Progressives are as appalled as any libertarian or true conservative could be by the unimaginable deficits and debt being run up by this administration, but it seems to me that bankrupting the government is in fact the point, not a side effect, of what we see as financial insanity. A government with no money can't spend any of it on social programs, the societal safety nets put in place by FDR after the Great Depression. And that's just the way they want it. It's called "starving the beast."
Whether they intend it or not, though, the impact is real. It may be that many of us can't imagine a time before government programs existed to buffer the impacts of hunger, homelessness, and joblessness, but my mother, Kathleen McKenzie, who was born in San Francisco in 1936, doesn't have to imagine it. She lived through it. She wrote this up and asked me to post it here.
On Bernal Heights
One of my early memories is of men who came to our front door. They wore shabby suits and battered hats but all in all they had a curious dignity, and as a small child I was never frightened of them. Sometimes they spoke to me as I stood by my mother at the door. They spoke of their little children back in the Midwest or wherever they came from.
One memory is seared in my heart. My mom usually gave the men a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk or water on the front stairs.
This one day she invited a man to come into the kitchen and sat him down. Gramma had made an apple pie and they gave him the usual sandwich and then the apple pie.
As he ate the pie, he told us that he came to San Francisco because he heard there was work out here in the west. As he spoke he began to cry. He said he hadn't sat at a kitchen table since he left home. He hadn't worked since he arrived and he had nothing to send home to his wife and children.
He slowly regained his composure and thanked my mom and gramma repeatedly. Then he left like all the other men.
I cried as he left and wanted to know why he couldn't go home to his own children and wife. My mom explained as best she could about something called "the depression."
I have never forgotten that day.
-KM
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