Curbside Conversation

Roger misses his right leg. Cut off at the hip, he lost it when he slipped off a train somewhere in Wisconsin. That was five years ago. Now Roger lives in a rented garage in South Sacramento. There's no kitchen or bathroom, but he is glad to have a safe place to retreat to at night. He has a wheel chair to get around, although in the past he had an electric one. Someone stole it. Roger's birthday is October 7. During our curbside conversation today he said he will be 42 this year. While he was in the hospital recovering from losing his leg, the doctors told him he had diabetes. So now Roger has to take insulin every day.

Roger is one of 46 million Americans who live in poverty in this country. According to the latest census data, 1 out of every 6 persons in this country is poor. That's the highest rate since the U.S. Census Bureau began keeping track of income levels in the 1950s.

What's more, the Census Bureau claims "that unemployment benefits kept 3.2 million people out of poverty in 2010, and that Social Security retirement benefits did the same for nearly 14 million seniors." In short, without the help of the U.S. government, things would actually be much worse than they presently are right now.

In addition, just under 50 million Americans have no health insurance. It's likely that many of the same people who are in poverty also don't have health insurance. Furthermore, the census data tells us that nearly "25 million Americans who lack health insurance have pre-existing conditions such as heart disease and diabetes." So half of the people without healthcare coverage already have a pre-existing condition for which they need medical treatment.

There is at least one politician running for the office of President of the United States who implies that the American people should just let a person who doesn't have insurance die. The underlying concept behind this libertarian rhetoric is that individuals and civic organizations in society should care for those who can't care for themselves. Or, in a 21st century version of social Darwinism, the individual who cannot take care of himself (because he does not have healthcare insurance) and who cannot find others to care for him, pays the price of freedom by dying. This isn't just a dramatic rhetorical flourish by a presidential candidate, however. Reuters reports that 45,000 people died in the U.S. in 2009 because they didn't have health insurance.

Although unintentional, this would appear to be a round about endorsement of the individual mandate portion of President Obama's healthcare overhaul. The individual mandate requires all individuals have healthcare insurance.

But there's more. According to Bernie Sanders, based on data from a report generated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, "the United States has both the highest overall poverty rate and the highest childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth. This comes at a time when the U.S. also has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth with the top 1 percent earning more than the bottom 50 percent." So one of the richest industrialized countries on earth also has the greatest amount of poverty on earth. How sadly unneccessary.

Back to Roger: he says he is a mechanic and he has lots of tools. The problem is cars have become more like computers than machines. Thus Roger's tools and car repair skills are becoming obsolete. He, like millions of other Americans, needs re-training in order to compete in a new global order.

Finish It!

Late last night I finally finished Matthiessen's Shadow Country. And, quite frankly, I hated every one of its 892 pages. Why, you might ask, did I continue reading it if I disliked it so much? Because it is a really good book.

If this sounds like a contradiction, that's because it reflects the contradictory nature of the book itself. Indeed the title alludes to the book's dualistic theme; the main character, E. J. Watson, maintains that he has a shadow personality known as Jack. When E. J. does something wrong -- and this is frequent -- it gets blamed on Jack. As a consequence the book is filled with violence, both psychological and physical, which may explain my displeasure with it.

But this book didn't just win a bunch of awards because of its graphic depictions of murder and mayhem. The story pulls the reader into the interior hell of the characters while simultaneously describing the exterior hell of southern Florida at the turn of the 20th century. Environmental degradation goes hand in hand with the utter collapse of E. J.'s life. Utter disregard for human life is shadowed by an absolute lack of appreciation for the natural world. Indigenous people, former slaves, white women, and mixed race children are all commodified -- trapped in a system of crass gilded age capitalism by the redneck men who ruled this part of the world.

But wait! Did she just call someone a redneck? In words reminiscent of some of the characters in Shadow Country, damn straight I just called someone a redneck! Because if the characters talk about themselves in those terms, then so can this reviewer, as evidenced when E. J.'s son Lucius sets out to interview most of the men who hated E. J. the most, including Bill House who claims: "All is forgiven, Boy, cause you ain't nothin but a redneck idjit that never knowed no better. "

This, then, is the nut that has to be cracked: if a man cannot respect himself and the people around him, how can he possibly respect the land upon which he lives? When pondering this question, Matthiessen requires the reader to also consider how Americans of the 21st century are continuing to degrade the world and then blame it on the shadow people of contemporary American culture. In this case, these shadow people of our time might be considered the "birthers" or the "tea partiers" or the "crazies" against health care reform at town hall meetings. Is it possible to blame these modern "Jacks" for the crimes committed by our present-day "E. J.s"?: the greedy banks, the inhumane insurance companies, or the corrupt politicians who commodify Native Americans, African Americans, women, and children today in the system of cynical 21st century neo-gilded age capitalism. Who is more to blame for the unraveling of the great American democracy experiment: wingnut individuals who call Israeli-Americans Nazis OR insurance companies who cancel insurance policies on individuals because those individuals have pre-existing medical conditions?

Matthiessen captures this contradiction -- the individual against the system -- in poignant ways when Bill House's sister says "Knowing what he was up against with our House family, he did not scowl to scare or threaten, he did something worse: he disarmed me with a wink, a reckless confidential wink that made my righteous indignation feel downright foolish, made everything he'd told the crowd a joke, made all our hopes and struggles in this world simply ridiculous for the fundamental reason that our precious human life, for all the joys, was blood-soaked, cruel, and empty, with only sorrow, fear, disease at its dark end, fading to nothingness. Staring back at him, I thought, Was this a society of human beings or some purgatory where folks was condemned to live their lives with a laughing killer loose amongst them like a wolf?"

Yes, we have wolves in our midst, as attested to by the people who call President Obama a Nazi or the winking Sarah Palin of last election cycle but, to follow the logic presented in Matthiessen's novel, those individuals are small and inconsequential. The larger wolf, the leader of the pack, might be the pressure of the collective -- society itself -- which allows the individuals to roam freely and launch their nonsensical tirades against other individuals. Or, more aptly, the collective Wolf which allows nearly 50 million people in the greatest country on earth to go without health care due to the tragic crime of . . . being poor.

And so, to cite E. J.'s last words in the novel, "finish it" Mr. President, by bringing the shadow country places of this nation toward a reconciliation with itself.