"It is better to live on one's knees than die on one's feet"
The dirty old man who reminded Nately of his father was one of the few people who celebrated living bereft of dignity. Tobe honest many, if not most, of us would choose life, even in the most degrading servitude, over the most glorious of deaths. Some cultures might vary, with Vikings, Spartans and Samurai to name but a few who would embrace death in combat over the chance to live, but that kind of thinking must be drummed into one from infancy to truly become a mantra of life (or death, in this case). Not only do few societies today embrace a culture of death so happily, but it is also a lot easier to go out in a blaze of glory when high on battle excitement and a lot harder when one's dignity is stripped slowly and incrementally.
More importantly, few Americans would exult in a chance to demean and degrade their enemies, and even to the extent that they may, they would strenuously deny that they derive an iota of enjoyment from the act. The Romans may have enjoyed the sight of their enemies paraded in chains through the Forum, and roared in approval as those unfortunates met their death for the public entertainment, but we live in more civilized times. We may secretly enjoy the humiliation of our most cherished public figures, but we leave the public stripping to the tabloids and hold ourselves aloof from the act, while gorging our voyeuristic tendencies behind a veil of anonymity. We would never admit especially that we were responsible for the debasement of our idols, and with impressive self-righteousness, we tell each other that it is not our actions that fuel the fire that consumes them but rather that they have fallen only because of their own imperfections.
It is this refusal to admit the degradation of our fellows and our willful delusion that they must somehow deserve their fate that permits the stripping of every vestige of human dignity from "the others". The others could be anyone, marked with the sign of Cain by their enemies and declared to be less deserving of the right to human dignity, the same dignity that we not only demand for ourselves but which we declare the right of all men and is so entrenched in the psyche of Americans. Those others have included, at different times, ethnic groups like the Irish, the Italians, the Germans, the Asians, the blacks, the Mexicans; it has also encompassed religious groups - the Mormons, the Jews and today, the Muslims; professions have been included, like the Vietnam vets, the hippie students who opposed the War. Sometimes the groups consigned to the outskirts may be logical enough, like union labor or police or fat-cat bankers, but can also include seemingly strange targets, like teachers in Wisconsin, airport flight controllers. But above all, we love to demonize and dehumanize the weakest members of society - the poor and the unemployed.
The one thing that has always marked the stigmatization of a group has been the wish to paint that group in broad strokes, pinning real or imaginary crimes of a few on the entirety. If a few Muslims embrace hatred for the West and employ terrorist tactics, the demagogues then portray all Muslims as guilty by virtue of a shared faith. The miniscule group that uses fraud to enjoy the largesse of a welfare state are proof enough that all the poor and unemployed are out to cheat us and need to be watched carefully at all times.
This latter group has enjoyed a prominent place on our list of hatred for a long time, seemingly bound up into the unique way that Americans view the world, and having only themselves to blame if they are poor instead of living in McMansions. The hatred has surged and ebbed, but never really gone away, and is now enjoying a new energy. Though we know that nearly anyone could have lost their jobs or money in the Great Recession and that many who suffered that misfortune may never recover like jobs or clamber back to the same economic footing, yet we quietly accept the insults heaped on the indigent. Those same unfortunates blamed for being poor were once our friends and colleagues - I'll wager that few of us did not know someone who lost their job or house or both as the recession swept through our nation, destroying lives and wealth. Yet we sit silent, because those erstwhile equals are now the "other". We barely murmur a protest when insults are heaped upon the poor, be in daily imprecations by the all knowing talking heads of TV or the soul sapping demands placed on them by antagonistic governments. We sat silently while Florida demanded that Welfare recipients undergo mandatory drug tests, and though the program never showed any significant evidence that this was justified, still we rewarded its architect with a second term of office, basically endorsing the demeaning treatment of our fellow men. Now we watch passively while Kansas seeks to close a deficit of its own making by cutting benefits to its least empowered, and requires a humiliating accounting of their spending. Seemingly paternalistic and intrusive government is less important than bringing these wastrels to heel!
