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Has anybody seen that new show, "Raising the Bar"? The moderator is essentially correct. People who work at that level of law are often gone in a couple of years because it can be just too brutal. For years I worked for a judge, at the state level, and the snootful of civil, criminal, tax, domestic, probate, worker's comp, etc., dysfunction I got to witness first hand was enough to make your head spin. The fruits of those labors are cynicism, alas. I used to call our court system "meatball justice", after Hawkeye Pierce's calling his M.A.S.H. unit's activity "meatball surgery." One can get quite discouraged, dealing with this kind of stuff day after day, year after year.
My husband thought that people who got into trouble with the law, or who became addicted, or developed behavioral problems could do something with themselves and make something of their lives if they set their mind to it, if they applied a little grit and determination. Then he went to work for this State-run treatment center which is like the last stop for troubled teenage boys and if they don't get it together from there they either go into prison or into a mental institution. Over time he began to see that it's too late. They are ruined already. Their parents (if they have any) are dysfunctional; their neighborhood is dysfunctional; the cops are crooked, the infrastructure is dysfunctional; the educational system and the economic system are dysfunctional; our economic system is dysfunctional; the mininum wage and tax incentives are dysfunctional. And there is no hope. Motivation has been beaten out of them. They are used, abused, thrown away. They have been cheated. They are damaged. They were not born damaged, but they became damaged because the world they were born into was not sufficiently nurturing, consoling, directing. That is not just their problem, it is also our problem.
The statistics are dire, and they keep going up. More and more people are succumbing to alcohol and drug abuse. The value of life is so cheap, they do drive-by shootings for amusement. We think it is dreadful that the "terrorists" make themselves into living bombs and blow themselves up so as to make a point, but that is what our youth is doing ... they just use different tools. They destroy themselves and others around them to make a point, but nobody is getting the point, which is that under their current circumstances, life is not worth living. That is no kind of life to bring people into and then expect them to have all the tools to rise above the poverty, disease, sickness, and despair that surrounds them night and day from the time they are born until the time they reach the age of consent.
The Social Services Department can't handle it all. Their agents will go into a home, break up the family, place kids in a home somewhere, but the kids are not necessarily better off. They become a commodity; they have separation anxiety; they are sexually exploited. Mary Jo is right -- the foster parents, at least, should attend parenting schools, but that is a stop-gap measure. Somehow, people have got to be convinced that they want and need Marriage Schools and Parenting Schools before this kind of damage is done.
It ought not be that difficult to alter the mores if we set our minds to it. In Paper 72 it talks about how the unequal distribution of wealth has been the brunt of social criticism, such that the paradigm is changing. If we can harangue the rich for being too rich and flaunting it, maybe we can guilt them into setting some new standards for it is very difficult for poor people to feel hope when they look at the disparity between real estate prices on the hill versus those in the ghetto. No wonder they become drug dealers and prostitutes.
Our country is a mess! It needs some serious overhauling. It might not look too bad for those who are surrounded by church-going, squeeky-clean folks who look good and smell good, but taking off our blinders and seeing how many people have to endure injustice in this alleged land of opportunity can be blinding. I can understand why people prefer to live in denial of truth and instead blame those in trouble for just being losers.
We really need the haves to set an example for the have nots. Not of largess and entitlement, but of humility and good will. Otherwise, the haves will have to support the have nots for a long, long time to come.
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Gerdean O'Dell
Author: "Secrets of Promise"
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