Short personal update
It has been some time since my last post. I have returned to work after almost a year and a half of being away. It is definitely good to be back and to be busy in a totally different way than last year, but it’s still quite an adjustment. When I took stock of where I am now as opposed to where I was a year ago, I couldn’t help but acknowledge that Jay, while certainly the most significant loss of this year, was not the only one. 
I also lost two cats (the first in January, the second in August), and my son and his dog moved to New York. Both my life and my house were feeling rather empty after all that, and I decided that I needed a little more companionship in my daily life. Enter Sadie, who was adopted at 12 weeks old, and after only one week I can’t imagine life without her. Another dramatic change in my lifestyle, but a very uplifting one. She’s endearing, very sweet tempered, and makes me laugh.
Now to more important matters…
It is not my intention that this blog become a political platform, but on the other hand I can’t help but view the world through the lens of my personal and professional ethics and values and this necessarily influences how I see and interpret what’s going on around me. As a social worker my ethical responsibilities require me to attend to the needs of the most vulnerable among us, and this often means advocating for the interests of people many of us are willing to “throw away” and ignore. In my world I am confronted daily with the realities of the systemic abuses and corporate excesses that oppress whole populations of people and create insurmountable barriers to the successes our Constitution says we all have a right to attain.
So it is against that backdrop that I confess that I’m a bit of a political junkie. I teach social policy, community organizing and advocacy at my university. I devour the news each night to find out the latest on the political scandals of the day or week, admittedly in the hopes that finally Congress will see the light about our current President and begin the process of removing him from office.
While I think I understand at a certain level why people may have voted for this President in 2016, I have little understanding why many of those same people are rabid in their continuing support for him now. The wholesale demonization by this administration of various groups of people at various times, while at the same time making exceptions for those close to the administration, is exceedingly frustrating to watch. Where are the core values so vital to our democracy; where is the integrity, respect, honor and authenticity that we have a right to expect from our leaders? What does the naked ambition, rampant lying, overt stealing, and unethical and contemptuous behavior say to the American people and the world? Are the policies you may support that are coming out of this administration worth the sort of moral compromise that requires men and women of integrity to overlook time and time again behavior that would have been career ending for anyone else? Why does this particular President and his cronies get a free pass every time?
I am deeply concerned about our collective futures, so I have been attentive to the succession of indictments, guilty pleas and guilty verdicts that have been hitting the headlines of late, and am struck by the extreme double standard when it comes to how the President talks about his former friends versus the way he talks about others. How is it that he (and so many others) so easily turn a blind eye to the millions of dollars stolen from the taxpayers through their fraudulent and evasive money making strategies? White collar crimes such as the ones making the news are so much more dangerous to democracy (and, dare I say, world peace) and impact all of us in a much bigger way than the petty drug crimes and misdemeanors that make up such a large percentage of our prison and jail populations these days.
On the one hand there is Eric Garner, who was simply trying to make his way in the world as best he could, but died from excessive police harassment and violence when he was on the street selling loose cigarettes to passersby. The difference between how he was treated and how we generally treat wealthy criminals is stunning, and most of us don’t realize or appreciate the extent of what this disparity costs us as a country when neighborhoods and families are decimated so thoroughly while the bigger criminals operate with impunity and little to no accountability. Investigative journalist and writer Matt Taibbi chronicled these differences in detail in two books that are worth a look: The Divide and I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street.
Then there is Paul Manafort, an interesting case that illustrates the concerns I raised above about power and the abuse of that power. As The Atlantic reported, he spent his life doing exactly what he wanted in order to make the money he needed to support his lavish lifestyle and he didn’t give a hoot how he did it or who he hurt or what laws he broke along the way. While I won’t pretend to know all the details and intrigue surrounding his life and ambitions, what I do know is that he pursued his goals with abandon, believing that he would never get caught, and even if he did he would never be convicted or otherwise held to account. 
This confidence in his own personal supremacy and his arrogance and perceived invulnerability directly led to his decision to go to a jury trial. Did he think the jury wouldn’t have the guts to convict him? Or did he think he could pay off enough jurors to get a hung jury or a full aquittal? Hard to tell what was in his mind (or how he tried to “game” the system), but I’ve no doubt he was surprised when he actually heard the words “guilty” and discovered that, in the end, he’s mortal like the rest of us.
A man like Paul Manafort reminds me of some of the defendants I represented when I was practicing criminal law many moons ago. They were always genuinely surprised when I told them they would likely have to go to prison and it was just a question of how long. They couldn’t believe it, and thought that there was no way they could be found guilty or get sent away. I was representing soldiers at that time, sometimes career enlisted men and women, or officers who thought they were above the law and didn’t want to believe that a 20-something newbie lawyer like me knew more than they did about accountability and the law. Paul Manafort came from a world of payoffs and corruption, where there was always a way out of any jam and a guaranteed return to the life of greed and lawbreaking. Until there wasn’t. How many other Paul Manaforts are out there still running amok?
Contrast the Paul Manafort mindset with the attitudes we see these same people display toward their fellow criminals. They have no tolerance for what I would call “poverty crimes” and no interest in fixing a system that preys disproportionately on the poor and especially people of color.
There is much suffering in the world and we don’t have to look very far to see it. Too often we blame the poor for their own suffering. We do this all the time when it comes to poverty and our government’s social safety net, or welfare. We justify taking away or putting limits on benefits like food stamps or subsidized housing, for example, by telling ourselves that it is their own fault when people can’t get ahead in the world, or can’t find a job, or suffer from an addiction or mental illness that prevents them from living productive lives. 
Because we choose to believe that they made poor choices and caused their own suffering, we let ourselves off the hook when it comes to taking an interest in the circumstances and chain of events that led them to those choices. Which then relieves us of the responsibility to help them lift themselves up and out. When decades of oppressive policies leave the only economic path open to them an illegal one and all that it entails, we could try to remedy those policies and create real opportunities for meaningful education and economic advancement. Instead, we round them up and drive them off the cliff into the oblivion that is our criminal justice system, a vicious cycle where they never escape and whole families and their communities are destroyed. Are these folks really more dangerous to society than the white collar criminals who wear nice suits, hang out with lobbyists and world leaders, yet are stealing millions of dollars daily while nobody seems to care?
Of course, in order to ignore the plight of the poor, or the mentally ill, or the historically oppressed, we necessarily must also ignore all the intentionally placed roadblocks that prevent most poor families from improving their lives. By framing the occasional successes as the norm, not the exception, we tell ourselves that everyone could be successful if they just try hard enough. 
Unfortunately, this is a terrible fallacy that we rely on to give ourselves permission to support policies that make it even more difficult for people already living extremely difficult lives. We use ourselves as the benchmark – “if I can do it then anyone can” when in fact our own personal histories and hardships bear no resemblance to the people we are comparing ourselves to.
Acknowledging the reality of suffering and the deep harm that it causes, means that we must then try to do something about it. That’s where The Kindness Continuum kicks in. Accepting the collective responsibility of governments, societies, and individuals coming together can indeed make a difference in people’s lives. What might the world look like if we put the same effort into eradicating disease and poverty that we put into locking people up or building up the military industrial complex or looking the other way while corporate leaders run roughshod over their employees, the government and the environment? Why can’t we harness that kind of commitment and power for more mundane purposes that would have even larger, positive effect on the world?
Where do the Eric Garners of the world fit on The Kindness Continuum? What about the Paul Manaforts of the world? And what about us and the way we respond to the events that give rise to both? Where would we place ourselves?