But hypocrisy aside, the issue here is not the actions of the government, but our willingness to play along. We gladly suspend empathy and embrace the narrative of hatred. Hatred comes in many shapes and colors, and it's not always garbed in black and screaming "Death to America". It can be far less visible and more insidious, erecting walls between citizens, turning us against each other. When we are willing to hate our neighbors, we have no chance to bridge the gaps with the rest of humanity that's further removed. And that suits the demagogues who seek power on the basis of hatred and division. Divided by ideology but united by method, they deal only in hatred of the others, the outsiders; we empower them when we refuse to think for ourselves and reject empathy for those others.
We need to remember that but for a few chances - of birth, of location, of opportunity - we may well be that unshaven, unwashed man standing by the freeway exit, broken and hopeless. Perhaps he too had a good job and comfortable life a few months ago, perhaps he has been homeless for years. Perhaps he worked fifty hour weeks till his employer went bankrupt and ended his idyl, or perhaps he does not care to work. Perhaps he went bankrupt when he ran up huge medical bills, or perhaps he has never paid a bill in his life. The important thing to remember is that we do not know what his (or her) life has been, we have not walked in their shoes or faced the awful choices they've made. We do not sit in comfort because we are deserving; perhaps we made some good choices along the way, but we live well mostly because of good fortune. We were born into reasonably affluent families, we were able to get good educations, we had the right guidance and mentors when we needed them - we had no hand in any of those events, and yet they have placed us where we are far more than anything we've done ourselves.
Humility in the knowledge of our good fortune and empathy for those who fell along the road should be our default stance, rather than a smug self-righteousness. We may not be able to personally help every person in need, but we can start by suspending judgement and we can hold our appointed agents, our government to the same recognition of reality. We universally agree that people deserve a second chance. But, in the words of Franklin Roosevelt, they also enjoy a right to "live in peace, honor and human dignity--free to speak, and pray as they wish--free from want--and free from fear". Refusing to treat them as criminals for being poor, refusing to humiliate them for needing help is the first step in freeing them from want and fear. A man forced to live on his knees is not a man able to stand on his feet.
The dirty old man who reminded Nately of his father was one of the few people who celebrated living bereft of dignity. Tobe honest many, if not most, of us would choose life, even in the most degrading servitude, over the most glorious of deaths. Some cultures might vary, with Vikings, Spartans and Samurai to name but a few who would embrace death in combat over the chance to live, but that kind of thinking must be drummed into one from infancy to truly become a mantra of life (or death, in this case). Not only do few societies today embrace a culture of death so happily, but it is also a lot easier to go out in a blaze of glory when high on battle excitement and a lot harder when one's dignity is stripped slowly and incrementally.
More importantly, few Americans would exult in a chance to demean and degrade their enemies, and even to the extent that they may, they would strenuously deny that they derive an iota of enjoyment from the act. The Romans may have enjoyed the sight of their enemies paraded in chains through the Forum, and roared in approval as those unfortunates met their death for the public entertainment, but we live in more civilized times. We may secretly enjoy the humiliation of our most cherished public figures, but we leave the public stripping to the tabloids and hold ourselves aloof from the act, while gorging our voyeuristic tendencies behind a veil of anonymity. We would never admit especially that we were responsible for the debasement of our idols, and with impressive self-righteousness, we tell each other that it is not our actions that fuel the fire that consumes them but rather that they have fallen only because of their own imperfections.
It is this refusal to admit the degradation of our fellows and our willful delusion that they must somehow deserve their fate that permits the stripping of every vestige of human dignity from "the others". The others could be anyone, marked with the sign of Cain by their enemies and declared to be less deserving of the right to human dignity, the same dignity that we not only demand for ourselves but which we declare the right of all men and is so entrenched in the psyche of Americans. Those others have included, at different times, ethnic groups like the Irish, the Italians, the Germans, the Asians, the blacks, the Mexicans; it has also encompassed religious groups - the Mormons, the Jews and today, the Muslims; professions have been included, like the Vietnam vets, the hippie students who opposed the War. Sometimes the groups consigned to the outskirts may be logical enough, like union labor or police or fat-cat bankers, but can also include seemingly strange targets, like teachers in Wisconsin, airport flight controllers. But above all, we love to demonize and dehumanize the weakest members of society - the poor and the unemployed.
