The Poor and Disabled in the Churches

[As I write this, some churches are exceptions to the below. Some area churches have helped me and offered the community charity.  Some have done so with a good spirit as well. These are trends I am seeing out there otherwise in the church world]

Some time ago I noticed the pastor's wife of the church I had just left posted this meme on her Facebook wall. It was otherwise full of gung-ho anti-welfare Republicanism. You know I can understand those who argue for limited government to a point but one thing never escaped my notice. They never offered any other real options for the poor or disabled outside of plucking their new middle class level job off the rainbows and unicorn Fox News job-tree. Their lives have been so different from my own.

Sometimes it got very tough being in that church. The pastor would rant and rave about how those who don't work, won't eat. Yes, it's in the Bible but there's a lot of verses that are ignored too, about fair day's wages for a fair days work and not oppressing the poor.

Psalm 12:5King James Version (KJV)
⁵ For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him.

We both would cringe inside as the pastor lectured about those who took advantage of welfare or people who "didn't want to work" over and over.  Fox news ruled his mind. He never took the bankers to task. I tried to tell him different but failed. He would say nice words to me but not really listen.

As I wrote before I walked from that church the day it raised it's praise of war to the zenith. The pastor's son had taken to the pulpit to discuss his times in combat, unlike his thousand yard stare brother who had been there too, this guy seemed gleeful as if military combat was like summer camp. That was straw that broke the camel's back and I knew we didn't belong there anymore.

Class-wise we were the only poor people in that church, from what I could tell the lowest level above us was lower middle class. Everyone owned a home and had large intact families. Four families in the church were related to the pastor. There wasn't one single person outside of one widow, or child-less person in that church either out of 100 people which always gave me a strange feeling. I've seen that in churches I've visited, Single over a certain age? Childless? Those people just were not there.  It was like only nuclear families were allowed. It seemed a given that the people in that church, expect certain lifestyles and incomes. Sadly this was the outlook of the entire church. To be poor in many of today's evangelical churches means you are considered a "bum" who did not work hard enough. You didn't do what was "right" to get ahead. You don't fit in. It's like the white picket fence life is mandated.

Sadly classism is a growing problem in the churches. I am sure there are exceptions to this rule but when Rick Warren got a hold of Drucker a business executive to write Purpose Driven Life, there is a reason that churches were affected by the change of churches into a business model. Some churches of course reject Rick Warren but some of his work has had a cultural impact that has infiltrated society as a whole.  Churches are more focused on solving global poverty rather then dealing with the poverty right across the street or the train tracks. Pastors are more like business men then ministers and the most successful "sell" and get as many butts in seats as possible. Years ago the whole "seeker sensitive phenomenon was more about sales. Churches became more like 'consumer" organizations where salesmen or pastors were told to get in there and "hustle".

Poor church members don't work well in that model. If you are poor enough and groceries are negotiable and you can barely keep a 12-13 year old car running, there is not going to be any money for tithing. I don't believe in the 10 percent tithe but that is a whole other article and subject. In my old town I had people telling me, they didn't go to church because the pastors were always demanding money. Some told me point blank, "We are too poor to go to church.". I'm in that boat now.  In my case, I have strong beliefs that have taken me out of the churches, I'm not interested in things that range from Patriarchy/Quiverful to the Prosperity gospel, but yes, being poor influences church membership.  

Poor people don't make the pastors rich. I hope that doesn't sound too cynical, but think about the pastor who wants a good salary, a church full of very poor people who can barely throw a fiver in the basket weekly isn't going to pay his bills. His attention is going to go more towards the established and wealthier families handing over 10 percent of their entire income. More and more I'm with the people who start discussing how Paul was a tent-maker and provided for himself.

 Some of these people were going without medical care and necessities so I understood even as I was in a church myself back then. One thing that always got me, is I noticed some pastors living far higher socioeconomic levels then some of their church members. It seemed odd to be trying to dig out money I didn't have for some guy to have a newer car and huge home. We see the super-wealthy televangelists and others who live like millionaires but this happens on the lower level a lot. There's still a few humble folks out there, but there's many pastors living large who are out of touch with realities of the USA economy.

I became a Christian as an adult, and well, having recently left the church world for good, I'm mulling over a lot of stuff. I'm in a "wrestle" with God moment, arguing night and day. The best I can say is "I am still talking to God." I already had my atheist years so throwing down and walking away from the Christian faith is not an option but I do fear my own falling away. Maybe my faith is growing more real and this is some kind of "growth" process. A lot of what I saw in the Christian world while I had much to enjoy in my first good church, bothers me now, it seems appearing good there is actually more important then being good.  The fakeness doesn't appeal to me nor false displays of righteousness. I have discussed before in other articles along with a guest blogger, how people are told God will solve all their problems and guarantee them a great life, which in my mind is ensuring there are lots more atheists and others against God out there.  It is concerning how  "No" seems to be the answer to so many prayers lately.

The "Christian" world is troubling me on many levels. "Christians" seem "meaner" to me. Not all. I have good Christian friends and others who have a kind faith I meet all the time, but around a lot of Christians, I felt "judged". Hey I was a non-Christian long enough to know how that can go down, how I was screamed at for going to hell and told I was no good. It affected even the way I witnessed the gospel to others. Today I will witness once or twice but don't harangue people.

Among the church set for so many years, I noticed a lot of the same attitudes about the poor, that bothered me. Many loved the politicians that told people to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and went on and on about self reliance. They believed poor people had become poor via sin. That laziness, sloth, and drug and alcohol use were a given among the poor. In my case, they saw us as "lazy". My first church was rural and poor and more friendly, but I encountered more of this later as our own fortunes fell.

No one would imagine that my husband worked 14 hour days at the newspapers for years. Even now as poor as we are, he can spend the whole night hunched over the computer doing work. I was looking for more freelance work for him today and checking out job listings for him. The jobs are jokes, many jobs he can't physically do because they are manual, but all part time, temp and paying 8 dollars an hour. I swear wages have not advanced since the 1990s. I even checked out some newspaper jobs for him, we don't have money to move, but they are very few in number, and the pay for one was $25,000 a year which is what was offered in 1999 for reporter jobs. We know he is not in good enough health with caretaking duties to go back to the long days required in newspapers, it's troubling figuring out what to do.

 Of course many "Christians" have told me disability and welfare are evil, and to be frank, it was hard to be on social security disability and have a bunch of smug people tell me social security was a "slave system" and that only the wicked depended on the government. Roosevelt was still discussed as evil incarnate for the likes of Ronald Reagan who seemed to destroy the economic system that worked far better before. I noticed the Tea Party and Libertarian types who sought to shame me, always owned their own homes, had land and extensive families networks and safety nets I never could dream of. Their jobs and businesses were secure. Life for them had an easier path. To me the dogging out the poor and disabled made no sense. Why not have the attitude of "By the grace of God, go I?".

Here too, with Christian Republican set, they never offer any real options in place of social security and other helps. Some would sneer at me saying I hadn't overcome my liberalism of my UU days. Lets get real.  What church, charity or family is going to cover thousands of dollars in medical costs? A medicine I need to breathe daily and I have to use a nebulizer to take costs $1,066 retail PER MONTH. This med changed my life by the way, in terms of functionality, it helped my walking.

That's just one of my medicines, at least 2 others cost $700 bucks a monthly pop and I'm on more. I manage to keep myself out of the hospital via lots of maintenance medical care and nursing care when needed, but lets just say to me none of these people are realistic. They also scream about people "sucking off the government tit" at the behest of their brainwashers on radio stations and news programs. I have said to a few, "Ok so your answer to me is to go to the gutter?"

