Officials say up to 10,000 people may have died on Leyte island ... I was just talking with Louie Cancio about Typhoon Haiyan, which fortunately did not harm his family in the Philippines (I became friends with Louie over a decade ago at Indiana University, I now rent the upstairs portion of a Jersey City house from his father). The discussion highlighted how little I know about the archipelago and where towns/cities are located and also led to a typically American realization: We cant fully comprehend the magnitude of suffering around the globe. 9/11 took about 3,000 lives. Even today its a scar in our collective memory that wont go away. Now imagine a storm that takes more than three times as many lives (on just one island!) in a nation that has less than a third of our population. And guess what? It wont remain front page news for as long as 9/11, even though its arguably a more catastrophic event. 10 years after 9/11 a Brown study estimated that 132,000 civilians had died in Iraq and Afghanistan. 44 times as many people as we lost on 9/11. But most Americans give it very little thought. Should our vengeance have no limit? Those lives dont matter as much? I grew up in a suburban white bubble, the same bubble people occupy today when their biggest outrage is that they havent received their iPhone 5S yet. I progressed from the silliness of conspicuous consumption (In 7th-8th grade people were mocked for not having a video game system in their household or the latest Air Jordans - its a peculiar kind of sickness in suburbia) to worrying about very real things in my 20s and 30s, i.e. the security of my job (Ive already lost two of them - one for performance reasons, the other via corporate restructuring), having a roof over my head and healthcare (although my healthcare - via UMR - pays for almost nothing ... so I might as well be uninsured). As rough as things have been for many Americans during the Great Recession, theres still another tier of suffering we havent tapped into yet. We dont have wars erupting over water scarcity. Were not being killed or traumatized by drone strikes. Our children are not ravaged by malaria. One in six Americans is indeed experiencing food insecurity but weve managed to marginalize those people as moochers and takers, to push them off to the side so we dont have to confront their desperation and feel any responsibility to them. Thats a product of the privileged bubble - if you dont know anyone from these households its easier to ignore them (and pretend that $29 a week in SNAP benefits is the cause of our massive budget deficits). Thats what gated communities and doormen are for ... to keep us from acknowledging reality because that reality would make it tougher to enjoy tonights Netflix selection. Ive listened to bankers who are upset that they wont get a bonus after the government bailed them out, six figure earners complaining about the cost of welfare queens (ripping just about every page out of the discredited book of Ronald Reagan) ... I know these people. Theres a shocking distance between the upper crusts sense of self entitlement and relatively worry free existence and the reality of how most people live in this country, the people they dont interact with unless theyre leaving a tip. When Joe Lieberman thinks that a US Senators salary is not much beyond middle class, we have a serious problem understanding how other people live in this country. And when you take that to a global level, the gap is even more dramatic. I thought a lot about the Philippines today because I have friends from the Philippines. Id like to think that the recipe for empathy is being a global citizen who seeks out new friends in every corner of the world but Im not even sure that would work. The new American mentality seems to be, Thats your problem, not mine. A nation where we only look after ourselves is not exactly to my liking.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 00:15:37 +0000
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