Lee McCollum was a young man who just wanted what everyone else wanted.
“My two worries in life are not making it and not being successful and ending up on the streets being a bum,” he said in August 2014. “And the second is I want to be a father that can provide for his family.” This full article is here…
He was the subject of a CNN Special on city violence called “Chicagoland”. Lee McCollum was murdered in the same violent streets he feared. Can we all please hear the words of common ground he expressed?
Lee McCollum was a young guy who wanted what every kid wants, but was consumed by a failed system. Had this young man had a job opportunity where he’d be learning a trade, carrying a lunch pail, taking the bus, he would be on a path for a better opportunity for himself and the kids he did not have.
All people are all the same, we just see the world through the perspective of our problems. The South side of Chicago is about as tough a starting place as any American could have. Life is all about where we’re born and how we all adapt to our environment. How many people are fighting for the only realistic job opportunities available in any given community? And keep in mind, a person who was not rich but goes to the beach occasionally, the cabin and has family with jobs, and is from the suburbs, has a larger context of the world than a kid from city who is born to poverty. Many assume the benefits of security and control in world that others cannot conceive because they have no fundamental frame of reference . Forget morality. Psychologically, from a mechanical point of view, we are the collection of our experience, family and friends. City folk are sometimes very funny to see while solving a problem on a farm. And equally so, I’ve walked through the city with an Iowa farm boy who was fascinated by the concrete canyons and noise and completely ill prepared for the common problem s of city dwellers.
Think about our society as a poker table. Each group of stacked chips are different groups of people with a unifying interest. The fundamental risks in some job industries do not exist in others. Some stacks of chips are built on very solid basis. These jobs cannot be outsourced and people in that stack are able to sit comfortably on those assumptions and grow as an individual, give back. Public sector jobs fall into this stack. These people have a very good hold of who they are because they assume fundamental security. This explains Hillary Clinton’s support from white suburbia.
There are many financially secure Republicans secure upon the same assumptions. They are the ones looking at each other and saying, “what the hell just happened?”
Other stacks of chips out there are built differently. Those stacks are exposed to the risk of both market conditions and government regulation. The current level of government regulation embeds the market with an economic framework. Consider it like the playing field, but not necessarily the rules of the game. though the rules between public and private sector are different.
NAFTA opened up the playing field with a pipeline to cheap labor markets. Over time those pipelines have opened so vastly that they have become transparent to some markets.
Some of the stacks of poker chips on the poker table of the United States have been leveled to the labor markets of China, India. The chips on the bottom of our stacks have deteriorated over time. For the last 30 years High School civics classes have discussed current events in the news. The American populace is aware of plant closings and the job loss which has occurred over the years. Over time entire job markets completely disappeared. The medical industry is specifically one of those stacks of chips that has grown. More and more young people are becoming doctors and nurses. And the ever increasing college debt is evidence of an expanding education stack of chips. These jobs cannot be outsourced. The participants in these industry verticals enjoy certain security, not just in their job, but in the psychology that the security affords.
The absence of a threat is a very impactful and powerful advantage. These industries are generally not exposed to this threat, so it is a part of the playing field they are completely oblivious to. It’s just that place in the distance where a lot of noise comes from. The natural human response is to make a moral judgement. Hillary Clinton does not make a moral judgement on poor African-American people, like Lee McCollum. And she speaks to his problems. That explains her popularity in the cities.
Republicans are the traditional fat cats that do make moral judgements. The Tea Party specifically is driven by it’s fear base image of God, so their air of moral superiority does nor resonate with many people.
But some Americans have had their stack of poker chips cut from under them. Everything they have and know is gone. They commuted to work every day in that part of the playing field which is open to foreign markets due to trade agreements and foreign born H4V visa holders. One day they went to work and was given a pink slip.
The fundamental risk of job loss is a blinding reason on both sides of the equation. But the most gifted educator still has limited empathy. At the end of the rainbow is where their life begins, their retirement.
There is an entire segment of society waking up every day worried their weekly or monthly subsidence. they wake up and try to rebuild those crumbled bottom chips while everyone judges them by the stack they are trying to hold up.
People with problems are on the constant lookout for solutions. they are looking for usefulness in things others don’t even notice. When Donald Trump says that he is closing that part of the playing field which has taken jobs from Americans, he ls talking to many people. Giving to charity is a luxury. Those Americans having their homes and jobs taken away from them are being literally abandoned in the cold.
We can only see the world through our own eyes. Our arrogance requires an answer to explain other people’s behavior. And we assume to have all the facts when making that judgement. Morality is the default answer for ourselves when we look for blame in others, and it is how we differentiate among ourselves. But our morality is contrived to justify our logic. Despite the efforts of the most sincere religious people from all religions, their perspective is singular. Religions do not agree with each other because each is creating God in the image of man, from the perspective and experience of those participating in that religion.We are all just different people, with different experiences and different problems to solve, but fundamentally the same. The truth lies in the pragmatism in the problem solving, and the human experience involved.
Before you judge the supporters for another candidate, take a few minutes to put yourself into the shoes of one. You can intellectualized but can’t, not really. You are not conscious of your own assumptions. People who have lost their jobs due to outsourcing understand a sense of helplessness. The fundamental bottom poker chips at the bottom are the ones everyone’s life is built on. Feeling the impact of the fall is painful when they are removed.
Donald Trump is speaking directly to that problem. His supporters lives are in shambles, all they care about are those bottom poker chips. His detractors look at the things at the top of the stack as important, being nice, altruism. Trump supporters are able to ignore his insensitive comments. It is the equivalent of arguing over the color of a new car to someone who cannot afford to buy a new car. Yea, no one wants to see puke green cars, but I’m not buying morality so it’s not my problem. And it’s not a problem that matters to a growing number of people.
Psychology can explain why we support who we support. But in the end, we all face the same problems. And Lee is an individual who deserved more opportunity than afforded to him. He deserved better from the Congress and Senate of the United States. But they sold off our manufacturing jobs and put people like Lee in a position with less opportunity. Closing a factory in the United States does not help the United States. Eliminating jobs from this is being done to reduce labor costs at the price of our human dignity.
RIP Lee… you deserved better!