They thought they were special. I got the feeling many believed their blessings came to them because God had specially blessed them and they believed people lacking those things, did not obey God or did something to deserve their lot. Even if a church was not immersed into Word of Faith teachings that taught that prosperity came via closeness to God, I feel like this was a belief in many churches nonetheless. Really even in your non-Word of Faith churches, even "conservative-evangelical" the prosperity gospel has filtered through, like when the pastor at the last one taught, that if "you do right: God will bless you for it". What's that say about all the good people killed in wars and concentration camps and martyrs. My brain feels confused. Good home lives meant you were a good person. Identifying with the poor was identifying with the wicked and those God had not blessed.

 One guy who has influenced the churches greatly is a man named Dave Ramsey who had had financial seminars in the churches for years. That fellow had advanced "hate the poor" philosophies in the churches. His books seem to think expendable income is a given and that frugal living will save us all and anyone can afford a house and good cars if they are just practical and don't make budgetary mistakes. Many of the financially struggling were assured that Dave Ramsey would show them the way out.

 His prejudices are plain to see on his own website. Supposedly rich people are more moral and read a lot more. What would he think of my apartment with it's literally thousands of books. I never buy books, books can be gotten for very cheap. We used to sell books on ebay years ago for a little bit of money. This man's prejudices against the poor are sickening.  You mean poor people don't make to-do lists? I have right now detailing what car repairs need done. What is the deal with #11? What's wrong with speaking your mind? The idea that the poor sitting around eating junk food is also pure prejudice. Many poor people cook beans and pre-plan meals to the extreme.

When poor in the "Christian" community one is literally pounded with the "self reliant" gospel. Ayn Rand who was a Theosphist by the way and anti-Christian to the core is more adhered to then anything Jesus Christ said about the poor. Her gospel of selfishness has definitely taken root in some of the churches over the gospel of Jesus Christ. I read Fountainhead and her books in my 20s. She definitely seemed to advance self-service and a sociopathic attitude towards life. One pundit wrote of Ayn Rand I read years ago saying there were no children, old or disabled people in her books. Well children need care and giving, so wonder her fictional world was a child-free one.! Her philosophies today is one reason that so much of the "evangelical" right wing pairs themselves up with the most heartless bastards. It's one reason that Trump who has been divorced several times and who has lived by the gospel of "me" for decades--by the way he was born rich with a business owner father, is being endorsed by the Republican party.

There is a cold cruelty in much of the church world and it is showing in their politics. Some here may tell me why don't you go into more liberal churches, but I don't agree with their teachings either, so I will remain an outsider for life. There are Christians leaving the church system.

One of my husband's said to me, "Well the best Christians don't go to church" and I got what he meant.  Religion is used to shame the poor, time and time again, and they teach totally against what Jesus taught in this. I get the feeling that if Jesus broke out the loaves and fishes for the poor around these right wing evangelists types, most would get angry and say he was making the poor ,more dependent who wanted to suck off the system. Hey when their politicians say this stuff, they give them more votes. They don't care about billions being handed over for wars and bankers, the poor are easy scapegoats, they want to toss overboard. I believe many will find Jesus saying to them, "I never knew you". The war praisers I left in that last church definitely are in a precarious spiritual position.

Many of them are fearful of identifying with the poor and this is one way the politicians get laws passed for people's own demise. Even the anti-union movements had a lot to do with this. Why do right wing Christians hate unions? Even if some went corrupt, I don't get that one. It worries me how America is growing to be a more hateful place, and the 1% are laughing and running to the bank as more is handed to them from all the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" Steinbeck style.  Many of them call themselves "Christians" as their love of money and propriety takes precedent. They are choosing denial rather then truth and throwing all ideas of Christian charity under the bus. They scream and shout about the socialists, as the "threat" while advancing the powerful and corrupt themselves.

More and more their wolves in the pulpit are united with the powerbrokers of our society and they have gotten their congregations to do likewise too. Forgotten is that Jesus was sent to the cross via the religious and state system married together. Today religion and state are unifying in a muddle-mess of power and sociopathy worship, this is why the poor are being disenfranchised from the false Babylonian churches.

I think the cloaks of denial is bring more coldness and cruelty to the poor and disabled too. They are afraid of seeing us and want us hidden away. They don't want to know what all the empty store fronts and full soup kitchens and food pantries mean for their future too. Many disabled and other people have learned to be careful of do-gooders who will beat us down with a present in one hand and a boatload of criticism and false judgment in another. Philanthropy can be  used for sadism. Many poor get tired of in some religious circles of being the "pitied" and of being the "other".

There are good people out there who let you keep your humanity, there is one Lutheran woman in my town, who I believe has a true love for the poor but there are many who do not. They want to take it away. They see the poor as less then "human". You literally are not a human being to them. I know this feeling all too well.  Their own fears lead them to deny that they could be in your boat. When I see someone worse off then me, I don't think "Oh look at that old drunk, or what did he do to end up behind that shopping cart?" I think "What happened to him?" He is a person to me. Compassion is an emotion getting in shorter supply.

I had a discussion with an older man at a church food pantry on this. One thing I had said during that course of the conversation was, "How come poor people who are Christians don't have our own church families taking care of them?" This poor old man told me three churches had treated him like he was invisible. I said if Jesus showed up wearing his robe and sandals with some dust of the road on him, they'd throw him out and yell "Get a job you bum!" He told me about his last pastor who drove a Cadillac.

Yeah some of the liberal world isn't much different either. It's not any easier on the poor. The New Age went into that book "The Secret" think and grow rich and money will come to you!  This became a new Social Darwinism of it's own. Strange how there is an overlap with Ayn Rand there too.  Rich New Agers told me "I lacked good karma" and have directly told me I must have been a very wicked person in my last life to have these severe disfiguring health problems and money problems." One psychic--medical intuitive to be exact,  I visited during my UU days, told me, that I had been a very wicked woman in my past life. He gave me details of these lives which seemed very made up and was now equalizing my karmic position via suffering.

This oddly happened to me with some of the "Christians" too.  It is an overlap that I was sure to notice. By the way I am learning to keep my mouth more shut about any problems outside of this blog. I think it will help me. One person I dealt with basically became a spiritual abuser using my abuse, and troubles to tell me that in a Christian context, I was "wicked" and "paying the price" for it.

[this verse is supposed to be spiritual healing not, you will never have any health problems in your life]

 The spiritual abuser told me because of my abuse and severe health problems I needed freed via "deliverance". She told me God wanted to heal me. She told me I did not have a natural disease--well the one I took 17 years to get diagnosed but at that time it wasn't diagnosed yet. If disabled be very careful of any Christians that promise "deliverance" or "healing" via prayer. I even faced this in the Catholic church where some charismatic Catholics told me, that if I had enough faith God would heal me. Problem is if you are still sick 5 years later, they see you as not having done what you were "supposed to".  I can see many people already having lost their faith under some pressures I've been under. Here the message too was, same as the karma New Agers, if you suffer, it's your fault. If I had not read the book of Job, they would have destroyed me with their false teachings.

 It is a place where many abuses and false theology and doctrines can abound. Even if one is questioning, and keeps an open mind that examines what they have to offer, these religious types can wiggle into your mind in an insidious fashion. Deeming themselves always the supreme experts, being a deferential scapegoat here, is not a good position.  I thought surely something is spiritually awry being so poor and sick. Isn't God supposed to be blessing me? It only troubled my mind. Thankfully I broke away from the person in question, but one question I still ponder in that context, why are the suffering always the ones who are deemed wicked and the prosperous are the good? The Bible actually says the exact opposite.

Psalm 73:12
Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.

What does that say about Jesus Christ who ended up suffering the most on the cross? I never attended any Pentecostal or Charismatic churches in my case, but they are notorious for this. I've met ill people who took a pounding from those who told them they need their demons and curses of illness and financial problems drummed out of them.  Those are dangerous places to admit you have any life challenges. My spiritual abuse came via an online "friendship", but in those churches, a disabled person will be told they have been "cursed" by the demon if illness or told that once delivered God will heal all their health problems. They are not seen as human either. They are seen as a problem to be reckoned with. The only answer is to be healed. If you failed to do that, you are a spiritual failure.

