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Sunday, August 28, 2011

My submission to the Pasadena Weekly

America’s Fallen State

By Jane Hoffman

When I voted for Obama, I did it with tears, not a political scorecard. He wasn’t even my first choice. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in all her intellectual cadence, could not pull it off. Three years later, I am very self-aware that hope could ever be manifested into concrete terms, suffice to say, I may now get free health care that I have to pay for vs. the free version I get due to poverty. Since Schwarzenegger, cut out my vision and dental care, I am somewhat relieved that if I go blind or my teeth fall out, no one can blame me for double dipping, but my son will have the good sense to carry on.

For me, a transitional mother at age 50 with a Master’s in Political Science and an income of $10,000 a year is a paradoxical grip on my limited horizontal vision for America. In my socialist diatribe, I don’t fully believe I deserve to earn more than 30k a year and I feel guilty for still depending on medical and low income housing. However, I sacrificed food stamps and cash aid for the higher good because I swallowed the mantra of Larry Elder of KABC that I was a “victocrat” on all levels. The airwaves demonstrated to me a sense of national purpose that manifested itself beyond my economic condition to make a Jeremy Bentham greatest good sacrifice for the greatest number.

Finding my way into shiny shoes of success would take more than a polished resume and glad handling handshakes at this point. I haven’t beaten my butt down the corridor of endless job search in America. I’ve been hiding at the University getting a teaching credential, my third degree. Why? I don’t lack compassion for hard work. I often spend 12 hours days between my menial teacher assistant position at an adult school, student teaching and driving my son home between shifts. I am one of the growing numbers of Americans, I suspect, who fear success from a money standpoint and believe that success is money ordained. That puts me in the category of socialist impaired, because redistribution is something I believe in.

On a grander scale, I don’t blame Obama or look for a new charlatan to resurrect me or my son’s future to a greater America. I fully believe the system cannot and has not worked and the only cohesive branch of government is the justice branch that can still pull presidential election coups and landscape social ideology. I coincide with reality of the post-modern cynicism that American entities of economic structure and government application are mismanaged, corrupt and ineffective. Corporate America does farm out jobs overseas, steals common people’s investment money and few companies have American people’s future in their best interest.

I grew up privileged and subconsciously became poor. When my daughter died under private health care from a failed heart transplant on Christmas Day 1992, I did not scrutinize the public vs. private debate of better health care. I was married and somewhat secure. Today, I scrutinize the system as a whole, because I see chiseling being done on all levels of public service. When I drive down the street, I see welfare mothers walking to the Public Social Services building and know I am inherently better off than them. Pretty soon, I will have a credential where I can reinforce theoretical commonalities of American society into high school students’ minds. I know the clash of civilizations projected by Samuel Huntington is as real as his similar theory as searching for a strong American identity with no loyalty to the state. I’m loyal but my heart is disloyal because within structure I have stopped believing. That’s why I am taking the Math subtests for teaching, because California has a seriously declining capacity to hire new teachers, all the state budgets are maxed out and each party blames the demanding constituent needs on the individual electorate.

I will be one of those people who will be happy going back to a day care job at $10.00 an hour because belief in wealth has been co-opted by the greedy, self-pontificating and grafted into a system of winner wants all and blame everyone. Four more years will not eradicate federal and state problems, but I‘d like to think someone like Ron Paul, an outside the box thinker could make it right but outsourcing the hidden puppet masters. Would it take one person to change it all? Or only me, by getting a 50k plus job, then paying taxes only to be publicly notified that my contribution falls short of ultimate expectations.

Jane Hoffman

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