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Almost ten million homes have been foreclosed on in the last three years. That means forty million Americans have been dispossessed. That number does not include renters who have also been evicted. So maybe these people are living with relatives but maybe the relatives also enforced conditions. "You can stay but that good for nothing husband or lazy, fat-ass wife can't!" Take your choice, live with mom and dad by yourself? Or live in the street with your spouse? If children are involved what real choice is there?
As I peruse the want ads each day, I see many jobs that literally don't pay enough money to keep the lights on. I had written about the job offered by the storage facility. Be available 24/7 to do sales, bookkeeping, maintenance and janitorial work at any facility in Atlanta. $300 per week, no mileage, no gas money, no benefits, no promise of steady work. I read an ad yesterday to rewrite 400-word articles for five dollars each. I thought to myself that at ten or twelve thousand words a day I could make a decent living. McDonalds and many large corporations take applications to keep a current stock of applicants on hand, but it doesn't mean that they are hiring.
When Chrysler went through its recent bankruptcy I read about thousands in Chrysler management who had been permanently laid off. Most had worked their entire adult lives in the automobile industry, and I thought, "Where will these people find new jobs?" The problem is not drugs or alcoholism or even homelessness; the problem is jobs. Strange, isn't it, that when America had a strong manufacturing base and a strong job market that we had few so-called defective people.
I live in the South and there are a great many literal Biblical believers who take the Bible at face value. I've always tended to view it in the same way as the Old Testament was written, in the form of parables. The stories are told in a way to make us see ourselves in them. Why else would they dwell on Christ's long walk to Calvary? Dragging his cross, an innocent man convicted by society. As the onlookers heckle and throw things at him, mocking his burden, only one of the multitude stopped to offer him any kindness or assistance.
As Lenny Bruce said, "If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses." This is a mean country that calls the victims criminals and the criminals innocents. So I've stopped worrying about the coldness of winter, as it will never blow colder than an American's heart.
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