I never judged poor people myself this way but I figured out even in the churches I was in, that the main message was "Bad Things happen to Bad People" so what does that say about Jesus Christ on the cross?

There seems to be an open war on the disabled, suffering and poor in many of these churches. Their bad politics speak to their dark hearts.  I believe that false teachings have taken over, and they are not preaching the comfort and goodness of God but drawing a net around people giving false hopes and dreams and answers for this life they focus on instead of eternal life. It ties into the sheer hatred shown many groups of people too. I can't go hate everyone like one certain party seems to want me to do. I'm not politically correct but I figure that is a path of evil too many of them are going down. The whole "Lets blow up the Islamic world"  following the Plan for a New American Century "Christian response", gets on my nerves, and yes I care about the Jewish people too.  By the way Iran is next on the list for the war mongers. The churches seem like they will be cheering to the day mushroom clouds are on the horizon.

The day I sat there, watching the pastor's ex-soldier son gleefully speak of killing people of another religion made me sick to my stomach. It's even hard to explain. A dark spirit has taken over many churches and I was feeling it that day. That very moment I knew I would be walking for good. Really they have become religious sock puppets to the elites who want their globalist wars and wars of civilizations. Evangelical churches almost seem to lust for Armageddon and can't wait until it gets here.

So why should I expect the treatment of the poor and disabled to be any better? All I know is I am done with the lot of them.  I will see where God takes me now.

The Gaslighter's Economy

 

                     Our grocery stores around here are looking sparse, how are yours doing? Aldis got rid of a lot of products when I was in there last and rearranged things to hide it. 

Economically things are still the same. I'm still waiting on my subsidized apartment. I don't need to rehash my own situation; it's the same Groundhog Day stuff over and over. Sometimes I wonder why trying to plan ahead doesn't work either.  I have been doing some art stuff so that's been enjoyable.  I'll point out a few things happening as an example though. Why is there so much gaslighting about our economy? This guy may be on to something with the famine that awaits. Our stores are EMPTYING out here. Aldis got rid of a bunch of products last week, this may have included my gluten free bread and rearranged the store to hide this. In my town, there's multiple times I cannot find a food product I need. Is this happening in your town? 

The city commissioners in my more well off town, decided to charge people to park--2 dollars an hour, so this town I live in is now overtly screening out people economically.  Poors not allowed. People are already drowning in bills. There's middle class people here who are probably stretched to the limit and all they do is pile on more costs. There's been outrage but nothing changes. Do our governments big or small even represent us even more? I voted for blue collar guys during the last election who own small businesses and all lost for these money-grubbing neo-liberals to be put in instead. They make $140,000-160,000 a year, most double household incomes probably crossing the $200,000 mark, you think they relate to normal people? I doubt it. We have nursery school teachers and cooks here too. 

I posted some of the Large Man Abroad videos on my social media. One guy said to me, "Oh things aren't that bad!" That's often the reaction one gets when they discuss this stuff. I have to cool it a bit. One is more popular posting positive stuff on Facebook. I suppose my social media is the "art" wall lately which I don't mind but it is hard when you wish there could be more discussion of this stuff. 

Why are poor people so alone in it? For people in some areas, there's always this feeling too, that one has to "hide negativity", the stiff upper lips don't want to hear about it.  The elite have separated poor people too, so we can't talk things over or relate to one another or form groups to help each other.  It's every lonely dog for themselves. Just like narcissists separate all the scapegoats so they can't form alliances, the same thing has happened with the poor and working class people in America. 

At least in the third world, if people are poor, there's other poor people to turn to and talk about how things really are, and get advice or at least be able to discuss reality with each other. Ask yourself where do poor people or even the working class have a voice anymore? We don't. I would say the only source right now where poor people have a voice, is some youtube videos, and other videos online. Blogs aren't so common now but maybe a few personal blogs are still out there like mine.

There is so much shame attached to poverty, that even my talking about personal poverty or money problems I know is extremely rare. It is risky. With lives run off the rails, you don't want to bore people with the same happenings that keep running through on repeat. SOME people though are taking to video to discuss their experiences despite the risks. There are others who interview homeless people or do tours of cities like Nick Johnson showing all the extreme poverty next to wealth. That's one aspect of the community I live in that is a very bad sign. We have a very poor ghetto area, next to extreme wealth. That's one aspect of America now, the distance is growing between the haves and have-nots. They live in two different realities. The poor and working class simply do not see their reality on TV or anywhere else for that matter. 

While our news won't tell us how bad things are, people are getting the news out on Tic-Tok and Youtube about the reality of how bad our economy is. Our elite just will gaslight us. I believe we are in a Depression now, but this time unlike the 1930s, they won't announce it. Tariffs were a thing in the 1930s by the way. We will just notice more inaccessible goods, emptying and closing stores, lower life quality and skyrocketing costs, but this time they won't tell you the WHYS, unless you research them for yourself online and have the means to. Truth is ignored in this country. Why is Depression 2.0 mostly silent?  That's more of the gaslighting process. People will think they are the "only ones".  When people can't even see the others that are in their same boat, it gives the powerful an endless boost.

I watch Youtube a lot, and included some videos here. We are gaslighted when most of our national media ignores the plight of millions of people in our own country. All us poor people know the news, the TV,  and magazines don't represent our world. Poor and working class people are never characters now on TV shows. When people are made voiceless, and their experiences minimized and simply IGNORED, there's gaslighting going on. 

I looked up mutual aid societies having this weird thought I could find one and that they were groups of poor people at least trying to join resources together. Did I misunderstand the concept? Of course, this town didn't have one. Have you ever wondered why everyone who is poor, we are so alone in it? People who have poor families may be better off if the family is close knit, at least there's someone in the boat with you instead of being out to sea alone with the boat sinking. Even the churches [my dream of the supportive country church may be an impossible illusion now] are places where rich pastors preach a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with the average poor person's lives. Poor people will get food [now dwindling in supply and quality] from the church food banks, but they know they don't belong in most churches. 

A lot of people are poorer than me. Remember I'm not homeless, I have internet access. I've kept my rent paid on time. There's still some art supplies in here and books. They are hiding the poor in America now, it's part of the gaslighting. They make it so the poor hide out. "We are embarrassed". I still have an apartment and a car. The homeless all talk about how lonely they become. Remember when you are very poor, you can wear out the welcome of those who help you. If your life is off its moorings and it never gets back on the moorings, it can wear people out. "Why are they always in need?" Some people will cut you off, they see you as a "drain". Bad luck clings like a stink. Those who have to live with relatives or on someone's couch, all talk about the resentment, the anger, the bouncing from one place to another. Some healthy people can sometimes crawl out and via employment efforts change things around but the older you get the harder this is. 

Why is there so little spiritual practices to help the poor? There were spiritual modalities to be contented in poverty. I was reading some of this stuff. The evangelical churches ran off the rails with prosperity gospel, maybe some of the Catholics had a tighter grip on this stuff. Many of us just want to be left alone in peace. Why are the poor in America constantly harassed where the screws are forever tightened to the breaking point? Why do they make bills impossible? Our leaders are so rich, they have no concept of what the average person lives on, or what bills they have to pay. At least in centuries past, while there was always trouble, the peasants had community and some stability unless there was a war. There seems to be a keen desire to crush people here. It's nuts. Leave us alone. Can we live in our small towns and just live quiet humble lives, without the money masters destroying the place? Why not?

 They don't want happy people living simple lives, they always want to crush you. Some of us may throw our hands up, and I did this long ago knowing with these disabilities the middle class was never going to be part of my reality. "Okay I'm poor, now just leave me alone to live in peace." They won't do that. They don't want people to have their basic needs met, they always want them on edge. 

