The term, “Children should be seen and not heard” is something that I was told frequently as a child. Many times, when I entered a room where people would be conversing about who knows what, this was said to me if I tried to participate in the conversation. Oddly enough, it was never my parents who said this to me. It was always my older sister, though my mother never contradicted her. I only had to be told this a few times before I stopped trying to engage in their socializing.
My sister was always snotty and condescending in her
interactions with me and that didn’t stop until she got married. After that,
she mellowed a bit, but not much. She told me once after we had both become
adults that she was sorry that she had been so hateful to me when we were growing
up. She cried as she admitted that she failed at being the “big sister” and how
she could have and should have been kinder and more supportive, and as the
older sibling she should have been there for me and been more caring. It is a
fact that she never was but as a child I just saw it as normal behavior on her
part. She was a mean-spirited person and that was just the sister card that I
drew, but that didn’t make her cruelty hurt any less. I truly did not know what
to say to her after her admitting that she was unkind, but it seemed to me that
her admission was pretty irrelevant by then. I responded by brushing it off
somewhat and chalking it up to kids will be kids, but mostly I just wondered
“what the hell brought this on?”
Actor, Ian McKellen said in an interview once that his older
sister was the same way, refusing to let him play with her and her friends and
hurting his feelings constantly when they were children. He said that he
forgave her and she grew up to be a lovely person. That is wonderful, but this
was not the case for my sister. She became tolerable - if I didn’t have to be
around her very much. So, I wasn’t.
This is the way that I used to feel about politics and
social injustice. As long as I could stay out of the fallout from political and
social inequality, I did. It is what it is, was the view I tried to take on it.
Even though I experienced more than my share of abuse, misogyny, and unfair
treatment, I worked around it as there was little else that I thought I could
do. It was less troubling than trying to analyze the why of it, but when I
began to see people in politics and local government that I knew gain power and
authority and use that power to disenfranchise those least capable of fighting
the tyranny I began to see things differently. Few things get your attention as
quickly as working with the poor and being the poor, and I did both. It was
around this time that the Universe came calling with influences that were too
compelling to ignore as well.
It is much too easy to believe that charities will solve the
problems that exist in this country. Former President George W. Bush tried to
start a movement toward expecting churches and charities to take care of the
needs of the people and therefore shift the responsibility of rampant poverty
away from the government being obliged to do something about it. This was very
popular in many states who quickly started dropping or cutting existing help
programs for the people. To this day, many of those programs have not been
reinstated and many more have been lost since then. What these lame-brains
don’t “get” is that charitable giving cannot “fix” a problem that is rooted in
a society that sets us up to fail so that capitalism can prevail at every turn,
as profit is always the bottom line with “big sister”. It is designed to lift
them up as they keep us down. It isn’t an accident that poverty exists. It is
intentionally built in to the system. They cannot maintain their exalted status
without taking us to the cleaners.
I saw recently that billionaire Jeff Bezos gave singer Dolly
Parton 100 million dollars in recognition of her charitable work. What Ms.
Parton has done as a philanthropist is definitely worthy of noting, but I am
appalled that a billionaire would give money to a millionaire when Mr. Bezos
could never be bothered to recognize the efforts of thousands of Amazon
employees who once worked for him and made it possible for him to become a
multi-billionaire, while they received inadequate salaries, intolerable working
conditions, few if any Covid protections, and many were fired or penalized for
daring to try to unionize. Charitable giving sounds very admirable on the
surface, but deduct the salaries and administrative costs for operating said
charities from the amount given to them and see how much of the money actually
goes to the cause. Then realize how much of a tax deduction the donors receive
for their generosity. Who really wins here? Not the Amazon workers or anyone
else in this country who must survive on substandard wages which are considered
acceptable by far too many people. 100 million dollars could make a substantial
difference in the lives of a great many people if it was distributed to the
citizens fairly. Charity would not be necessary in a world where classism and
favoritism did not exist.
For all the things that our government does that never solve
the problems of poverty and inequality, they aren’t responsible for how
employers treat the people who work for them or how unequally resources are
distributed and sold to consumers. They are however, complicit in perpetuating
the problems.
