Family Value(s) Meal

I triple dog dare somebody to go and try the new ‘vegetarian slider’ at White Castle.

I’m not saying it will definitely kill you… Just that you might want to hug your loved ones extra tight before setting out on your culinary adventure. I’m thinking ‘plant-like substance’ is probably a more apt description for this new sandwich. Just as ‘meat-like substance’ would probably be a better moniker for the original.

Sometimes, a thing just is what it is. You can try to call it something else, or re-package it—maybe add green food coloring? –but it is still the same greasy, slimy thing . That may or may not kill you.

This week, Gov. Brownback opened the first legistlative session of the new year with a speech about child poverty and family values.

When politicians start talking about poverty, we get hopeful. It starts to sound like a conversation that might yield something life giving, and good for us all. But then… well, sometimes a thing just is what it is. A greasy, partly-congealed thing that may or may not kill us, after all.

After making devastating tax cuts, destroying the state’s economy, and wielding a giant meat cleaver above crucial services for children and families, Brownback now acknowledges that we have a BIG problem with child poverty in our state, and says it needs to be addressed. But he does not seem to take any personal responsibility  for the state of child welfare. Nor is he promising to change policies or implement new programs that would ultimately benefit the youngest and most vulnerable among us. Instead, his great plan is FAMILY VALUES.

When I first heard what-all  he said about our state’s “moral and cultural problem,” I sputtered and stammered and found it hard to complete a sentence. I’m still finding it hard to complete a sentence. Just… the nerve! I can’t even… For the love of… how many different ways can you blame poor people for being poor? Without acknowledging that the system you created is KEEPING them poor?

See? Complete sentences. They’re failing me. It’s not pretty.

And furthermore, why do poor-shaming politicians always call on the language of “personal responsibility,” while never claiming any of their own? (There. There’s a complete sentence.)

When politicians get into this sort of posturing, (remember when Paul Ryan said we had a major “cultural problem” in America’s inner-cities?) many assume that they misunderstand the root causes of poverty. I don’t buy that. More often, they talk like this because politicians have learned that the posturing gets them elected. Waxing poetic about morals and values has become code language for all sorts of toxic ideology. It somehow alludes to a long litany of pretend social ills, including but not limited to: gay marriage; attacks on “religious freedom;” liberal women with business cards; dangerous black people who are not yet in jail; and a liberal government that wants to come take your guns away.   And suddenly, lots of folks have forgotten that they are poor, or that their neighbors are poor. They are voting for ‘family values’ to keep all the boogey-men away.

I’m not saying that Ryan, Brownback and company are geniuses… but they are smart enough. They understand just fine the root causes of poverty. What they also understand is the dramatic structural transformations it would take to change the system. And in their circles, justice doesn’t sell. So they sing the song that got them there.

Sometimes, a thing just is what it is. You can tell by the grease stains.

In any case, the Brownback administration remains committed to the cause of ‘protecting the traditional family’ in Kansas, regardless of the economic (and environmental) crises that their leadership has wrought in the meantime. I know because I wrote them a letter. I asked how they could continue to spend tax-payer dollars and hours an ideological mirage, when real people’s lives are being affected by their disastrous policies. They, in return, assured me that this is what the voters want—to ‘protect marriage’ in Kansas–and so that is what they will do.

Well. And have we weighed the cost of economic hardship in a marriage? Have we reckoned with the toll it takes on a relationship when a single income—sometimes even two incomes—cannot pay the bills? When childcare costs are out of reach, healthcare is inaccessible, and continued education is increasingly a luxury for the very wealthy?

To call  poverty a “values” issue, in this sense, is not only a backhanded way of blaming the victim… It bears the dangerous implication that affluence is a sign of right-living, while poverty is the wages of sin. That nuance creeps into everything. It changes how we see the world, how we practice compassion, and yes, how we vote. It dehumanizes the struggle of not having choices, opportunities, or the basic securities of food and shelter, and turns real people into issues and talking points.

But if you want to say that poverty is a morality problem, I can get behind that. It is positively amoral for rich and powerful people to ignore their own culpability in matters of systemic imbalance, while demanding ‘responsibility’ from everyone else. It is deplorable to beat the drum for “family,” while cutting the services that families need to thrive. It is abhorrent to speak from a place of wealth and authority about all the ways poor people could better themselves, while simultaneously making it harder to go to college or get a job than it is to buy a gun.

I wish that we could take morality language out of politics altogether. But if we can’t—and I think we know by now that we can’t—then it’s time to turn real issues into a values vote. Time we all start quoting scripture, answer posturing with posturing, and criminalize gross excess the same way  we’ve managed to criminalize poverty.

We can’t expect political figures to change that narrative for us. Some things just are what they are, and they’re never going to be good for you. Or anybody. You can reshape and repackage and find new ways to market it… but it is always going to be the same old greasy mass of stuff.  On a steamed bun.

Real change–just like real food–comes from the ground.