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| panda-like calm through fiction | |||||||||
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Real American Dreams
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“We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation.” – Vice Presidential Nominee, Sarah Palin
I live in a small town, and I was even leaning towards voting Republican, and was excited they’d finally found an experienced woman who could be President, and even I knew that statement was dumb as hell. It took me a while, but I came to realize that Sarah Palin isn’t fit to be President- of course, that realization puts me in line with 71% of Americans, and even 56% of Republicans- though I’ve always considered myself an independent. I’m 5’4”, about 150 lbs, which is right on the line of the US average; I’m about as Jane Sixpack as you can get. And I like statistics: that may actually be the most atypical thing about me. I live with my husband, Jesse. We don’t have kids, and statistically, we’re about as likely as not to ever has some- which is kind of how we feel about the prospect ourselves. We’re both white, like 66% of the country (not that I think that should matter, but statistically it does). Jesse was raised Catholic, but I grew up Protestant, like 51% of Americans, and since there isn’t a Catholic church in town we attend mine. I drive a school bus. My husband is a history teacher at the high school. I’m underemployed about an hour a day, five hours a week, and combined with the disparity of our wage-structures, I bring home about 60% of what he does, which is statistically about right. Of course, some of that is because my husband is more educated than average; more than the 52.5% of people have “some college,” including me. We “own” our own home, which is to say we make payments on it to the bank instead of making rent payments to a landlord; our equity is about 50%, which is on par with the rest of the country, though we hope to pay it off before 30 years, and make double payments whenever we can. I spend, on an average day, an hour more than my husband working around the house, but I’m lucky: he knows there’s a discrepancy, and he tries to pick up the slack. I at least think I’m hardworking, and I’m very pro-America. Like most Americans, I was for the stimulus before I was against it, and might have remained against it, until it saved some jobs at my husband’s school- jobs that would have been cut to balance the budget; the stimulus saved some 16,000 education jobs in California alone. I don’t know if those jobs were worth what they cost us, but I hope they were; my husband knows one or two of them, and told me it’s harder to put a price to it when you know the person whose job was saved. And I’m scared about healthcare. I know that rumors about jail sentences and death panels were so much nonsense, but the insurance reform bill is enormous. It’s shaping a huge chunk, maybe a huger chunk than Congress has ever touched at any one time, of our economy. But I also know that something needed to be done. So I hope that the reform that passed into law at least gets us started in that right direction, which puts me with 48% of Americans who agree (about 40% opposed). I don’t like abortion, but I don’t want to talk about dead babies or women’s rights; I want to know, for a fact, what would lead to fewer abortions. Is it a policy of comprehensive sexual education, including condom use, coupled with insurance coverage for birth control, or is prohibition the way to go? I’m asking because there were abortions before they were made legal, so we can’t honestly expect the number to zero out. I know it’s not possible to quantify human misery, but without trying, I don’t know how we’ll ever know what’s the right thing to do. Not that politicians can ever cop to that. It’s been said that politics is the art of controlling reality, but that’s not true; reality stays the same, we just look at it through different colored glasses. There is a right answer- even if I don’t know for sure what it is. Our congress usually has approval ratings in the teens and twenties, but what's odd about that is that people tend to have fairly positive views on their own elected representatives. I can’t help but think it’s the converse of the old saying, so that the grass is more rancid on the other side. Maybe it’s just people being upset that no matter how they vote, at the end of the day their leaders only make up a small part of the Congress; essentially, the future of the country is out of their hands. But I don’t know. I hate politics, I think because I hate being lied to, and all politicians, whether they intend to or not, lie. But Sarah Palin was right about one thing: there are two Americas, and that’s why I said earlier that statistically ethnicity matters. Minorities are about half as likely to get a college education (setting aside for a moment Asian Americans, who are actually 50% more likely than whites). Minorities are about a third less likely to own a home; that’s important, because home equity can provide a cushion against economic uncertainty, or flexibility when it comes to making other large purchases, whether it’s a new car or the next generation’s education. But the most insidious thing about these achievement gaps is that minority groups are also growing faster, to the point that by 2050 minorities are expected to be in the majority. Those two Americas are going to converge at some point, and if those negative trends continue, we’ll all be living in a less-educated and less-wealthy America. My hope, and I share it with another very prominent American, is that regardless of our races we will all be able to be a part of the America I’ve been privileged enough to enjoy. More than anything, I want America to stay a good country. It has faults, and flaws, but at its core it is still a land of free, brave people. Now I don’t know if my husband and I will ever have kids, but if we do, I want to give them the same America I had- though I wouldn’t mind it if we gave them a better one. |
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