The one thing that has always marked the stigmatization of a group has been the wish to paint that group in broad strokes, pinning real or imaginary crimes of a few on the entirety. If a few Muslims embrace hatred for the West and employ terrorist tactics, the demagogues then portray all Muslims as guilty by virtue of a shared faith. The miniscule group that uses fraud to enjoy the largesse of a welfare state are proof enough that all the poor and unemployed are out to cheat us and need to be watched carefully at all times.
This latter group has enjoyed a prominent place on our list of hatred for a long time, seemingly bound up into the unique way that Americans view the world, and having only themselves to blame if they are poor instead of living in McMansions. The hatred has surged and ebbed, but never really gone away, and is now enjoying a new energy. Though we know that nearly anyone could have lost their jobs or money in the Great Recession and that many who suffered that misfortune may never recover like jobs or clamber back to the same economic footing, yet we quietly accept the insults heaped on the indigent. Those same unfortunates blamed for being poor were once our friends and colleagues - I'll wager that few of us did not know someone who lost their job or house or both as the recession swept through our nation, destroying lives and wealth. Yet we sit silent, because those erstwhile equals are now the "other". We barely murmur a protest when insults are heaped upon the poor, be in daily imprecations by the all knowing talking heads of TV or the soul sapping demands placed on them by antagonistic governments. We sat silently while Florida demanded that Welfare recipients undergo mandatory drug tests, and though the program never showed any significant evidence that this was justified, still we rewarded its architect with a second term of office, basically endorsing the demeaning treatment of our fellow men. Now we watch passively while Kansas seeks to close a deficit of its own making by cutting benefits to its least empowered, and requires a humiliating accounting of their spending. Seemingly paternalistic and intrusive government is less important than bringing these wastrels to heel!
But hypocrisy aside, the issue here is not the actions of the government, but our willingness to play along. We gladly suspend empathy and embrace the narrative of hatred. Hatred comes in many shapes and colors, and it's not always garbed in black and screaming "Death to America". It can be far less visible and more insidious, erecting walls between citizens, turning us against each other. When we are willing to hate our neighbors, we have no chance to bridge the gaps with the rest of humanity that's further removed. And that suits the demagogues who seek power on the basis of hatred and division. Divided by ideology but united by method, they deal only in hatred of the others, the outsiders; we empower them when we refuse to think for ourselves and reject empathy for those others.
We need to remember that but for a few chances - of birth, of location, of opportunity - we may well be that unshaven, unwashed man standing by the freeway exit, broken and hopeless. Perhaps he too had a good job and comfortable life a few months ago, perhaps he has been homeless for years. Perhaps he worked fifty hour weeks till his employer went bankrupt and ended his idyl, or perhaps he does not care to work. Perhaps he went bankrupt when he ran up huge medical bills, or perhaps he has never paid a bill in his life. The important thing to remember is that we do not know what his (or her) life has been, we have not walked in their shoes or faced the awful choices they've made. We do not sit in comfort because we are deserving; perhaps we made some good choices along the way, but we live well mostly because of good fortune. We were born into reasonably affluent families, we were able to get good educations, we had the right guidance and mentors when we needed them - we had no hand in any of those events, and yet they have placed us where we are far more than anything we've done ourselves.
Humility in the knowledge of our good fortune and empathy for those who fell along the road should be our default stance, rather than a smug self-righteousness. We may not be able to personally help every person in need, but we can start by suspending judgement and we can hold our appointed agents, our government to the same recognition of reality. We universally agree that people deserve a second chance. But, in the words of Franklin Roosevelt, they also enjoy a right to "live in peace, honor and human dignity--free to speak, and pray as they wish--free from want--and free from fear". Refusing to treat them as criminals for being poor, refusing to humiliate them for needing help is the first step in freeing them from want and fear. A man forced to live on his knees is not a man able to stand on his feet.
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