Rich and Poor in Minnesota; American Blindness

Today in the Star Tribune we have this:

Front Page: "GOP's First Pass: $1B in Trims.  The proposed cuts would fall heavily on local governments, colleges and low-income people."

Variety Section: "Our dogs have vintage crystal bowls..." and "... she houses her extensive collection of Bonnie Cashin bags in a climate controlled lover-level room."

How's that for juxtaposition?

The lifestyle of one household is not the issue of course but the example is emblematic of the choices we are making and affirming as a society.  And while it may seem like the harsh consequences for these choices can be concentrated in the lower classes, it won't stay bottled up there for long.  But the cost of our collective life doesn't just come due at some later date.  Long before the backlash, we pay a price through the erosion of our character as a people.  But this is precisely the thing we can't see - our "group identity" if you will.  This is our American Blindness.  We are so fixated on our lives as individuals that we can barely detect our existence as a community.

Years ago I was in a restaurant with some friends, having a wonderful time in conversation, laughing and being boisterous.  I noticed that our energy level (and our volume) was coming in waves that would rise and fall every few minutes - the laughing and joking would rise to a peak and then fall back down.  Then I noticed that in fact, the ebb and flow of our conversation was in sync with the entire room.  All of the tables were moving together through a rise and fall of humor and energy.  I thought that our conversation was simply following a life of its own in our group, but we were actually being profoundly influenced by the "society" in the room.  We just never saw it.  Had we been the only group in the restaurant, I know our experience would have been much different.

In the same way, is a movie inherently less funny if you see it in a theater with only a few people to laugh along with?

We think our actions and our attitudes, our thoughts and or values are entirely seated within us as individuals.  They are not.  But our American Blindness to our life as a people, a society  and a culture leaves us always surprised by anything beyond our little lives as supposed automatons.  It seems sometimes the best we can do to impersonate a community of shared values is to divide the house into Us and Them so at least some of us get to be an Us at the expense of the Them.  Was I the only one who noticed the irony when one of our parties, which seems to lay claim to being the the one defined by true patriotism, made a point of publicly reading the Constitution which begins with the phrase; "We the People...?"  

We are blind to our common life. That's why we think so little of tearing it apart, whether it's to shred The People into Lefties and Righties politically, or to think nothing of rushing past the divide between the Haves and Have Nots so we can get to the land flowing with climate controlled rooms for our purses and homeless veterans on the street.  If there was a prophet among us, he or she would take a copy of the constitution and tear it down the middle on the floor of the House.  We the People indeed.  

We occasionally note that there's something odd about having our troops dying on foreign battlefields while civilians like myself are almost entirely unaffected by my country being, so they tell me, at war.  The phrase "shared sacrifice?" appears from time to time.  Our ability to live with this tension, or rather, to basically not feel this tension bears witness again to the general absence of our communal identity.  American Blindness.

So back in Minnesota I expect our budget deficit debate will only play out in the terms of costs to poor individuals vs. the rights of individual taxpayers.  That we can't even engage the conversation in terms of the cost to us as a people and the dissipation of our commitment to shared values and communal well-being makes me sad.  But it's easy for us to spend these things and give them away because we simply don't see them as real.  American Blindness prevails.

Those who have eyes to see, let them see.