The View From Flyover Country

I forget how this book got on my to-read list years ago, but I am glad I finally got around to reading it. The author admits that the events described in her essays are quite depressing to read about, and unfortunately I just felt bad after reading it but not inspired to actually do anything. I have the vague intention to donate my bonus, but saving for a downpayment is more prominent of a need so that's where the money went. And at the rate Toronto housing prices are trending, it will be a very long time before my bonuses are free to be donated. I also had the vague intention to get something for the homeless lady that I frequently see at the subway station, but was stuck on thinking of what's the most effective small thing I can give. That was enough of a challenge that I also didn't end up doing anything.

Back to the book. One of my favourite themes in the book is about the American mindset that being wealthy is also being morally better:

Mistaking wealth for virtue is a cruelty of our times. [...] Poverty is not a character flaw. Poverty is not emblematic of intelligence. Poverty is lost potential, unheard contributions, silenced voices.

In America, there is little chance at reversal of fortune for those less fortunate. Poverty is a sentence for the crime of existing. Poverty is a denial of rights sold as a character flaw.

When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character.

Another standout theme to me is corporate / large organization using charity to divert attention away from structural inequality that they perpetrate or at least benefit from. The first quotation is similar to a FuturePerfect article questioning the morality of donations by billionaires:

Refus[ing] charity while pursuing justice [...] is not a position to condemn. Fiscal stability that relies on gifts is not stability. It is a guarantee of insecurity: income based not on work but on whim. Capricious generosity isn’t not a replacement for a living wage, nor is it a basis for a functioning society. Charity is no substitute for justice.

[Charity] is an investment in the present, not the future. If you value the future - if you value a society where people can imagine their future - work for justice.

Success is not a pathway out of social responsibility

 The last theme I want to highlight describes my reaction, or my lack of reaction, after reading the book:

There is no point in speaking truth to power when power is the only truth. [...] We continue to live in an era of hysterical panic about invented catastrophes a d false reassurances about real catastrophes. [...] We lost accountability and faith in our institutions, and most of all, we lost the outrage that accompanies that loss, because we came to expect it and accept it as normal. The quite acquiescence is, in the end, as damaging as any lie we were told.

You begun to have nostalgia for disappointment, because at least that means you had expectations.

Complaints is often perceived as an alternative to action. Those who complain are criticized as “just complaining,” instead of “actually doing something.” But
For marginalized and stigmatized groups, complaining is the first step in removing the shame from a lifetime of being told one’s problems are unimportant, nonexistent, or even a cause for gratitude. Complaining alerts the world that the problem is a problem. [...]
Long term complaining indicates that a problem is serious and structural, not that it is hopeless and should continue to be ignored.