 America is a fear ruled country. They keep you afraid, desperate and clawing at the side of the crab barrel. This place is sick. People who are afraid are PTSD/CPTSD ridden, they aren't turning to each other in cooperation and with problem solving abilities. They are curled into a ball, and detaching or lashing out in anger. Hmm... that describes a lot of what is happening to this place. 

 There is almost an absurdist thing in play now. Where they tell people to pay bills they know will be impossible to them. I was told to pony up 900 dollars the other day for two new lower garments for my compression machine for instance. This compression machine has given me a second lease on life, remember I like it a lot. It ended severe infections I battled during my 30s and 40s. Some of those almost ended my life.  I only get them rarely now. I crossed the 18-24 month marker without an infection for the first time in literally decades. 

The garments are the cloth bandages with tubes in them, that go on your legs and are tubed into the machine where your legs are "massaged" and compressed with air to get fluids off them. 

One of them has been having error messages, it's worn out. The second one is having error messages about half the time. These are the bottom part of the legs, the top half costs even more and full replacement would be 1800 dollars. I cracked a joke, on the phone, "Sure I will go get my bag of gold out of my closet, and send it to you right away!" and then got mad and said, "You people seriously expect disabled people to have 1,000 to 2,000 dollars laying around?" It's absurdity. I did apply for financial aid, and hope I get it. I have the fear, my legs will go back to infection land as my garments are wearing out. 

The tent cities are proliferating all over. There's the hidden homeless too, the people living in motels and with relatives. Most people in our situation with families may have moved in with them, to catch up and get a breather while waiting for subsidized housing but many don't have that anymore. Rental rooms are crazy in price now, I'm noticing some of those are hitting 700-800 dollars in bigger cities. How come we don't have boarding houses anymore? Poor people used to be able to use those to "take a rest" or catch up or survive.

I read this book from the library. Every homeless person in this book was African American. I'm not sure why he focused on one race, because the stuff that happens to them is happening to ALL races. Maybe it was because it was Atlanta, I don't know. I just read it and their lives were like my own in many ways, so figured so be it.  The underclass has all races in it. They did face the added layer for racism in the mix. I was pleased William Barber wrote a book about poor whites. He wrote a book about "White Poverty".  I read it a few months ago. Maybe some are realizing that when they divide races, the powers that be never want different groups to unite such as the black and white poor and working class. 

Anyway I read the "There is No Place" for us book and all these homeless people had jobs. The jobs didn't pay enough for their rent in Atlanta. Everything was expensive. There are draconian rules all over the place meant to trip you up.  The rules seemed designed just to make everything as hard as possible and put up endless barriers. I related to that. These requirements included that one had to make three times the rent. There were credit cut-offs, one person even had a perfect housing record for years at one place but because they had bad credit were not allowed to move into another apartment.  There's no tenant rights. There's scam artists taking rent and lease money who really don't own the place. Their lives are unstable and hell. Most have to hold several jobs. Many of them have to go live in extended stays at cheap hotels that charge more than rent would cost.

The social work programs are all overloaded and useless with stupid rules like not allowing a 15 year old to stay with his family in a homeless shelter. That's one nasty reality about homeless shelters, if you have kids they will put a family in housing but if you are married without kids they will separate spouses and come up with other crazy rules. It's a mess. It also shows what a wreck this country is and how much graft, rip-offs and life quality has sunk. They of course have racism to contend with in some different places. Oh one big matter was many of them got charged application fees. I remember those from Chicago where they got your 30 dollars, and kept it after they said NO. Many used this to rip off people just collecting application fees. I noticed since the 90s, now they charge 80-100. Who has that kind of money? One lady described paying out hundreds of dollars, while she got turned down for apartments. The system is designed to make you lose. 

One reason we have held onto the present apartment with a death grip living here so long, is it was stable. It is a decent apartment, I've written about my own hellish past in living in some hellholes. I understand why my husband is so afraid to move. I'm scared too. He told me he is afraid of us ending up like we did in Chicago. I can't argue with that. Having stable housing in America while you are poor is very fortunate. You do not take it for granted. 

I felt sorry for these people I read about.  I related to a lot of the troubles. That's life as the poor in America always scrounging. I am lucky to have almost 20 years in the same apartment. I was able to keep the rent paid on time because of disability. Jobs aren't so stable now, they disappear in a heartbeat and then people lose their homes. I believe the job system in America needs to be changed. Jobs shouldn't be so easy to lose. We need complete changes to the job system. Jobs no longer pay the bills. 

Surviving as a poor person meant a ton of gaslighting, everyone was out to rip these people off and tell them no and shut the door in their face. I noticed transportation for many of them was a constant problem. It was for me too in past times. I hated big cities because everything was spread out and hard to get to. Atlanta is one of those sprawling places too, it seems worse than Chicago. When you live in a place like that, everything is far away. Just doing basic things can be very complicated. Small towns are simpler which is one reason I'll never move to a big city again. One caveat though, jobs are harder to get in small towns. The mouse traps seem to design with a hitch everywhere you turn. 

The book talked about all the people living in hotels. The homeless by necessity have taken over all the cheaper hotels and motels in America. Remember there's levels of homelessness, some are couch sleeper at other people's houses, some have a car or van to live in, some have motels and hotels to live in and the worse off are in the streets with nothing.  I am too poor to travel but had to take a few cheap motel rooms for power outages over the years, the places are full of the homeless. Sometimes it can suck if you get a room next door to a homeless family of 6 and the noise levels make it impossible to sleep. There was one motel years ago in my mother's town and this was in the "suburban" area too that was nicer but it was a Red Roof Inn that basically was a homeless shelter. We stopped staying there because it was far too noisy to sleep and most rooms had more than 4 people staying in them. It's true of a lot of hotels and motels here. It's the more cheaper ones, not the fancy vacation ones, but that's where many of the working homeless live and they charge far more than rent. 

Foreign people in developed countries, feel sorry for Americans. They probably are told more truth about the American economy than we are.  I am online friends with English speaking people in Wales, Ireland, and England, I speak with them on a consistent basis. Their countries have problems too but they feel sorry for Americans for being poor and being unable to access medical care. People don't realize what a joke America has become.  I think even the Chinese and Russians [look at Russia Today] feel sorry for Americans too, and think this economy is a hellish one. I have thoughts like well even the Communists at least provided jobs and places to live for their people. I am not a Communist but it seems the main American motive now, is to punish people. Nothing is ever done for the betterment of society, only for the profit of the psychopathic. Everything is authoritarian. 

A lot of rich people here get mad if you talk about the economy. I had this one more well off friend who got mad when I told her how bad the economy was. She was a generous and nice person but our world views clashed. That's the friend who basically unfriended me for refusing to vote for Kamala. I learned my lesson and don't talk about politics anymore with people. She said, "Both you and your husband are disabled!" Well that is true, it's probably one of the main reason for our poverty. Being disabled doesn't rake it in. There are tons of costs built in from that alone. All these medications, doctors, supplements and gluten-free food, cost money. 

 One weird thing is she kept telling me the economy was great as I was watching our life implode and trying to help husband job hunt which was a fruitless endeavor. That still happens with people. That's part of the national gaslighting too. The rich people who often live in nice suburban areas, and don't see much poverty or only see it as a "rare" part of inner city ghettos and some rural enclaves like in West Virginia, really see America as "rich" and if you say things like the economy is not going well, they get angry at you.  I thought I could open up to this friend but know I overdid it. 

 I suppose they don't want their own fortunes to change, that makes sense. I don't want more well off friends to be poor. Anyone who can escape this, all the better for you and your kids! However for us poor people, it adds to the invisibility quotient. All those people on Youtube, probably should be prepared for that reaction. "You are just one guy or gal, you failed, America is the richest country on the earth!"

