re: #61 Obdicut

I think it creates a barrier and a problem for them. Try as you might, you can’t really image how gut-wrenching it is to worry about paying rent. Hell, I’ve experienced that relatively recently— within a decade— and already it’s a more distant memory. I can’t re-experience the feeling, I can just remember and, as it were, empathize with my past self.

This leads, I think, to a lot of politicians, even those who rose from poverty, assigning a myth to themselves, of how they endured it bravely and worked hard to get out of it, and everyone else can too. When telling our own narratives, we tend to overlook our luck, and we tend to rewrite our emotional history to make ourselves look better. It’s human nature.

There’s also the need, in the US, to pretend that someone working three jobs is ‘uniquely American’, that it’s somehow a good thing on some level, instead of a crying shame. Does it say a good thing about the person that they’re willing to do that for their kids? Sure. Does it say something terrible about our country that someone has to do that for our kids? Yes. But a lot of people nodded along with Bush when he admired the woman for working three jobs, rather than actually sympathizing with her about how fucking hard it was. She wasn’t asking for admiration, she was asking for help, and he just didn’t get it.

Hey now, we should be thrilled that that woman has three jobs! Most folks are lucky if they can find one! She’s a hero to us!