By the Book

There is a particular sort of awfulness to how we let bureaucracy kill one another. We watch as our brothers and sisters are hung up by red tape and left to hang for all to see. 

We watch as they drown beneath manufactured debt – property taxes on homes and land they own. 

We evict people from homes they, again, own. 

We create rules and laws that confuse and fluster people and make it so that the system is so big that it’s nearly impossible to navigate or change. 

And we think it’s good.

And we need systems. 

We need rules. 

We need laws. 

We need those things because it helps bring sense to the chaos that fills so much of life. 

We should never sacrifice people though for the system. 

We should never let them lose their dreams because of rules we can change. 

We are so tied to having one set of rules for everyone, one set of guides, and we think it works. 

It doesn’t. 

Look at our schools and you see that. 

There are haves and have nots. 

There are kids that have access to technology and sports programs and arts programs and you have kids that only manage to survive because there are a few social safeguards to try to keep them from drowning. 

And now you have politicians that want those safeguards removed and if kids are ‘lost’ then so be it. 

That’s what happens. 

They just need to…all together now…bootstrap it. 

The idea that sports success or academic success can save you, can give you a leg up, is a farce because that still means oceans of kids are lost because they don’t know how to read, or write, or excel at things. 

Some kids are just trying to survive. 

And they need help. 

One size doesn’t fit all. 

With anything. 

It’s heartbreaking but people don’t care. 

People don’t loathe the idea that SOMEONE in the world is getting something they don’t have. 

They are getting a break they didn’t get. 

AND DIDN’T NEED. 

And we don’t care that the rich get over on us, no, that’s different. 

We care that other people like us are getting things we don’t have. 

There isn’t a care for other Americans or even other Christians. 

There’s the credo of ‘Imma get mine’ and ‘Eff them’ and ‘Work for a living’. 

This doesn’t mean we decide some people get a free pass.

That they can live ‘rent’ free in the world. 

No. 

It means that we help one another out and work together not to sacrifice everyone. 

In Flint we recently had something that is shattering. 

Hundreds of homes were sold off en masse by the county. 

Homes people had lived in for generations but had gotten behind on their property taxes. Suddenly people’s property was sold for pennies on the dollar to a company from another state and were told that they could rent their homes…for way more than the value of the property. 

These are homes they owned and are now being told to move out or to become renters. 

That’s insane. 

It’s evil. 

But this is the system. 

This is the country. 

We’d rather kick people out of their homes if they owe money than to go and make sure they keep their land and work with them to keep it. 

Flint is the last place that should want carpet bagging companies to come in and buy up land and property to ‘manage’ it from afar because we have done this. 

We have seen it. 

It doesn’t work.
These companies don’t care about anything other than making profits off of the poor. 

Bleeding them dry and moving on. 

There is no one size fits all. 

You need services that work for the people, that serve the people, and that look at the whole and not just the parts. Does it serve the greater purpose of the nation to have more poor and homeless people?

No.

So you need to teach them, we need to rehabilitate them, we need to help them.

We need to foster hope and not despair.

We can’t let predatory lenders and companies decide the fate of the nation as they buy and sell the souls of the people.

We need to work with one another and find a better way. 

It’s not socialism, it’s not any ‘ism’, it’s just a matter of caring enough about people to not want to watch them drown. 

We forget that by making more poor people, more homeless people, more people who have nothing to lose that we’re not bettering the nation, we’re weakening it. 

But we don’t care because we’d rather have them suffer than to know they got something we didn’t. 

That’s what it’s about. 

That’s all it’s about. 

And all the while we overlook those people in our families, in our circle, in our hearts that hit hard times too and without a hand, without a life preserver may have been lost. 

How many people hit a rough patch and were utterly lost?

How many continue to have that happen?

And yet we think that it is good, that is just, and that is just the way it is. 

And that’s the most disgusting thing of all. 

…c…