I confess: I broke my vow to never, ever watch John Stossel last night in order to see all my worst fears confirmed about the way things really work. I watched Privilege in America, or yet another Nip/Tuck Ugly Betty Devil Wore Prada HOWL about how pretty rich people have it better. Stossel hit all the highlights of the brewing revolt of the fairly rich (usually posing as the “middle class”), though he carefully avoided talking about the 35.9 million Americans living in poverty whose underpaid labor has long subsidized the middle class lifestyle.

I haven’t been around for a few weeks because I’m really tired. But let me offer this twist: I’m tired because of the efforts of well-meaning people who care about me. As usually, the conversation finally came around to why a bright, highly-skilled, and very nice person like me can’t get work in a booming economy. Since no one feels they can do anything about BushCo’s rigged numbers, the diagnosis was it’s all my fault: I don’t try hard enough, I’m not putting enough time and money to make myself attractive, and I’m not making a major effort to socialize.

After looking longingly at my various unfinished creative projects, my only source of happiness, I subordinated myself to the outlook of my friends who “know better” in that truthiness kind of way.

I made an effort to go out more and meet people. This is inevitably pretty painful for me, because bar-hopping is expensive for someone who has no regular income, and the historical record shows that the investment will be futile. I make very few friends this way - but I do get to go through a lot of rejection, a lot of people overtly leaving me off their lists for group gatherings even when I finally stop hoping to be embraced and ask to be included, and occasionally a few people who take serious advantage of my needy position.  

The reason this happens is that I’m seen as someone who has nothing to offer. This isn’t about my confidence or paranoia or any other psychological trickiness. It’s about the cold fact that I’m not that attractive, I don’t have money or other forms of class access, I don’t have many social connections or any influence, and whatever talent, skills, or intelligence I have don’t matter because they aren’t expressed in a social context. This isn’t the distorted perceptions of someone who lacks confidence. This isn’t paranoia. It’s the plain truth, and frankly it hurts me more when people try to pretend that this is something I can overcome with a little extra effort and a makeover.  

This reject-status doesn’t just mean I’m not invited to the party - it means I don’t even get the benefit of the relationships I pay for. I spent seven years of graduate school trying to get an advisor for my dissertation. I would go into professor’s office hours with a raft full of questions and potential contributions and avid interest in their work…to be met with icy silence - and the experience of listening to the next student be treated very differently while I gathered my books out in the hall. It wasn’t because I lacked merit or was deficient in my academic work - it was because I couldn’t bring the fellowships, connections, or any other sign of a “bright future” to those professors. I wore myself down trying to fight the administrator of my department who did everything in his power to make me drop out (and he eventually succeeded).

In fact, my harrowing experience with graduate school is why my hair was prematurely gray before I hit thirty. It’s from nutritional deficiencies related to several starvation periods because I didn’t have an advisor to sponsor me for work in my own department. This gray hair is now one of my “social deficits” that well-meaning people insist that I have to “fix” - i.e., though I’m usually out of work, I should be paying to have my hair professionally dyed and styled on a regular basis. Dishing out blame isn’t going to help anything - I just need to accept the fact that poor people who have had their looks hijacked by society have to pay more to meet society’s standards of attractiveness.

So after seeing my attempts at socializing weren’t really working, and just draining the little IRA I started while working and attempting to be a good citizen, my friends started getting antsy about what else I should do…i.e. my hair, my nails, my weight, my teeth, better-fitting clothes. When all their hinting didn’t lead to a shopping spree and a makeover, the hints became a “birthday present”. I got my hair professionally done, and now I have to put up with the constant pressure to keep paying to “keep it up”. I bet the “present” to get my nails done is just around the corner.

My hair does look better…but it’s not doing anything to change my life. It’s not getting me “over the top” in job interviews. The people who were repulsing me from their social circles are still repulsing me.