Life for the poor and working class can be weird among liberals, you can see endless articles bemoaning why has the working class joined MAGA? This is one of the reasons why. I've written about how as they banged on about "white supremacy", the existence of poor whites seemed negated. None seemed to understand that if many of us Americans were falling into the abyss, that meant inner city African American poverty had to be worsening too. The left denied the real circumstances and basically told the working class and poor to shove off. I wrote about this already, this is why Trump won. I don't think most are getting it even now except a few more empathetic liberals I know. 

My husband is still a Democrat. I told him "Look how poor we are, they don't care about us either!" Liberals are right about some of the bad stuff the Republican party always does to the poor. Always the FIRST thing is to put the disabled to the chopping block. It's the rare person who arrives at my conclusion that both parties only care about the oligarchy. This stuff is complex, I've voted for a few Democrats to "protect disability" in the past, but at this point, I've stepped away from politics. I may still vote but I'm more detached from it in real life. 

The negation of the existence of the poor, the insistence and mythos of "America is the richest nation on earth" has kept a lot of the gaslighting going. Reality is not being faced or dealt with that while there is some money in America, most Americans are doing very badly now. The money has collected at the top, and trickle down was a lie from the start.

 If you ignore the existence of people, minimize them, hide them, shove them away with no voice, they aren't living in your neighborhood living hand to mouth hiding on someone's couch or in a motel, I guess they are "out of sight, out of mind". We have massive homelessness happening, it's off the charts. The gaslighting has hidden them. What happens when the numbers grow too large to ignore? They will try and hide the existence of how homelessness is exploding here as long as possible.  Here's two videos, I wanted to embed them, but couldn't. Maybe some are shadow banned, I don't know but check these out.

People are HOMELESS Living in the Woods and Their Cars Due to the Economy 


Here is another video of his too:

The American Dream is a Nightmare: It is impossible Now.

Here are more channels and videos on Youtube describing the reality of poverty in America and our worsening economy. 

Here's a documentary describing the trailer park debacle:

People living in their cars

You will be shocked, there's so many of these videos. I don't think they are counting how many people are living in their cars right now. 

This is a good channel, it interviews homeless people. Many end up that way even from losing jobs. It breaks through some of the stereotypes.

Invisible People

This channel focused on food prices. He hasn't done a video in awhile. I hope he is okay. I watched it to compare prices here, they were about the same. 

The Real Economy

Speaking of trying to find community and resources, I looked up mutual aid societies having this weird thought I could find one and that they were groups of poor people at least trying to join resources together. Did I misunderstand the concept? This town didn't have one. 

A lot of people are sinking into the abyss out there. Remember I'm not homeless, I have internet access, an apartment and a car. They are hiding the poor in America now, it's part of the gaslighting. They make it so the poor hide out. "We are embarrassed". The tent cities are proliferating all over. There's the hidden homeless too, the people living in motels and with relatives. The people who are seeing the bottom fall out, are all told, "its your fault". They slink away under an air of failure. You see people give up, and I think that's where despair leads to so much drug and alcohol abuse to take the pain away. People always comment on how drug addiction leads to homelessness but very few point out some become homeless and then turn to drugs to numb out the pain. 

There is so much gaslighting. Why can't Americans and America be honest about how widespread the poverty and suffering are getting out there? If you don't admit a problem it never will be fixed. Trump is part of the gaslighting always telling us "Lets Make America Great". Why aren't factories being built for more jobs if he really plans to re-industrialize America and bring the jobs back? I am confused. Some things aren't adding up. My running theory is he's shutting down the corporation called America. With the growing poverty and despair, very few realize how systemic and wide-spread this is. It can mess with people's sense of reality. 

This is why Blackrock, Vanguard and other companies can buy up all the real estate and raise the rent even in super rural areas and there is no protest. Here's one thing going on few know about, they have been buying trailer parks. Trailer parks were one refuge of the very poor in the USA. If you hit really hard times you could rent a very cheap trailer in a trailer park. You could buy a trailer for far cheaper and pay a cheap lot rent.. That's now over. They have doubled the rent even at the trailer parks.

Here is one bad sign of the growing problems. Even in this richer town, there's the "hidden poor" and we just don't know each other. They could have come from the neighboring poorer area too. We use this food box at a local church, it's outside with open access. I both take and give to this food box. When I go to food pantries, they give me a lot I can't eat or am allergic to, from cereal to canned tuna and salmon to potatoes. I pile some of it up. We took the bags of this food and put it in the box. We went to the box just one day later to see if any new stuff I can eat got added, and almost all of this food was gone. I suppose the quickness of it disappearing said it all. Its a good thing people could use those things and they didn't go to waste.

The American economy is in bad shape. Instead of facing reality, America is gaslighting everyone and us poor people all feel like "throwaway" people. It doesn't bode well for a society or country when your young people are all unemployed or posting videos about how they will have no future. Youth is usually the time where people are eager and anticipate the future with hope. 

The Democrats spent all this time gaslighting us. They told us things were great even as the inflation skyrocketed to outer space. Republicans aren't any better for us poor people, they always go after Medicare and Medicaid. No one ever cuts the empire war mongering costs or the 700 bases around the world. Who knows what the tariffs will do to us? Some Republicans have told me they think the USA is going to boom. I wish but I don't see it, Michael Hudson the economist says the American empire is in collapse. The ones in charge here are too greedy. They don't care if everyone's quality of life sinks to the bottom. Should working people be forced to live in their cars?

Look how hard these people work and they are homeless. If someone works full time they should have food and an apartment full stop. America is a crazy place. 

Sometimes they do put things in the news, to tell us "some" of what is going on, but they'll never address it. Notice no one is dealing with AI's impact on employment. Do you ever notice how no one questions the "job system" or how it is run?

That would include my husband who got stuck in the contract/gig/freelance gauntlet. 

Some people hint to me their lives are economically bad. How did we ever get to this place where we are afraid to tell people our real economic situations? How did we get to this place where most of the poor are invisible and where even their very existence is denied? Why aren't there churches to turn to where one can get real support and pooling of resources instead of David Ramsey lectures or being told to care about "woke" issues that ignore economics?  We need intentional communities for the poor and working class not just for rich boomers who can afford the $300,000-$400,000 buy in for the condo at the cohousing center. We need change but the ones in power obviously aren't interested. What's the game plan here to drive most of the population into permanent homelessness? To keep the crushing going with no end in sight? The rest of the world is watching, they see what America is doing to it's own people. They know something is wrong here. The gaslighting about the economy is off the charts. 

Vonnegut on the Poor

"America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register…

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves."

Found on Redditt

Poor people in America are shamed beyond measure. I supposed it is this shame that gets most to keep voting for those who put the bankers on high like they are our "moral betters".  In the Republican "Christian" world there is a worship of the wealthy that is beyond glaring. It's why some of the poorest people I know want to vote for Cruz, who will do even more to make wages be repressed, rescind more worker's rights and dismantle even more of social security. Not that Clinton will be even better with her mega-corporate ties. Yes, they tell people it is easy to make money, like high paying jobs can be plucked off a tree. 

Hillbilly Elegy: Blaming the Poor in America

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

NOTE: I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS VIDEO

I recently read Hillbilly Elegy. I hated this book. Imagine a country where a thin swathe of out of touch types, ignore the growing lack of middle class and above jobs, the crumbling infrastructure and where a book that blames the poor, especially white poor people for their own lot, becomes a best seller. Yes, that's America.  It is the land of denial, and delusions. The people who love this book are probably mostly older evangelicals who all support Trump. Their lives probably still include out of state vacations and garden furniture. They call the millennials and Gen X folks who didn't obtain their same socio-economic level "losers" and "snowflakes". They are disgusted with us. We supposedly failed and it's our fault supposedly.

