Cruel but brilliant
by David Atkins
In case you missed it, this piece from The Onion was one of their best ever:
A survey released Wednesday by researchers at the University of North Carolina found that despite the many challenges they face, the nation's lowest-income individuals are nonetheless thankful they don't have to endure the unique hardships of the nation's long-suffering middle class.
According to the report, the 46 million Americans who fall below the federal poverty line, though struggling mightily, are at least glad they don't have to live up to some rapidly vanishing American dream of advancing in their career, making more money, and improving their lifestyle, the way their middle-income counterparts do.
"The unrealistic expectations and false hope they experience must be unbearable," Camden, NJ hotel clerk Allison Jacobsen told researchers, noting that while her $22,000 annual salary barely covers her rent and groceries each month, at least she doesn't operate under the flawed assumption that her situation will ever improve. "A life spent constantly stressing out over a dead-end job or struggling to pay off a fixed 30-year mortgage on a continuously depreciating three-bedroom townhouse? It's horrific."
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"I can't even fathom what it would be like to drag yourself to work every morning actually believing that someday it will all pay off," said Bronx, NY substitute teacher David McGrath, who along with his wife and 2-year-old son survives on food stamps. "Or to practically kill yourself for a job promotion or meager raise while under the delusion that you can work your way to the top. People waste the best years of their life doing that, and it's a goddamn tragedy."
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Researchers also found that people who were once part of the nation's middle class experience a profound sense of relief upon moving down the country's socioeconomic ladder and finding themselves on the bottom rung.
"Honestly, I can't tell you how much better I feel these days," said 42-year-old former IT technician Ryan Tunnicliffe, who last April lost his job and, subsequently, his house. "Just knowing I no longer have to strive for something completely and utterly out of reach is such a load off my mind."
"I'm poor, and I'm going to stay poor," Tunnicliffe continued while staring at his $320 weekly unemployment check. "It's been very liberating."
Reached for comment, several members of the nation's upper class said they are "equally grateful" to have been spared the hardships of the middle class.
All dark comedy aside, this feeling is all too real. The left and right have dealt with it in different ways. Part of the left has re-adopted the "small/simple is beautiful" ethic as a way of dealing of loss of standard of living, while part of the right has eagerly embraced hardship and humiliation as a moral or religious test in service of the rightful, hierarchical order of things.
But most people who aren't on the activist edges aren't so keen to rationalize away and embrace that slow decline into lower expectations. They get angry. They're going to blame someone year after year until it gets better, or until there is a violent breakdown. The only question is when it will happen--and who will get the blame.
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