The thing is, I could have told my well-meaning friends this wouldn’t work in advance. I know because I’ve been through this over, and over, and over again. Everytime I meet someone new, they look at my sorry condition in life and try to figure out what I can do to help myself. This usually involves a regimen of (expensive) self-improvement and socialization. These people project what worked for them onto me. This usually comes with an urban legend about how a poor thirty-fourth cousin invested their last dollar in a nice suit, talked themselves up, engaged in some telephone-rounds scam where they told each person that someone else “wanted them” or “already agreed to it”, and ended up with a plum job/promotion/book deal/angel investor/etc.

Worst of all, these friends are demanding that I shut down my ability to learn from the past. As much as the U.S. has promoted a society of continuous learning, our dirty secret is we don’t want anyone learning anything if their experience tells them to stop jumping through the social hoops that work for the top ten percent. All of that good advice doled out to people to be confident, to network, to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and not let the bastards get them down…that’s all about defying the record of experience. Repressing your memories and functioning as if you haven’t experienced rejection doing the same thing ten times over is really, really hard work. It’s draining. I’d even propose this is a root cause of major depression.

However, I go through the motions because the well-meaning self-appointed life coach will be my friend as long as I do what they say. Pointing out the truth will be end of that relationship.

In sum, emulating privilege is not going to make me privileged. Not everyone can be privileged. Everyone is trying to optimize their social networks and maximize their filters for a good reason: the current social scenario is that you have to be privileged just to survive. However, the privileged cannot exist, by definition, without the not-privileged. And there’s not a virtuous circulation of privilege that gives everyone a turn, either. Privilege breeds more privilege and lack of privilege accumulates the problems that keep you down.

As the Victorians used to say, the Poor Will Always Be With Us.

Some people like me get filtered out. Automatically. It’s time to DEAL WITH IT.      

Everyone wants to be communicators and visionaries, to “raise awareness” of problems that everyone already knows about. All of this is tap-dancing around the core issue: redistribution of wealth. No one wants to talk about solutions because it involves dirty words like taxes and the image of Big Brother reaching into your wallet to filch your hard-earned money.

The only way to solve problems like mine, though, is to guarantee a minimum survival kit, including either the right to work or the right to be subsidized when you’re denied work. This is the point where people’s eyes usually glaze over and they start talking about Magical Macroeconomics. And that’s where the people who have not only fallen through the cracks, but are being held down there, start to hear nothing but, “Blah, blah, blah…” There is no dodging the ultimate truth: if there’s no work and no subsidy for not working, then people starve and die. All other options besides guaranteeing work or subsidies for no work make us a country of murderers. Dropping dead of stress and preventable disease is just as bad as holding a gun up to them and shooting them. Diffusing responsibility throughout  society changes nothing for a dead person.

Redistribution of wealth is not about ideology, it’s about fairness. It’s about giving back some of the hay you made out of your privileges, and doing it in a way that hits everyone’s pockets in a fair way. It’s about recognizing that our social system runs on privilege and filtering. And it’s about realizing that trying to force people to adjust their attitudes to compensate for homelessness or hunger is a form of mental torture. Let’s strive to be a better country than that, and vote for the political representatives who want us to be a better country than that.

This post refers to a tragic situation that occurred on Daily Kos - I’m not going to rehash it or add juicy links because I’m worried that the person used her real name, and I don’t want to add to her problems by feeding the Google monster. The first thing I saw when I revved up Daily Kos the next morning was another moving plea for help in the rec box, this time by a fairly high profile diarist. I truly empathized with his frustration at having to advocate for himself. His situation sounded horrific: I hope he will find the help he needs, and I’m grateful he’s using his writing gifts to illustrate the impact of a widespread problem on relatively helpless individuals.

The reason I wrote this follow up is I’m concerned that people have to be “amplified” to be heard, or otherwise they are allowed to fall through the cracks. Many people just on Daily Kos are living on the edge. I’ve been mostly unemployed (a little under-the-table work) for three years. I won’t go into my litany of problems (but feel free to read through my diaries if your curious) - the point is that I read diaries and comments from people in similar extreme situations every day. They, too, have been going without help they need for a while. They, too, have gotten to the point where they are going on the web and shouting their problems, hoping that someone, anyone will start listening. All the cries for help create a lot of noise, so people who could help just tune out.