The media and ultra rich will tell us the economy is booming, even as we drive around our home-towns and see the emptied out stores, cracking parking lots, pot-holes, broken windows, unpainted houses and decaying bridges that look like they are ready to fall into our rivers. Sure the economy is doing fine for them but not for most of us.

One thing they are doing too, is playing the usual narcissist/sociopath games of telling people their economic failures are all their fault. As they tie people's hands and knock them about, they will tell them, "You did it to yourself". There's plenty of sold-out types to stand up and repeat the chorus. The elites who profit off suffering in this country don't want much honesty to break out about poverty or what is happening. Even when I and my husband visit some churches, for food pantries and  food co-ops, the lecturing about moral lifestyles and living healthy, where we were told to 'exercise" at the last food co-op, never ends. Very little of reality is dealt with. There's no open discussion of real survival, it's all pretense.

 I suppose many conservative evangelicals aren't much into reality in general. It's constant patronizing and lectures. I told my husband at the last food co-op meeting, "Why are we getting all these health 101 lectures, you can tell where the assumption is, that "WE ALL LIVE WRONG".  It is a relief when we have had a better month, and don't have to be converted or talked down to for bags of food or hot dinners. At least the Lutherans are easier going but the constant pressure to join people's churches for charity does get tiring. How would a public and out atheist around here get any help? Don't forget most of these churches get money via government faith initiatives for the charity programs. Ignored is that with money comes more options.

J.D Vance loves his family, and his hard-working grandparents, even his supposedly rough uncles earn some of his respect but like others who have "made good" and won the job Lotto, he looks back at the younger members of his family as all "losers" who just decided to "drug" and "bum" their way through life.  His success has brought him a giant dose of self-righteousness. This is nothing new to me. His mother has drug addiction problems and this is growing in our society but to hear J.D. Vance tell his story it's like every poor white person is starting each day with an injection of heroin instead of a bowl of cereal.

My mother came from poor farmers and could be called a "hillybilly" though more technically her family was Ohioan dirt farmers. She made it out to the upper middle class. She hated poor people and openly called them "losers" including me. I grew up with my better off parents, telling me "Only losers end up poor!" I certainly was not given life skills or knowledge regarding how the world really worked. J.D. Vance reminds me of one of my narcissistic uncles who went into business instead of law, but had nothing but disdain for those who did not get rewarded by his same efforts. That's my Tea Party uncle who is racist to the hilt and considers every poor person a bum. He too like J.D. Vance loved the older people of his family, he had affection for my hard working grandmother-- his mother and father who were farmers, and a lot less appreciation for anyone in the family who didn't escape the farm or the country or obtain the middle class.  Older people became idealized in these cheery accolades to the past while younger people were "lazy entitled snowflakes". Reading this book was like reading a screed by my uncle if he had been literate enough to come up with one.

I grew up rather uncultured. In fact a lot of my own knowledge and culture came from meeting that ex-millionaire friend in college, and while the friendship went kaput 30 years later. I was basically introduced to the more's that JD Vance and Charles Murray keep waxing on about.

While at home it was meat and potatoes and processed cinnamon rolls with orange icing out of a can, and a few National Geographic magazines, at my millionaire friend's house it was the NY Times, health food stores, caviar, and other class-based things I had no inkling of. My ex millionaire friend introduced me to more upper crust pursuits. We would attend museums, nature centers, musicals and lectures.  My interests switched to away from low brow TV and heavy metal music to PBS and British imports at the record store. It's ironic I probably was considered as being "too big for my britches" especially for a scapegoat became a snob to my family, while later, the real snobs, would kick me to the curb for being "too poor". Some here may point out but your family was upper middle class itself, but this came about from my father's STEM talents, the household culture still remained that of my mother's upbringing. These books seems even more ignorant to me because while they extol the virtues of education, proper "breeding" and "proper" living, most of these things cost money. 

My mother read Harlequin novels and cookbooks. She was very low-brow. She had the cunningness to "make it" but she was a very non-intellectual woman. She was not someone I could talk to about art shows or documentaries. What is odder for me is that my father came from bluebloods, they were immigrants but once owned a multi-million dollar  horse racing track. His father was disinherited though, and ended up working at a munitions plant that made chemical weapons. I was told it was a steel factory but found out some interesting things on my geneaology pursuits.

J. D. Vance's book was odd to me, I often wonder how no one who has gone the opposite way on the ladder is ever allowed a voice, it reminded me of Horatio Alger Stories, when books were published about immigrants who came to America and became millionaires. His book follows that formula too.  So much of our society now is just like the 1890s gilded age as the divide between rich and poor becomes wider and wider. I suppose the formula of an impoverished boy making it to middle class and upper middle class stability is being revised. There too, the impoverished masses would be told they would be rich too with enough pluck and morality.

Ironically while my money nose-dived and I became a member of the lowest classes, my knowledge of the upper middle class world increased. Perhaps this led to more discomfort on my part. I had the odd mixture of being my mother's family's first college graduate ever but then entering a level of poverty where I became the "embarrassment". J.D. Vances fortunes were just the opposite of my own.

Most people won't see through J.D Vance's book, but I did. Here's the problem, it's really the re-telling of another book. I read Charles Murray's book,  Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010 a few years ago. Remember the racist who co-wrote the Bell Curve? Yes, it's the same guy. These books converged in an odd way for me. J.D Vance actually does praise Charles Murray in this book.  Why wouldn't he? They follow the same theme. The two have joined together in giving a lecture. While Murray's book Coming Apart, was an academic screed, and J.D. Vance's book a memoir the same message is the exact same. Here is that message stripped down to the core:

The American poor [now with the focus on whites instead of other races] are poor because they are immoral failures. They cannot blame society and have only themselves to blame for their failures. 

 Now Republican eugenics types have turned their jaundiced eyes not only above the "unwashed masses of other races" to debase but now they have turned those same eyes towards poor white people.  While black people were told for decades, they were "too violent"and "not smart" enough by conservatives and deserved their ill-economic futures as the elite dismantled manufacturing after the northern migrations, the same spiel is now being used on poor whites. 
This book is basically a memoir to back up these themes. People in America are not poor because of the jobs being sent overseas or automation or the 1 percent cleaning out the tills, or a sociopathic and narcissistic society, they are poor, because they are "immoral", because they "do too many drugs", or "are lazy".

“The wealthy and the powerful aren't just wealthy and powerful; they follow a different set of norms and mores.” 

― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis

[source]

Charles Murray followed those same themes, claiming that even for poor whites, low IQ means lower income, and higher IQ means higher income. Education is not really something that costs money but is obtained via higher effort and morality. Charles Murray is an apologist for the our neo-conservative/neo-liberal uber-capitalist oligarchs and so is J.D. Vance. Trump fooled the masses claiming his billionaire pals would bring in more wealth to average people and these authors carry the same message.

In Charles Murray's book, he prescribed the Protestant work ethic, morality, working harder, patriotism and other Calvinist prescripts as the answer to poverty. People weren't poor because they got laid off or the factories closed in America, they were poor due to their own "bad behavior" and other shortcomings. To be frank this entire country is being gaslighted by many elites and conservative academics, as the infrastructure and economy go into the trash. Charles Murray and J.D. Vance are definitely among their number.

"Murray goes on to provide evidence that religiosity, work ethic, industriousness, family, etc., have either remained strong or have weakened minimally in the New Upper Class, whereas these same attributes have either weakened substantially or have become almost nonexistent in the New Lower Class. Much of his argument is centered on a notion of self-selective sorting that began in the 1960s and 1970s, when he argues that cognitive ability became the essential predictor of professional and financial success, and people overwhelmingly began marrying others in the same cognitive stratum and living in areas surrounded largely by others in that same stratum, leading to not only an exacerbation of existing economic divides, but an unprecedented sociocultural divide that had not existed before in America."

