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Why are we here, and what do we believe in?
That is the question of the day.
It is not impossible for me to look at things from the viewpoint of people other than myself. Okay, except rich, complacent elitists. I can't see thing from their perspective cause, frankly, I don't see why I should give a SHIT what their perspective is. Too much money, too much comfort and complacency, can be like a black hole, warping perception the way a singularity warps gravity. I've seen it happen.
I grew up in farming country. My neighbors and friends were family farmers. I've had friends--close friends--who were single mothers on welfare. I've seen their struggles first-hand. I myself have been homeless and hopeless, so far down I wasn't sure how I'd ever get back up again. I've slept in fields, under bridges, and on the side of the freeway more than once trying to get back somewhere where I'd have a fighting chance and a support system of some kind.
I get pissed when I see people saying stuff like "Edwards isn't talking about poverty, he's talking about the middle class." Well, duh. Without a strong middle class, there's nowhere for the poor to GO. There's no helping hand upward. If all the better jobs are being outsourced, and those trained for them are forced into low wage jobs, then there's no jobs at all for those on the very bottom. None at all. If the middle class isn't out there driving the economy, there IS no economy to speak of. Look at places in the U.S. where the middle class is all but dead. They're practically ghost towns already.
Hillary Clinton, like her husband, is a very talented politician. Obama has the makings of a very talented politician. But it's harder than hell for me to tell what they actually CARE about. People are busting on Edwards because he just repeated parts of his stump speech last night. But I think he did it because his candidacy is very much ABOUT all those forgotten people, the ones all too many of us would like to forget even exists. The opportunity to remind America about those people on national television when he has to claw for every chance to get that message out was not one he could, or should, neglect.
Hell, I could. Damn straight I could. I've been down, but I'm not down anymore. I have times when I have to struggle, but I'm not hurting for a meal, or wondering how I'm going to get to work all week. But the people who have it worse than I do, sometimes MUCH worse, are of concern to me. Because I've been there, hanging on to the edge of solvency by my fingernails, or losing my grip and falling into the abyss. I know all too well what it feels like to be there. And I DO NOT forget. I don't forget what it's like to be an abused child, or a confused and lost teenager. And I do not forget what it's like to have nothing, and not know where your next meal is coming from.
I do not forget.
It's the passion for the cause of those far less unfortunate than himself that has drawn me to Edwards from the beginning. I would've sworn that no one who had that much money could ever pour so much of himself into the fight to give them a voice. But I would have been wrong.
I can see that he cares about these issues when he speaks. And that, more than anything, draws my support. I can't send him money, but I can use every resource in my power to echo what he's saying, to try to make others care as much as he seems to about the cause he champions.
His fight is my fight. He's got a national stage from which to wage it. I do not. But I will use what I do have to keep his message from being marginalized. Not for him, but for the faceless and forgotten for whom he speaks.
And that's MY bottom line.
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