It’s not just a matter of whether you are articulate enough to communicate your problems. I would say most people who participate in the blogosphere have above-average communication skills: they already have a major advantage over the significant portion of the population that can barely read, who can’t advocate for themselves or interest anyone in advocating for them, and are therefore invisible. At this point, though, you have to scream to be heard. You have to have a following as a writer (a “rec box regular”), media contacts, or access to mailing lists that will get the word out. You have to be willing to do shocking things, use profanity, wave huge multi-colored flags. If you want to hold on to your dignity as the one thing you have left, you’re out of luck. The message the world is sending is give us all a good show, or you aren’t working hard enough to deserve our help.

This state of affairs depresses the hell out of me. I mentioned in a comment before that I was wavering about voting for the Democratic candidate in my state (though the Republican in office is beyond awful), because he gave me the impression that keeping people from falling through the cracks wasn’t part of his platform. Good policy is important, and in theory progressive policy helps more people in the aggregate, but I want political representatives who are also willing to address the flaws in their policy. Instead of worrying that people might “come out of the woodwork” to take advantage of programs, a good political representative should be wondering what is going on with people while they’re still in the woodwork and being ignored. The implication is that the system is okay as long as people suffer and die quietly.

It’s up to us, the voters, to let our political representatives know that there are no “acceptable numbers” of people falling through the cracks. It’s up to us to tell our political representatives that we will vote for the one wants to help real people and seal the cracks instead of just orating about policy.

AllisonInSeattle made an important comment that this is one of the strengths of the Red State outlook. People in the largely red rural areas use small churches and civic organizations to try to cover the cracks, even though they often have meager resources as a community. In urban “Blue” areas, people are often isolated, and while they vote for the party that’s promising to do the right thing, that promise is often empty as far as individual lives are concerned.

In sum, I hope the efforts that Kossacks made that today to help people in dire straits will spark a larger discussion about how to reach out to the people who have no voice at all.

Both political parties know that a unifying core value expressed in a pithy slogan translates into votes. FDR’s Democrats had “The New Deal”; LBJ’s party advanced “The Great Society.” Republicans rally to “lower taxes,” “smaller government,” “strong defense,” and “family values.”

What core value, what slogan, could move us beyond the toxic standoff that paralyzes American politics today?

The answer lies in a single word—Dignity.

This core value takes wings on the inclusive slogan: “Dignity For All.” The bumper sticker reads “Dignity4All,” and it will soon begin appearing on cars across America.

The idea of a universal right to dignity may at first seem too simple to pull together the disparate elements of this divided nation, but it’s not. Dignity is what people want, on the left, on the right, and most importantly, in the vast, non-ideological middle.

Dignity is not negotiable. People will stand up for their dignity, and once they’re on their feet, it’s usually not long before they’re marching for justice.

Two hundred years of bloody world history have shown that there is no direct path from Liberty to Justice. But if we interpose a steppingstone, we can build a bridge to justice. The name of that stone is not “Equality,” it’s “Dignity.” By establishing the right to dignity, and then enacting legislation that protects everyone’s dignity equally, we can give concrete meaning to Thomas Jefferson’s evocative claim that “All men are created equal.”

A “dignitarian society” pulls together what’s best from the three broad strands of civic culture dominating politics since the French Revolution—Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. The polarizing stranglehold these ideals exert on the contemporary imagination, when any one is prioritized over the others, is a major source of the incivility that infects our politics today.

Conservatives see themselves as Liberty’s defenders; progressives pride themselves as the champions of equality. Both parties promise Fraternity, but neither delivers it.

Dignity is more encompassing than Liberty, Equality, or Fraternity. It’s the missing link that when restored will yield an electoral mandate to make good on America’s founding promise of “liberty and justice for all.”

The politics of dignity puts the “We” back in “We the People.” It spans the conservative-liberal divide. It closes the ideological fissures that separate libertarian, egalitarian, and fraternitarian ideologies and breaks the stalemate that has stalled the advance of justice since the 1960s.

