Yesterday I heard a flat statement that a quarter of American adults were going hungry (at times). When I went to see if it was true, this is what I found. I think we can fairly rate it Mostly True.
The statement was made in a throwaway fashion by the same Peter Daou that was just named campaign manager of Cornel West’s bid for the Green Party nomination–a very controversial move.
Daou went on Sabrini Salvati’s show to address the controversy and to try to prove that he has turned over a new leaf, and isn’t a careerist bag of shitlib any more. He apologized for being one, and it’s not the first apology for the same crime.
I am not particularly inclined to trust him, or to be as all-in as I wanted to be about the West campaign. We’ll see.
But I am inclined, in light of that one statement about hunger, to say in large part: Fuck Politics.
People are not just homeless around here, in a position where you can easily dismiss them as mostly addicts and head cases and cluck with a barely feigned sympathy and a shrug.
Long before they’re homeless, they’re malnourished, and stressed, and lied to routinely, and traumatized by capitalist neo-slavery, which turns them into addicts, and head cases, even if they have jobs, and a roof over their heads.
Even if they have kids who are going to suffer from all that too.
If you stood up to reality and were smart and worked hard and got out of that trap, by whatever means … I applaud for you, and I’m genuinely glad.
That kind of conditional life victory, though, will never entitle anyone to claim that the System works, or is good. It doesn’t, and it isn’t, for far too great a slice of We, The People. And not everyone who it fails is sick, or lazy, or of dubious morals, or of suspect character, or a loser druggie.
I believe that the System, and the belief System that supports it, is deeply and often intentionally evil.
You don’t need my permission to disagree. So I won’t give it.
Let do what Thou wilt be the whole of the Law.
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