John Henry Fuseli The Nightmare
Immediate disclaimer: I’ve never literally woken up with a stranger. Not my style.
But I am pretty sure I know what it would feel like, which again goes to why I’ve never allowed it to happen. This week I had the bizarre feeling it had happened, but not in any way I saw coming.
Perusing a social media site, I found a comment by an acquaintance about the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Her comment boiled down to, “Get a life, get a job, and stop irritating those of us who are trying to spend our hard-earned money on vacation.” Discovering this comment was like opening a door into a lot of similar feelings expressed by people who I assume are decent human beings. Some people who see the protesters this way are even my friends and family members. It was like rolling over all warm and sleepy and realizing that head on the pillow was not any one I recognized.
This is bigger for me than individuals. Everyone has a bad day, or says a dumb thing, or just needs to blow off steam sometimes. If we all isolated ourselves from everyone who makes a frustrated comment we don’t agree with on Facebook or Twitter, we wouldn’t have much of a network.
The Stranger, it turns out, is the social mood, priorities, and values of my own country.
I have a three-year-old child, and am only just now emerging from what a friend calls, “The Baby Tunnel.” The tunnel is a place you enter about the time you realize you are pregnant, and you only go deeper, darker, and quieter for about 4 years after that. Eventually, you see the light and begin to re-emerge, but the world and the people in it have changed while you were away. I was born in 1968, and when I was in college I relentlessly quizzed my mother about Vietnam, JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., and The Beatles. “What was it like? Did you love them? Did you march? Who said what? Did you go? Were you scared?”
For years her answer was the same: “Sigh. Honey, I don’t know. You had just been born. I wasn’t paying attention to anything else.”
How is this possible?
Well, now I know. And a deep description of The Baby Tunnel is more the purview of a true mommy blogger, so I’ll not go there. But it is a real place, The Tunnel, and it can distance you from important cultural shifts.
Somewhere in the past 4 years, we lost a core shared vision as a nation. Clearly, the roots of the loss go back much further than 4 years, but my experience indicates that the cement on this really started hardening between 2007-2011.
There seems to be an honest-to-God belief system that having a job is a reflection of a moral or ethical state. Being employed is now a character trait. But it’s weirder than that, it’s not enough to be employed. It’s not even enough to have more than one job. If that job or jobs does not pay enough to feed your family, then YOU are a failure. YOU are at fault. And if you feel differently, then YOU do not have the right to express those thoughts and beliefs because, well, YOU are the problem. The problem is not allowed to speak.
Get a life, get a job, get out of my way.
No one wants to be on the outside. It’s cold out there, and the kids are hungry. It is not a complicated mystery that more and more people are growing anxious about how close they are to the edge.
But what is mysterious to me is the glaring refusal to acknowledge that the crumbling social architecture is not the fault of those most at-risk. The closest thing I can piece together as logic is that if you are a guilty party — if you are part of the industry or power structure that has benefited from that which has hurt so many — you are pretty anxious yourself. I keep seeing the prison warden in The Shawshank Redemption when he reads his own cross-stitched wall hanging: “His judgement cometh, and that right soon.”
Those on the edge want an assured place inside. If you want to be inside, you listen to those who already are. They are the ones who, allegedly, allow you to stay safe. If you are guilty, you want as many on your side as you can get. You tell those who are trying to stay inside that those outside are wrong, evil, The Problem. Don’t listen to those people, they just want to drag you down. We want to keep you safe. THEY are why everything is a mess.
I don’t feel good about waking up with whoever this is. He needs to get his pants on and get the hell out of my house. No pancakes, no coffee, no early movie. Get gone.
Now, those faces in Occupy, for better or worse, they are familiar. You folks, come on in. I’ve got a pull out couch.
Esse Diem 
Amen, sister.
Thanks, K. It loops into some very strange territory, and very sensitive stuff. Some people I’ve seen hammering away at the OWS crowd are also asking for money to pay for the health insurance of a sick, unemployed friend.
I’m not sure why the connections are not being made that this sick, unemployed person is who OWS is fighting to defend.
Damned good!!!!
This from you….thank you! I know you know good. 🙂
a friend of mine likened it to being contagious…when she was struggling, people did not want to be around her, as though they would ‘catch’ her misfortune…when she needed her friends the most, so many were nowhere to be found…sad state of affairs…
Sara, I know what you mean. But I think it’s also something different. When you are sick and no one wants to be sick, they don’t suggest you are at fault for your own illness (usually).
This is like the sickness is the under- or un-employment. And it’s a sickness you gave yourself. AND as you suggest, no one wants to get your self-imposed sickness. It makes no sense.
I’m very impressed with your words!!! What a wonderful way to express how you and, I’m sure, many others are feeling. It’s also nice to know that others feel the same way I do. It is comforting that we are not alone and we would all welcome so many folks who have the same feelings into our homes. I think we should all thank all the folks in our country who have the opportunity to take the time out of their daily lives to stand up for what they believe. PS Just remember you aren’t alone – you are standing up for what I and many others also believe. No one is alone!!!!!
Thank you, Betty. You are very kind. 🙂
Quick, get pregnant!
Have you seen any of the R debates? People cheering executions, booing a gay soldier, in uniform yet! It isn’t limited to the R side, Bill Maher talking about MTR miners, “Get another job you stupid redneck.” Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Nancy Grace, Ann Coulter, and the list goes on. These people are paid very well to be mean. Is any surprise FB peeps are mean?
Debra, great points. (The pregnancy thing isn’t going to happen, but I like the way you think.)
You are right. This is not a simple partisan issue. It goes much deeper. I’m not dialed in enough to all of the dynamics of “people paid very well to be mean” such that I could articulate it in any great detail, but you are onto something.
I did write something awhile back that is related to the current atmosphere: https://essediemblog.com/2010/08/04/i-didnt-do-anything-did-i/ I’d be interested in your thoughts there if you have time.
Amen. Helen
Pull out couches are so uncomfortable as well as heavy to move. But you are kind.
What I find most incongruous about the situation these days is that while being unemployed is often seen as a character flaw, the system often pits labor against the success of the company, against profits and against the dividends for shareholders. It doesn’t have to be thay way and am not sure how it came to be. It seems that employees are seen as impediments to profitability rather than as potential sources of production and profit. I know situations differ, but good employees used well would be better for companies than good employees used badly and then fired. I’m pretty sure that not all the 30k BofA employes who are going to be canned have nothing to offer to a well run bank’s bottom line. Too bad it does them no good.
Actually, you are right about the couches. I don’t really have one, it was a vehicle to convey my metaphor. When you visit, you will have an actual bed, with a real mattress, and your own bathroom.
Agreed: The Baby Tunnel has a strong tractor beam. I have a four and half year old and I think I am only one leg and arm out now. And, honestly, I favor my Baby – turned Toddler – turned Pre Schooler Tunnel – over having to watch the sad state of affairs going on now. Call it defeated. Cry out quitter. I just don’t have it in me anymore. Leave the fight for the 20 somethings and the wiser, thicker-skinned Julian Martin’s of the world. It ain’t me, babe. No, no, no…it ain’t me..
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