A dignitarian society does not tolerate indignity—towards anyone. When this principle is translated into policy, it rules out acceptance of a permanent underclass. It disallows prejudice and discrimination toward all the groups that have rallied around the various flags of identity politics. It transforms the stalemate over abortion and gay marriage into a civil discussion of whose rights to dignity are being abridged. It proclaims everyone’s right to a sustainable environment.

Like liberty and justice, dignity is most easily defined in the negative. As a precursor to banishment or enslavement, we’re all attuned to pick up on the slightest hint of indignity.

What causes people to experience indignity? The precise and universal cause of indignity is the abuse of power. Make a list of the most distressing issues of recent years: corporate corruption, the Katrina catastrophe, sexual abuse by clergy, Abu Ghraib, domestic spying, etc. Every one of them can be traced to an abuse of power by individuals of high rank. Often the abuses had the blessing of people of even higher rank.

To effectively oppose the full range of abuses of power vested in rank, we need a word that identifies them collectively. Abuse and discrimination based on color and gender are called “racism” and “sexism,” respectively. By analogy, abuse and discrimination based on the power inherent in rank is “rankism.” This coinage provides a vitalizing link between the methods of identity politics and the moral values of democratic governance. Having a generic name for abuses of power makes them much easier to target, and targeting them is precisely what’s called for if democracy is to resume its evolution.

However principled the cause, no party can present itself as a champion of dignity so long as its members reserve the right to indulge in rankism. This includes treating political opponents with indignity. Humiliation and condescension—toward domestic opponents or foreign enemies—are inherently rankist postures, and as such they have no place in a dignitarian politics.

How would a society that makes dignity its linchpin differ from ones shaped by ideologies that accentuate liberty, equality, or fraternity? The difference is one of nuance, not opposition, for a dignitarian society combines the strengths of all three traditions.

A dignitarian society promotes individual freedom, while at the same time tempering the uninhibited free market with institutions of social responsibility that insure that economic power does not confer unwarranted educational or political advantages. For example, you shouldn’t have to be rich to attend good schools, or command a fortune to stand for office.

A dignitarian society provides genuine equality of opportunity. In a dignitarian society, loss of social mobility, let alone division into master and servant classes, is unacceptable. There’s a way out of poverty in a dignitarian society. Everyone earns a living wage and has access to quality health care.

The politics of dignity sees democracy as a work in progress. Democracy’s next step—one that will enlarge liberty, deliver justice, and foster fraternity—is to overcome rankism and build a dignitarian society.

Dignity is an idea whose time has come. The party that takes dignity as its core value can mobilize the energy not merely to win at the polls, but to win with a mandate to fulfill our nation’s implicit promise of “Dignity For All.”

*This article was a featured column on Huffington Post on June 15, 2006.

I just discovered that a documentary called Dignity of the Nobodies is making the rounds on the indy film circuit. The director Fernando Solanas has a distinguished history in covering human rights issues in Latin America. Dignity of the Nobodies explores the lives of the people who have been struggling to survive in the Argentina slums, in the wake of a national economic disaster. It also attempts to instill the nobodies with the dignity of telling their own story. This quote from a protester says it all: “work is dignity … they are destroying all dignity.”

As I checked into the Nobodies Movement, I found that they had been spawning groups on a variety of social networking sites:

1. A growing Frappr Network.

2. A Google Group of Nobodies.

3. A Nobodies Wiki.

4. A Squidoo Lens on nobodyness.

This is some exciting follow-up for the International Association of Nobodies. I spent half the morning signing up for things.

Ps. I’ve added a link to the Nobodies Movement to The Nobody Manifesto.

Today I met the founders of BlogHer, Lisa Stone and Elisa Camahort, and they pointed out that there was a Nobody’s Movement afoot! If you want to join the International Association of Nobodies, grab this microbanner to declare your allegiance:

The circumstances that birthed the IAN can be found here.

Also, Susan Getgood gets a shout out for being an early adopter.