To Be Homeless In America Is To

I Realize That After Decades Of Positive Thinking The Notion Of Realism, Of Things As They Are, May Seem A Little Quaint. ... When The Stakes Are High Enough And The Risks Obvious, We Still Turn To People Who Can Be Counted On To Understand Those Risks And Prepare For Worst-case Scenarios. A Chief Of State Does Not Want To Hear A General In The Field Say That He 'hopes' To Win Tomorrow's Battle Or That He's 'visualizing Victory'.

In A Process That Had Begun In The 1980s And Suddenly Accelerated In The Early 2000s ... [t]he Peaks Of Great Wealth Grew Higher, Rising Up Beyond The Clouds, While The Valleys Of Poverty Sank Lower Into Perpetual Shadow. The Once Broad Plateau Of The Middle Class Eroded Away Into A Narrow Ledge, With The White-knuckled Occupants Holding On For Dear Life.

War Has Dug Itself Into Economic Systems, Where It Offers A Livelihood To Millions ... It Has Lodged In Our Souls As A Kind Of Religion, A Quick Tonic For Political Malaise And A Bracing Antidote To The Moral Torpor Of Consumerist, Market-driven Cultures.

Lenders, Including Major Credit Companies As Well As Payday Lenders, Have Taken Over The Traditional Role Of The Street-corner Loan Shark, Charging The Poor Insanely High Rates Of Interest.

There Can Be No More Ancient And Traditional American Value Than Ignorance. English-only Speakers Brought It With Them To This Country Three Centuries Ago, And They Quickly Imposed It On The Africans--who Were Not Allowed To Learn To Read And Write--and On The Native Americans, Who Were Simply Not Allowed.