"pathetic souls...silently shuffle off to grim fates...the well-heeled set won't care one iota"

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The parable of the landfill rowboat
by Dennis Rahkonen | January 22, 2008 - 9:18am
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/12326

If your city is anything like mine, certain members of the routinely money-grubbing business class will suddenly get conscience pangs (or maybe just sense a useful public-relations opportunity) and arrange for a media event calling attention to the "plight of the homeless."

Usually, Chamber of Commerce types will organize a sleep-out in cardboard refrigerator boxes, near an oil-drum fire, at some centrally located community park.

It'll invariably happen on a night that's sufficiently cold to arouse sympathy from prosperous families gathered around giant plasma TVs within their toasty recreation rooms, far from the bad side of the tracks, who'll maybe then drive up in their SUVs, to drop off some yellow waxed beans or pickled beets for the local food shelf.

The next morning, everyone will feel a little closer to Jesus, and participation in the daily agenda of making more private profit through capitalism's inherently exploitative, poverty-creating labor relations can continue apace.

Meanwhile, just a few blocks from that staged act of great magnanimity, authentically homeless people beneath a freeway overpass will wake up shivering under threadbare blankets, shake away accumulated snow, and check their extremities for frostbite.

As Wall Street's opening bell rings to enthusiastic clapping on the aforementioned televisions, now tuned to MSNBC, pathetic souls doomed by an immoral system's economic injustice silently shuffle off to grim fates about which the well-heeled set won't care one iota, for the rest of the year, now that their obligatory "charity" has passed.

So it goes, in a nation whose destiny is being sealed by the same karmic turnabout that mugged ancient Greece and Rome.

No amount of sweatshop parasitism or imperial wars to steal petroleum lying under someone else's sovereign sand can save us now.

"The line, it is drawn. The curse, it is cast," as Bob Dylan put it.

Decades ago, when we lived as regular working stiffs in a resort area frequented by wealthy Chicagoans, my father and I found a discarded rowboat at the town dump. It had minor cosmetic blemishes, but was otherwise in excellent shape.

We instantly understood that it had been abandoned (or maybe "donated") by some tourist with dollars enough to easily purchase a replacement vessel, definitely one of much greater elegance.

After taking it home on our car top, and giving it a fresh coat of paint, we used that boat as a fishing platform for many years.

The only problem we encountered was that large power craft belonging to moneyed summer visitors would regularly, insensitively roar past -- too near -- causing wakes that almost capsized us.

I confess to deriving a measure of satisfaction now that the American elite's arrogant, unthinking behavior has placed it in very troubled waters.

Rising oil prices, the plummeting dollar, the subprime lending crisis, chronic trade deficits, and an insoluble credit/indebtedness dilemma threaten, sooner rather than later, to bring about a Wall Street close noted not by celebratory bell ringing, but by stunned numbness over the total collapse of "free enterprise."

It'll hit the already economically stressed most painfully, of course. Folks living hard lives in dilapidated rental properties with rusting vehicles out front are certain to suffer. But at least they're used to eating Raman noodles, and peanuts salted in the shell.

Countless thousands of them will become contemporary equivalents of Depression-era migrants, seeking sustenance and solace wherever they can.

But what about the rich, unwisely or unwittingly invested in a fatally flawed order, who'll lose their proverbial shirts?

Back in the Thirties, wiped-out stock traders and jobless factory workers often rode boxcars together. The age of railroad hobos is long gone, however.

Will a forced existence absent luxury amenities -- and all those expensive "toys" -- drive them to complete consternation, or even insanity?

"The first one now will later be last."

Indeed, the times are dramatically a-changin'.

The currently rich of America would come completely undone if they had to experience real homelessness in appliance cartons for many bitter nights on end, without merciful relief.

But then, their undoing has already started.

is that, sooner or later, it tends to choke you........and you end up with a serious case of gastric upset.

that has already come and gone, I am at the point of just trying to keep myself somewhat sane. I'll let you know later how that goes.

the trouble with this "analysis" is it just makes the writer look bitter and silly

people who start w. more money, things, and resources will always have more money, things, and resources than the guy under the bridge

the rich guy may not have a private jet any more but if there is one $20 jug of milk in the store, his kids will be getting it and i won't be getting it, he'll have better crap to barter for the last scrap of meat on the bone

the rich are buffered from disaster, that's the meaning of being rich

if the rich are being hurt, then i'll probably be dead, as will a great many of us who have health challenges, so i don't see the use of glorying in financial disaster, it's wishing for a lot of us to be dead just so a rich guy can experience a mild inconvenience

your analysis is correct, the rich will always be rich, and the writer got the story all twisted. However, no matter what the writer's conclusions are, it doesn't change the fact in the title of the OP. I try to post stories and articles about poverty just to keep us reminded about this serious issue, what good it does, I don't know, but I will continue to post about what I believe is the most important issue in our country.

Maybe A ceo will come begging for warmth and seek shelter in my box and as soon as I find out how many lives he has ruined I may end up tossing his psychopath ass into the frigid waters of the bay to freeze to death. My compassion only goes so far..One less psychopath in the world. My compassion is not for the ones who lived so well off my misery.