Remember Murray followed this same formula on blacks and other races, where the Bell Curve claimed that some races all had "lower IQs" and now has turned his attention to poor whites. According to Murray, the rich are richer because they are "better people". He waxes on about the higher IQs of the wealthy as if intelligence is a guarantee for the money to pour into one's personal coffers. It's so bad, its nauseating, it's cemented and institutionalized classism.

I don't agree with either of these authors attitudes about intelligence, or better morality among the rich.
For those of us who have studied narcissism and sociopathy, we know this society is rewarding the amoral more then ever. Here we have neo-Victorianism shoved down our throats where to have money supposedly meant "better breeding" when the trappings that money could buy displayed that breeding to begin with. In today's more profitable STEM careers, there is a degree of elitism happening in some circles and those who focus on certain modes of thoughts as being more acceptable. Linear thinking as opposed to global thinking. Lack of empathy sadly seems to be one growing blight among the technocrats. Maybe this is why we are sending up with such obtuse social science such as from the likes of Charles Murray. 

Even basic analytical thinking can call these two to task, what did the money bring first? What came first? The poor do not have the same access to ballets, museums, the same science educations--an impoverished school will not have an lavish lab. As they give judgment for the drug abuse, would be violence and perceived brutishness among the poor, they hide the bigger picture. They won't admit that the despair is leading to the drug use, or that poverty in itself breaks down civil order out of the desperation. They expect poor people to live like rich ones, ignoring the basic fact the money isn't there.

The conservative eugenics lens that once was focused on other races aka the Bell Curve to advance racism pertaining to African Americans and Latinos, has now been turned on poor whites. Sadly most in this country won't wake up. They will buy this feel-good story, with it's blame and disdain towards the poor and internalize it. Same as they bought the racism, they will buy the classism. They voted in Trump after all.

Hipcrime Vocab explained this quite well on reddit, and in various articles in his blog by the same name:

"Since African Americans did not own the land they farmed, and had few, if any, assets, they had no other choice than to become deracinated migrants and headed to Northern industrial cities in one of the largest internal migrations in world history, from 1940-1970 (the "Great Migration"). This was to places like the Atlantic seaboard, the Ohio Valley, Great lakes industrial cities, and Western cities which had significant manufacturing jobs (New York, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Oakland, etc.). America was the only major industrialized power to emerge unscathed from the war, and dominated the global manufacturing economy. Work was abundant. Blacks who had been primarily associated with the rural south became "urban" overnight.

These plentiful factory jobs allowed African Americans to develop burgeoning lower-middle-class urban communities. That all came to a halt starting in the mid-1960's, as a combination of automation and suburbanization decreased the number of jobs and moved them away from urban areas. Low-skilled occupations were the first to go, and African-Americans soon found themselves without jobs before they were able to build up significant wealth or assets. Inner-cities and downtowns became the empty, hollowed-out ghettos we simply take for granted today, as "white flight" promoted by the newly-constructed freeways allowed whites to follow the jobs to the distant fringe suburbs, purchase houses with Federally subsidized home loans, and build wealth to pass on to future generations. These opportunities were denied to African-Americans due to the cost of transportation, redlining, aggressive policing, etc. We all know that "job creation" is mainly suburban nowadays, from "office parks" to strip malls.

And what happened to African-Americans when their work disappeared? Their communities came apart. The only jobs left were government jobs which could not be suburbanized, and low-wage service work which did not pay enough to support a family (Popeye's, hair salons, etc.). Families broke down, drug abuse became epidemic, and many African-Americans rationally chose a shorter, riskier life of higher wages and self-respect in the black-market drug trade to the subservience and low pay of fast-food work. Were it not for government jobs (thanks to laws passed to favor the hiring of unemployed blacks), the inner-city unemployment rates and lack of good jobs would be even more acute. With no more use for their labor, blacks became virtual wards of the state, and a welfare-industrial complex allowed blacks to administer the conditions of their own dependence.

Entire cities became no-go zones for significant numbers of Americans, and creeping normalcy conditioned us to accept this situation as "just the way things are." We justified it by claiming that blacks are subhuman, have no self-control, have lower IQs, have poor family structures (which were destroyed by the legacy of slavery), were lazy, and so forth. Talk to any inner-city activist and what will they tell you is the root of the problem? "No jobs" (or perhaps poor schools, which is related).

Some escaped, but not all could. A small portion moved into the professional class and did well; a tiny handful became superstar millionaires in our winner-take-all culture (in entertainment, music, athletics, etc.), but by and large, African-American communities suffered a level of deprivation and destitution that most societies would consider literally inhuman. The success of the few escapees was used as a continued justification for the grinding poverty and ghettoization of the vast majority of the African-American community.

Meanwhile, suburban whites just avoided the inner cities their parents had grown up in and derided blacks as "lazy." The specter of "Cadillac-driving welfare queens" drove the now-suburban white working class into the arms of the Republican party, even in traditional Democratic strongholds in the formerly unionized North.

The mass incarceration of unemployed black males was the response to the unrest that automating and offshoring work had created. A "law and order" policy started under Nixon and accelerated under Reagan and his successors. The drug war was ramped up, and "three strikes" laws were passed. Blacks were portrayed as "superpredators," and we promised to "end welfare as we know it" (both under the Clintons). The end result: there are more African Americans in the legal/justice system today than there were slaves in 1860. One in four of the world's prisoners is in U.S. jails.

None of this was blamed on lack of jobs or automation/offshoring, rather it was "poor family structures," single parents, a lack of desire to get married, insufficient educational attainment, and so forth. Job training was touted as the solution, despite the fact that schools are funded by local taxes (and hence of poor quality in urban areas), and the fact that the jobs don't exist. Ghettos contributed to a self-reinforcing cycle of poverty. Many generations since the 1960's have never known steady work, and this is attributed to "work-resistant personalities" rather than automation, suburbanization and offshoring.

Now we're seeing the exact same arguments applied to lower-class whites. They just have poor work skills (which they never had before), it's just "bad behavior, "they have low IQs, they get married too soon, they talk, look and act wrong, they deserve their plight, blah, blah, on and on. Just like blacks, females are more able to secure jobs in the new "service/caring" economy because they are more amenable to low-pay/service work, while the men engage in self-destructive behavior because they can no longer afford a family. They are told, just as the blacks after sharecropping, to just get in the U-Haul and move to where the jobs are. Sound familiar?
............

We're now dehumanizing poor whites in the media the exact same way we did to blacks, because the media is owned by the same very corporations benefiting from offshoring/automation. The sneering derision of upper-class whites parallels the dehumanization of blacks when the jobs disappeared in the late 1960s and 1970's. You want to know why Trump? That's why Trump. Of course, keeping blacks and whites (and now, Hispanics) at each others' throats has been a fundamental tactic of the ruling classes since day one in America, which is why Trump supporters tend to despise Black Lives Matter, Mexicans, and Bernie Sanders supporters, despite the fact their core interests are aligned (higher wages, better jobs and working conditions, and getting the money out of politics). Whites' life expectancies are shrinking, family formation is down, single parenthood is common due to the lack of family-supporting wages (laughably blamed by conservatives as a cause, not as a result, of decreasing job opportunities), educational attainment is falling, social dysfunction such as child abuse is rampant, and drug use is reaching epidemic proportions (in this case, painkillers and opiates, predominantly). In other words, all the same pathololgies we attributed to the African-American community just being "different." Turns out, whites aren't so different after all.

The lesson of how African-Americans have been treated is an ill omen for the future, I'm afraid. Drive through any Rust belt inner-city today; that's the future, except now the faces will now be of every race instead of predominately African-American. Libertarian economists such as Tyler Cowen already predict massive favelas and giant ghettos housing 80+ percent of the American population in the years ahead thanks to outsourcing and automation.