Just like my Mother never stopped my sister from bullying
me. She would just sit there and allow her to exclude and belittle me, and
wouldn’t make eye contact with me while it was happening. This is how our
government reacts. They can see the effects of not paying a living wage and
ignoring the difficulties of the people but they do not intervene to stop it. So,
the “big sister” employers continue to bully and abuse the “little sister”
employees as long as the “parent” government says by saying nothing that it is
acceptable to be this way. So many things are learned by the employees when
they are treated as underlings and 50% of it results in depressed, burned out,
and defeated workers with the other 50% becoming angry and aggressive toward
everyone except the very people who are responsible for the injustice. We are a
culture that admires and aspires to be like the wealthy capitalists who gorge
themselves on what little resources that the people have. Anytime that people
can manage to elevate their status to a higher level they many times forget
where they came from and are just so proud of their achievements that they
never look back because this proves that they have always been worthy of their
new status, and the people who never get there just don’t deserve it.
Giving back to the processes that have helped us achieve a
better situation should be as normal as breathing when you understand that no
one makes it to the top by themselves. I believe that this is the place where
Dolly Parton’s charitable giving comes from and I commend her for that, but
being that she is a wealthy person now, I find it difficult to believe that she
needs a benefactor like Jeff Bezos to continue doing what she does. The biggest
kindness that anyone can do is to raise the standard of living for all of us
with a living wage, healthcare for everyone, and a fair say in what happens in
our world. Little can be done by a society that lives from hand to mouth and
lives in fear of never having enough to get by on. We have been seen but are
not being heard as to what will resolve the multitude of problems that we have.
It is extremely easy to dismiss us as just unworthy because God didn’t see fit
to bless us like he blessed them. We didn’t choose a lucrative career path or
we just aren’t smart enough to do the jobs that garner a higher income. There
are hundreds of excuses for why we are just unfortunate people but the only
true reasons are greed and elitism, which are actually glorified and admired
traits by many.
Our “big sister” capitalist employers are rarely held
accountable for their crimes and abuses of the people. Our “parent” government
refuses to be bothered with the system that never stops being thoughtless and
lacking in empathy. Why should they? Toughen up “little sisters” because we
have earned the right to lord over you by virtue of our superior status. You
will be “seen” as a resource and nothing more. You will not be “heard” because
your protestations of unfair treatment are irrelevant. Breaking this cycle is possible if the
“parent” government calls a halt to it, but few of them are inclined to do so.
Trickledown economics does not work. They know this already
but they feel no responsibility for changing the prevailing warped mentality
that exists in the world. Too many of us also feel that they are probably right
about us not deserving better.
“Big sister” may grow up and learn to do better if there are
enough voices out there to reveal the real cost to society as a whole when
dis-ease and a simmering resentment toward them breeds a breakdown in the
culture that has had a devastating effect on everyone. An apology down the road
means little when the basic behavior stays the same. Crime, hate, loss of
respect for others, and a perpetuation of egotistical and status seeking
behavior that we see in profit driven pseudo role models becomes the norm in
all areas of society. A set of values that disregards people as being people
has evolved into what we are reaping on a massive scale right now in this
country. This is the legacy of a “Me First!” country and family dynamic.
The United States is very much like a highly dysfunctional
family that has many secrets, faults, and delusions which they continuously
sweep under the rug and blame others for the fact that the rug is now too lumpy
to walk on. We have arrived at this point in time by them being too arrogant
and guilty of ludicrous choices to backtrack and repair the damage. The
children must lead us out of this because the representative parents and the
older siblings will not budge if we don’t make some noise and barge into the
room with a determination to be heard. Many times, it truly is a child that can
lead to a truth that was unnoticed before. The child may be an adult now but
when people are used to not listening to them it is often necessary to cause a
commotion to get attention. The hard part is getting a seat at the table with
the big people. You won’t get an invitation but you have the power to be heard on
social media and many other forums that were never available to the generations
that came before you. To assume that your expressions have no worth in the eyes
of the ruling class is an easy assumption to make but remember that they have
made some major screw ups from where they sit right now that look pretty damn
dumb to the rest of us. Ridiculous statements and insane comments have come out
of their mouths on national television. To say nothing gets you nothing because
it will be assumed that you either agree with what they have given us or you
agree with their assessment that you have no right to be heard.
Say something. Give them a shake up, because you are very
tired of the shake down that they keep giving to you.
On one occasion when my sister was spouting off to me I
unexpectedly pushed over the chair that she was sitting in and she slammed into
the wall. I got reprimanded severely for it by my parents but it was worth
getting in to trouble for because the shocked look on her face when she hit the
wall was priceless. She picked her battles a little more carefully with me
after that and I felt a little more empowered after showing her that I had a
limit to how much crap I would take from her. We have never really been able to
become friends in this life but I have never felt guilt or regret about that.
It was a necessary break from a dysfunctional relationship. She had to go, and
so does Capitalism.
