A Terrorism of Indifference

"I would invite anyone in Washington to come look my patients in the eye and tell them that waiting for a flight is a bigger problem than traveling farther and waiting longer for chemotherapy."  ~  Dr. William Nibley, of United Cancer Specialists in Utah.

It came home to roost this past week.  The IT is sequestration.  You remember sequestration don’t you?  It’s only been about 8 weeks since President Obama and Congress foisted the sequester on the folks they’re paid to serve, and for the most part it’s been almost forgotten; by the public, by the media and most of all by the men and women who are responsible for it.  Perfectly content and comfortable with sequestration conveniently out of the news, they were no doubt equally disappointed when it came back to the headlines with something of a vengeance.

The overwhelming emphasis has been on the cuts to the Federal Aviation Agency and the furloughing of air traffic controllers causing flight delays and inconveniencing air travelers. Television news has fed us a daily diet of film showing long lines of fuming, frustrated air travelers and “experts” have issued dire warning that these delays will harm business and the economy.  That’s right; BUSINESS and the ECONOMY.  No more need be said on the matter.  Well, Harry Reid had something to say on the matter as he categorized the air traffic delays as the “first taste of the pain of sequestration.”  This may be Senator Reid’s first taste of pain, largely due to the headlines focusing on he and his fellow knaves, but there have been plenty of other Americans who have been gnawing on the pain for some time now. 

In Massachusetts, 45,000 folks who have been unemployed for more than six months are seeing a $50 dollar a week drop in unemployment benefits.  Food banks across the nation have been running on empty.  Detroit Medical Center has laid off 300 employees, representing 2% of its full time staff immediately impacting both the employees and patient care. 

Nationwide, 140,000 families receiving housing assistance known as Section 8 will either see cuts to their benefits or, in some cases, may lose their benefits entirely.  Consider that the average income for families receiving Section 8 is $12,500 and sequestration could increase monthly rent by $200.  The danger is that these cuts will force more people into the streets putting increased pressure on other services for the poor. 

Due to sequestration cuts, cancer clinics are turning away thousands of Medicare patients.  According to The Washington Post, “doctors at the Charleston Cancer Center in South Carolina began informing patients weeks ago that, due to the sequester cuts, they would soon need to seek treatment elsewhere.”  What do you do when your doctor says, “I can’t treat you anymore?”  

In Sacramento California, low income schools will have to make due with fewer materials and teachers and larger class sizes.  Academic support programs for low income families and homeless students are looking at cuts. 

(A listing of sequestration cuts can be found at The Center For American Progress)

But none of these have been lead stories or made headlines.  Hell, the grounding of the Blue Angels created more news.  You see empty food banks aren't as flashy as F-18s. Homeless kids aren't as “sexy” as sound bites from indignant air travelers.  Section 8 families?  They're painted with the broad brush of being the shiftless slackers who trash homes and who, along with students and the homeless don't vote in great enough numbers to matter, don't have the representation of slick lobbyists and as a result don't get a second glance in Washington.  At least not when it comes to sequestration because all was quiet on the DC front until media radar locked on to air traffic. 

The leadership diddled and dawdled, tossing the issue back and forth like a live grenade until a convergence of events thawed the usually glacial Congress into action.  Those events were lines of angry business travelers, the specter of damage to the economy and an impending Congressional recess sending lawmakers home to play face the music in front of an angry constituency.  And so with the friendly skies once again friendly everyone is happy.  Right?  Hardly.  Remember those poor, sick and underserved folks?  They’re still screwed and very few folks are willing to speak up for them.  Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee stood up, saying "We've got to save the traveling public but I ask the question about 5,000 children in Texas that will lose Head Start or the millions of seniors or our military families that will lose the support because we've got the sequester."

This is a sad, sad commentary on what stirs action in Americans, from our leaders to the media to all of us folks sitting in the comfort of our living rooms sipping our mojitos, fiddling with our iPhones and suddenly deciding that sequestration is a bad thing because we’ve been inconvenienced at the airport.  We aren’t incited by the plight of the faceless that live in cars or in THOSE neighborhoods which we diligently avoid.  It’s the airport lines, the grounded Blue Angels and the impact on BUSINESS.

I believe that there is an inherent good in Americans. We can, when inspired, be concerned and caring, helping out and digging deep as we did in the aftermath of Sandy Hook and the terrorism of Boston.  When madmen and natural disasters wreak their havoc, the media offers 24 hour coverage, social networks are buzzing and politicians race for photo ops and an opportunity to showcase their “compassion.”  The American people are suddenly galvanized, roll up their sleeves and open their checkbooks.  Yet there is an ongoing contradiction to that inherent goodness because people perish every day, invisible and nameless; victims of another kind of terrorism, a silent terrorism that is repeated daily; a terrorism of indifference and contempt perpetrated by us and by our leaders.  Americans perish from want, from homelessness, from hunger, from untreated illness, from discrimination, from ignorance and perhaps saddest of all, from abject loneliness.  They are the ghosts among us; insignificant; unworthy of a visit of condolence from a politician much less a mention on the front page.  They’re never the viral topics on Facebook and Twitter.  But they do perish and in greater numbers than from bombings, mass shooting and natural disasters.  Researchers from Columbia University found that in 2000, approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States were attributable to low levels of education, 176,000 to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty.

For weeks the sequestration, that clearly has affected our most vulnerable has been absent from the news.  That is until airport lines titillated the media and goosed Washington.  It is in itself a telling headline about our societal values. 

Minority Whip Steny Hoyer's hopeless plea, "We ought not to be mitigating the sequester's effect on just one segment, when children, the sick, our military and many other groups who will be impacted by this irresponsible policy are left un-helped," is in stark contrast against the political reality from  Oklahoma Congressman Tom Cole who said that the FAA fix “lowers the pressure considerably” on Congress to roll back the sequester.  So when the lines thin out and airline schedules are back to normal the President and Congress can return sequestration and the marginalized to the back burner.  It's something we should all be very ashamed of.