Outside It's America

Living in America has always been a little like a poop sandwich. The more bread you have, the less poop you have to eat. Unless eating poop is your thing in which case you could afford to just back up the truck and commence to well, you know. And if poop was your thing and you couldn't afford it, you'd still be stuck not getting what you wanted because you couldn't afford those truckloads of poop. Pardon the vernacular.
It comes as little surprise to most of us that the pandemic has done most of its damage in high-density urban areas. Areas in America where people of color have found themselves over the years, sometimes by choice, other times herded by circumstance. None of this happens in isolation. Economic and social conditions have contributed to this trend for more than one hundred fifty years, starting with the end of the Civil War. The American Dream is elusive at best for most of these families. Instead, these are the folks who are brushed aside or moved out of the way when someone with money decides that row of houses would make great condominiums. The people who shop at Wal-Mart because it is exactly what they can afford, regardless of what might be the healthiest alternative. The families who send their kids to the neighborhood school because they are working two jobs and can't spend the time thinking about school choice. These are survivors.
These are the people who are, and have been, in the cross-hairs of modern society. We blame them for the conditions in which they find themselves. We wonder why they can't just change their lives. The color of their skin or their zip code or their parents' last name could be enough to keep that elusive opportunity just out of reach.
Twelve years ago, the housing bubble burst. That illusion that everyone was going to get rich ended abruptly and only those who were holding the purse strings when we were riding high got bailed out. No one went to jail for lying to the country about what was going on. At the time, there was a move to Occupy Wall Street, and any number of other streets that might allow ninety-nine percent of America have their own slice of the pie. There were demonstrations, and riots. And eventually regulations were passed aimed at limiting the possibility of anything like that happen again.
And this "president" has made it his job, between rounds of golf, to roll back those protections. And now there are frightened voices in the halls of government crying socialism, as if it were a dirty word. And the people who have been pushed around for a hundred fifty years are not being patient. And they are fighting. And dying.
As if their lives depended on it.
Because it does.