Look at Detroit. That will be every major city in America in 20 years' time. A tiny sliver of prosperity behind walls and armed guards, surrounded by third-world poverty. That's what history tells us will be our future under mass automation, based on the African-American experience.

tl;dr: Automation decimated the African-American community and we turned a blind eye. The exact same dynamic is now unfolding for 80+ percent of White America. The outlook is not good.


I agree with this post.

Hipcrime Vocab has warned sociopathy in America is growing. I have discussions with my husband about how much I hate the culture of America, and how it has become racist too and "winner take all" and far more oppressive to people it has deemed "throwaways". We see now authors who defend the "winner take all" ethos. They defend the lack of empathy of this society. Their response to all these poor people is not real help or any future but just blame, and "work harder" and put your nose to the grind stone as the jobs go away. I noticed long ago in the evangelical world, no one wanted to talk about what was really happening. The prosperity gospel ruled even in the non-Word of Faith churches. They had the Charles Murray and J.D. Vance outlook on the poor, the whole "I got mine, tough for you" attitudes.

J.D. Vance in his book gives the same prescriptions to "stop being poor", work hard, be religious--he goes on about how church attendance is higher among better heeled people, and how the military whipped him into shape into being a man who followed rules and learned not helplessness but willfulness. If you think about this, isn't this the message that serves the powerful? Obey, Obey, Obey and don't question the system. I wonder what kind of lawyer he will be? Will the realities of our court and political system wake him up?

JD Vance follows the same themes as Charles Murray though using his own life as an example His own classism makes itself more then apparent.

“In the past few years, I’ve vacationed in Panama and England. I’ve bought my groceries at Whole Foods. I’ve watched orchestral concerts. I’ve tried to break my addiction to “refined processed sugars” (a term that includes at least one too many words). I’ve worried about racial prejudice in my own family and friends. None of these things is bad on its own. In fact, most of them are good—visiting England was a childhood dream; eating less sugar improves health. At the same time, they’ve shown me that social mobility isn’t just about money and economics, it’s about a lifestyle change. The wealthy and the powerful aren’t just wealthy and powerful; they follow a different set of norms and mores. When you go from working-class to professional-class, almost everything about your old life becomes unfashionable at best or unhealthy at worst.” 
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Isn't lifestyle mandated by the money available? That reality is ignored by both Charles Murray and JD Vance. You can afford better food, you can afford more educational opportunities. They of course forget that the egg [the money] had to come before the chicken [the better and healthier lifestyle]!

In Charles Murray's world and JD Vance's world, the poor are simply lazy. Somehow they missed the memo on all the unemployed college educated people.

"“People talk about hard work all the time in places like Middletown. You can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men work fewer than twenty hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness.” 
― J.D. Vance Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

He forgets here, that many jobs now only offer part-time hours and one new thing, is to require that one have open scheduling hours even for those few hours.

Of course in J.D. Vance's world, people like my husband do not exist, who put in 12-14 hour shifts and who did work hard, and got laid off.  He would not imagine that a woman like me once worked 4 and 5 part-time jobs at once to keep a roof over her head. Supposedly all the poor are bums who lost their jobs due to malfeasance.

“We’ll get fired for tardiness, or for stealing merchandise and selling it on eBay, or for having a customer complain about the smell of alcohol on our breath, or for taking five thirty-minute restroom breaks per shift. We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we’re not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves to solve the cognitive dissonance—the broken connection between the world we see and the values we preach. ” 
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

One thing I noticed about this book, is he kept repeating the phrase American Dream without exactly defining it. You mean the dream, that George Carlin used to say you have to be asleep to believe it? Here you get the usual lectures about "hard work", but even here I would say to have "hard work" work, you need the opportunities in the first place. I certainly heard a gutsful myself about the "fucking losers" who didn't make it.

“Mamaw and Papaw believed that hard work mattered more. They knew that life was a struggle, and though the odds were a bit longer for people like them, that fact didn’t excuse failure. “Never be like these fucking losers who think the deck is stacked against them,” my grandma often told me. “You can do anything you want to.” 
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

You know, America's a funny place, all this preaching about self sufficiency and independence. Maybe in agricultural and trapping and hunting days one could make their own way dependent on their own person. It's like a mythos has replaced reality in America, the self made man taking over, but I noticed J.D. got a string of lucky breaks. Did any of you know, that one of his professors was the lady who wrote the Tiger Mom book, and got him this book deal to begin with?

With attending Yale, he definitely learned a new lingo, and culture. When I read the below, what part of the money bought those good things that he does not get? One thing I learned as someone who fell down the ladder, twice now, out of the upper middle class the first time and out of the working class the second, that the one's who most often had the least empathy sometimes could be better off adults who were poor as children. They left behind their poor relatives, and looked back with a mixture of distaste and self-loathing. I suppose this describes some of the problems I had with my own mother. She complained of having no shoes and having to eat pop corn for dinner, and her built in loathing for her childhood poverty gave her no empathy for my adulthood fall into it.

“As a cultural emigrant from one group to the other, I am acutely aware of their differences. Sometimes I view members of the elite with an almost primal scorn—recently, an acquaintance used the word “confabulate” in a sentence, and I just wanted to scream. But I have to give it to them: Their children are happier and healthier, their divorce rates lower, their church attendance higher, their lives longer. These people are beating us at our own damned game. ” 
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

He sees the forest and not the trees, and with his religious blind spots, money buys that stability, money buys that happiness after a certain point. One researched pegged around $75,000 being that cut off point around 10 years ago. One of his major blind spots I notice is that his own grandparents escaped "hillybilly" destitution by moving to Middletown Ohio, where his grandfather held a good middle class providing factory job at Armco. His book, has an extreme disconnect in not tying the destruction of American manufacturing to the destruction of economic lives. Someone who worked hard and could provide properly for his family gave him the foundation to build his life upon. His lack of empathy for the very fact these opportunities have been removed from American people is sickening.

One could say I come out of a hillybilly past though these were Ohio dirt farmers on one side, they just happened to be "more north". For those who made good, there was a loathing for those who failed, it's one puzzle piece to my own story in why my family threw me away beyond the narcissism. I grew up being told to be poor, was to be a failure and money counted for everything. My mother's own family was divided with a crack between those who had "made it" and those who didn't. J.D. Vances' attitudes are not that foreign to me. I was the first to earn a college degree in my mother's entire family. Yes, I was the first. I remember the odd jealousy at the time, almost like I didn't deserve it. My mother did not go to college and got her good job via my father remember.

I lived in an area considered a "white trash"/"hillbilly"/"poor rural whites" area for over 10 years. The jobs disappearing affected that place. It went from a stable small town to having multiple abandoned houses, a problem with heroin, and home invasions. I knew the jobs disappearing destroyed family lives, and unlike J.D. who saw the drugs as the cause of the poverty, I saw drugs as a symptom of the despair that came to settle on my old small town and the future young people were losing out on. Sadly J.D Vance and those who support him see the drugs as the cause and not the result.  They also ignore the fact that unlike his grandparents, the same jobs like they had at Armco are no longer there.

Older people with empathy would tell me they feared for young people and told me their lives were much harder. They realized the rug had been pulled from underneath people in being able to make livings or support families. Republican types like J.D. Vance of course blame people for failing in a system when the moorings have been removed. I would even try to tell people do what you can, to survive and succeed, but you wonder about those who serve as apologists for the system, and defend the status quo, in claiming poverty is a result of one's own laziness and immorality. I suppose that's the only answer for the right in America. After all it's easier to steal this place blind and refuse decency, while blaming the victims and gaslighting them about the true causes of their economic misery. 

Gen X: The Scapegoat Generation is Dying Young