net worth of various senators listed here. further proof that campaign finance reform is needed now: those best able to afford a campaign are probably the least likely to be able to represent us for the same reason. what do i have in common with someone who is worth $171,000,000? nothing. a million is a serious buffer against reality. 171 million even more so, and not just 171 times the buffer. i figure that every million after the first affords an exponential measure of distance, although you'd ever think so talking to the rich, not as if i'll ever know. that's the thing, isn't it? where all the trouble comes from. one can sympathize with the plight of another, talk about it, but there's no knowing the plight of another unless one's been in it himself. this is pure conjecture here --actually, it isn't; i married into a family with money once, so i know how wide the gap between an actual problem and a perceived one can be for the rich -- but i'm hardpressed to think of anything other than death that money can't help buy a way out of. scandal. imprisonment. even illness is much easier with money. everything is easier with money. which begs the question, what frame of reference can a millionaire use when confronted with a constituent who says she cannot afford groceries? what can that possibly mean?
i have a little cousin in portugal. she was four when last i saw her. she heard me speaking english and wanted to know what language it was. "inglês," angelo said. this was a wholly unsatisfying reply to her. she walked away annoyed, waving us english speakers off with a flutter of her hand that fell very promptly to her hip. "might as well be chinese to me," she said, in portuguese.
our senators might as well be speaking chinese. seems like a hell of a gamble to me. so why is this acceptable to anyone?
it's the same logic that got lucky louie got cancelled and that makes people take a pressing interest in britney spears: people don't like reality, not really. they don't want to see it represented. people like the meltdowns and spectacle of reality shows, but that's doctored reality, and nobody likes reality straight. it is ugly, unflattering. i remember doing a project in AP american history juxtaposing busby berkeley stills with pictures by dorothea lange. they were contemporaries, after all. busby berkely won. why? reality is depressing. so why on earth would we want it in our politics?
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I AGREE. 1) No one wants to face reality, which is why society is so interested in Brittany Spears and the majority of people read tabloids before they would even think of picking up a novel. 2) Millionaires have nothing in common with poor people and cannot relate. That is what is screwing over our political system so badly. You can talk about the system in the abstract, but unless you lived it, you really don't have a clue. It's like executives who never did the grunt labor--they always end up making bad decisions that make everyone's job harder b/c they don't know what actually works "on the field." I found that working for Java City at UR: they kept "updating" things and making them worse and worse, and we, the workers, had to enforce and deal with the impracticality of it all. Ridiculous. All for $7.50 per hour that is going straight back to the government, who is MAKING money on the fact that we have to pay 45 grand a year to get an education by charging us interest on the loans we are forced to take out. Incredible.
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