Sunday 22 August 2010
First an APOLOGY to readers: I am afraid I’ve made a few posts that need to be revised. I hope to get around to filling things in and smoothing things out within the next couple of days.
In the meantime, now I’d like to write about an experience I had yesterday:
Yesterday, Saturday, I made the walk across the busy street which seems to always be filled with trucks, along the street of dogs barking, past the high school, past the post office, across the dead parking lot to Kmart, where I purchased ink for my printer.
Waiting in line to pay, I found myself having a conversation with a red-faced young man in a tank top.
He began by complaining about the service. He’d been waiting in line too long, and he told me how four or five employees were standing around while exactly one was operating the cash register.
I guess this was something that had just happened because so far as I recall two or three cash registers were then in operation, and I didn’t see anyone standing around except for customers.
Initially, there was a third person party to the conversation standing to my right at the customer service counter, but he seemed to exit from the conversation. Maybe he’d simply left. I don’t know because my attention was drawn to the speaker.
At some point I heard him complaining about two hundred dollars paid to a hospital or doctor for his father. He explained that his father had only one leg, the other having been amputated. His father was an invalid and it was his responsibility to take care of him.
The conversation or monologue continued and I learned that:
He had two children, but they had been
Taken away from him. The reason was unclear, as he was speaking he turned his head or maybe I was momentarily distracted.
He told me that his wife was a ‘crack addict” and that she had stolen 3000 US dollars from him.
At some point I explained that I too was unemployed. He suggested I might work at McDonald’s. Curiously he went on to tell me how he had been fired form McDonalds.
He had given food to a homeless man, and this was captured on a video camera. But, then he began to act out the story, using the historical present, quoting the manager of boss, and I found him hard to follow. I think he said that the manager threw the homeless man out of the store, but it may have been that the manager was telling the red-faced man that he was fired.
In any case, the guy was fired because he gave food to a homeless person. He was accused of “stealing”. I asked whether McDonald’s did not routinely throw food away. The man said “yes”. But, what, then, was the sense of that?
Wouldn’t it be bad publicity for McDonald’s if he told his story to the newspaper?
Well, that was five years ago, and I was young and didn’t know anything.
I recalled that there is a line from St. Aquinas (I think) –one cited by the philosopher Peter Singer—according to which if a rich man has bread, more bread than he needs, that extra bread is not his own. It belongs to the poor.
And, I agree with that. Whether it was said by a Saint or a sinner, it makes sense.
At some point my new acquaintance remarked that he felt like robbing a bank.
This was disturbing. I tried somehow to find words to discourage him.
And later, he mentioned his two daughters, saying how much he loved them.
So, somehow, I would have like to give him comfort. But all I could do was remind him that his father depended on him.
Think of your daughters. Think of your father and how much he needs you.
Those were, I think, my final words.
The man purchased two tins of something alcoholic. I assume it was alcoholic because the black and white attired young man behind the counter insisted upon identification.
I wanted to say: That’s awful. That is an insult. Being asked to prove you are “old enough” to drink! -- But in the United States people don’t even notice it.
The joke is that it’s only one of many aspects of a system of control, a system which robs us of our dignity.
From what the red-faced man said I drew the conclusion that he does not have health insurance. A great part of his suffering comes from paying medical bills. Wholly unnecessary. It would not happen in a civilized country.
When the troubled young man left, the guy behind the counter commented on how he obviously needed someone to talk to. I said “there but for the grace of God go I’… and I might have added: you too.
But the employee of K Mart plainly didn’t like the tenor of what I said.
I even said something like: no one deserves to suffer like that.
And, responding to a doubt I thought I heard or felt, I added, “And if someone does, that’s not for you or me to judge—but only God.”
Now, I’m actually an atheist, but I have no hesitance to express myself in that way. We don’t have the right to condemn another human being to misery. The notion that people deserve suffering is attractive when we want revenge, but that’s not a sufficient reason.
Again, the guy behind the counter disagreed, “well earthly justice is all we’ve got”
That was more or less his thought.
The justice of men is all we’ve got.
But the justice of men, I might have said, is precisely not justice.
Smug bastard behind the counter. Do you really believe that? Or is it the fact that you are behind the counter that makes you think that way?
Are you posing for the sake of a boss or an imaginary authority figure?
When I first lived in Slovakia I was often embarrassed when I had difficulty understanding what was said to me in a shop. Or, sometimes I was embarrassed by my inability to find the words or my bad grammar.
Gradually my hearing got better. Gradually my pronunciation and vocabulary improved. I don’t think my grammar every really improved so much, but I had essentially memorized a sufficient number of stock phrases. And, finally I could have a sort of conversation and even learn something or get a hint of a different perspective on life if a salesperson had time to talk.
But I don’t think I will ever get used to what I see and hear in the United States, the country of my birth. The injustice, the misery, the emotional confusion are too overpowering, too disturbing.
I understand too much, feel too much, and, finally, I too am powerless. And, I think I will never be comfortable here.
The reaction of the KMart employee was even more disturbing than anything the first man had said. It was pure indifference and denial--a denial of our common humanity. That bothers me more than anything the first man said. this attempt to create a distance between the more and less fortunate--no matter how small the real difference between them. That sort of brain-washed reflex reaction is common in this country. Not: there but for the grace of god go I/ But: They are bad and I am good.
One of the first times I heard and saw this was at the University of Toledo among "Honors" students who disapproved of female sexuality.....who disapproved when they read of a medieval Japanese woman who enjoyed sex with someone other than her employer....."employer"? Not exactly. She was a concubine owned by an ex-emperor. My Toledo students were offended that she spoke of enjoying sex with someone else. One even said she was a "slut".
This lack of sympathy, poverty of imagination, can, I think be encouraged or developed or the reverse--depending upon social structures, institutions, and depending upon economic institutions as well.....So the more I see the ugliness, the more I reason backwards and draw conclusions about the structure of US society...
and the less I like it...
And i saw it /heard it my very first week in El Paso, Texas when a soldier said that anyone who drove drunk was bad and deserved punishment.....
I know what it is. I've seen it before. I don't like it. It is truly ugly.
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