some reason.
Once you fall in our current social reality, getting back up is excessively challenging. Some essential wisdom about how to provide abundance and stability for the people in the US so the country as a whole can be strong has been largely lost.
What it's done to this country is not just a problem for poor Americans. It's also a problem for rich Americans and also also a problem for the world since the US remains an important world leader.
I told it to some folks once online and prefaced it with "It's the only racist joke he ever told." After hearing it, they said "It's not really a racist joke. It's more like a joke about racism."
It is being included here to help paint a portrait because jokes typically contain some social truths about the time and place that gave rise to them. Here is a summary version of the joke, in part because I don't tell jokes all that well:
A group of people were milling about waiting for a grocery store in Russia to open. An hour after it was supposed to have opened, someone comes out and tells all the Jews to go home because there isn't enough food for everyone.
Throughout the day, about every hour, someone comes out and sends another group home. Finally, at the end of the day, they come out and say "There's no food" and they send everyone home. One guy who has been waiting all day turns to another and says "The Jews get the best of everything."
I also once read an anecdote in, I think, Reader's Digest during the Cold War. An American family was sponsoring a visiting Russian lady and they arranged to take her to tour some of the best factories and what not in their city.
Every single thing they tour, at the end she staunchly says "Is better in Russia." At the end of the first day of this, they throw in the towel on trying to impress her and take her grocery shopping. She stands in the produce aisle and breaks down in tears at the sight of the abundant, high quality food readily available to ordinary Americans.
During the Cold War, Russia increased its military spending from something like twenty percent of its budget to something like forty percent of its budget. This was, understandably, just KILLING Russia and ordinary Russians.
In contrast, the US increased its military spending from something like two percent of the budget to something like four percent of the budget and we were handily outspending Russia without breaking a sweat. We simply had more resources to draw on because of a healthy economy.
I'm not some kind of Social Justice Warrior. I'm pretty sure that's what people see when they "look at me" -- when they read my writing online, whether blog posts or comments on various forums.
I'm an ordinary American who grew up awash in the Post World War II abundance of the US and saw that disappear for me at some point. Having been fairly privileged in the past, thus fairly educated and well traveled and what not, I've spent my time in the dark underbelly of current American social ills trying to analyze not only what went wrong with my life in specific but what is going on systemically that, try though I might, I seem simply unable to fix my life in spite of having a long history of being The Best of The Best of The Best, sir!!
I was a good student. I have roughly six years of post-secondary education of various sorts. I'm not a drug addict or alcoholic. I have no criminal record of any sort. Etc. Etc.
Yet, my life remains behind the eight ball.
I write to try to cast light on the systemic issues as I see them. It's not because I am some bleeding heart who thinks you should virtuously care about The Little People (TM).
It's because I somehow ended up being one of The Little People in spite of graduating at the top of my high school class with accolades and winning a National Merit Scholarship to one of the top two universities in my home state.
I have a pretty good idea of what the road not taken looks like. I have a sister whose academic record in high school is very similar to mine who made different choices than I did and ended up with a serious career, especially for a woman.
But I wouldn't trade my life for hers. She has worse overall quality of life than I have in spite of having all the outward trappings of success, like a spiffy title and owning a big house.
It wasn't really the house she wanted to buy. Our housing policies are so fucked and have been for so long that even the "winners" like her are being screwed by it.
I lived a very private life for a lot of years, by which I mean I was a full-time wife and mom. I'm prone to telling personal anecdotes in part because that's how I know how to communicate and in part because that's sometimes all I've got to try to illustrate my point.
There's good points and bad points to that. Someone who is the closest thing to a friend I have had in a long time said something to me once along the lines of "Stop worrying about that. The personal is political because you are a woman."
Everything I do is "done wrong" in spite of me doing everything right according to everything I understand about how you are supposed to make your life work. My writing gets no traction. People think I am being intentionally inflammatory if I happen to describe my understanding of reality more effectively than usual.
I can't do this dance and make other people happy. I'm literally fighting for my life here. I'm struggling to survive and somehow turn the hand that was dealt me into something other than a death spiral.
I need to write. If you don't like what I have to say, don't read it. I'm someone the world has intentionally painted into a corner because I'm too smart and too upper class in social background and too stuck behind the eight ball of life.
It's disturbing. No one likes to see that maybe poor people aren't all junkies and crazies who made bad choices. Maybe there are systemic problems causing even "good people" who "made good choices" to be trapped and drowning.
I'm sorry that disturbs you. Rest assured, the whole drowning thing in spite of doing everything right is disturbing as all fuck to me.
Rest assured, no one fucking cares what I think and my writing will never make one iota of difference in this world. It won't get listened to or acted upon.
I'm very much the wrong kind of people. I'm dirt poor. I'm a woman. I'm rude, crude and socially unacceptable for being willing to speak the unspeakable.
And henceforth, I am going to find my voice. You don't have to like it.
I am not writing about how the little people are suffering. I'm writing about how our past abundance is slipping away and our economy has been destabilized because too much is designed for a middle class that has largely disappeared and an upper class that has become excessively influential and there is no floor anymore for the people whose lives once worked but who fell for some reason.
Once you fall in our current social reality, getting back up is excessively challenging. Some essential wisdom about how to provide abundance and stability for the people in the US so the country as a whole can be strong has been largely lost.
What it's done to this country is not just a problem for poor Americans. It's also a problem for rich Americans and also also a problem for the world since the US remains an important world leader.