September 8, 2024

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

The “forgotten” is the usual theme in this essay space – the ordinary gal or fellow, the backbone of our republic, the ones who largely work blue-collar, and in a look back people like the doctors who came to your home, teachers who bagged at the A&P after school to make ends meet, moms and pops who ran the corner store. “Ordinary” because there were so many, but extraordinary in making ends meet and keeping it all together in this nation. “Forgotten” because they were so woven into the national fabric that they were – they are – taken for granted.

They remain, the forgotten, some now of the American middle class that grew post-war with the help of both political parties. They remain, others having been pushed to lower economic life – out of the middle class – because of greed and profit-taking by the very few but the very rich.

In April 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, running for the presidency as a Democrat, noted in a radio address from Albany, N.Y., that the nation, then in the worst of the Great Depression: “The present condition of our national affairs is too serious to be viewed through partisan eyes for partisan purposes.” As it is true today.

He said that the forgotten were the nation’s farmers, dispossessed as they lost it all when crops were not sold, and forgotten, too were main street, hometown businesses that were part of the economic chain.

FDR chided the Herbert Hoover administration for setting up what was then a huge $2 billion fund to assist big corporations while it was the forgotten who needed a leg up. “These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten,” said FDR.

“Unhappy times” are here again in the loss of middle-class ladder rungs; high rents that prevent investment in home ownership; the scourge of substance abuse and suicide; condescension toward groups, individuals, rural folk, those without post-high school education, those who have lost factory jobs because both parties have cared more about philosophy than action for people at the bottom of the economic pyramid; prejudice toward voters of religious faith.

In all this, charlatans bearing promises of relief till the neglected soil, and while it is weeds that will grow, the forgotten are promised a mirage – the greenest grass that could ever be. Just hand over the power, and it will be done.

Until there is again respect for the forgotten – empathy – from both parties and concrete solutions to secure their well-being in towns and villages small and large; until, as FDR said, we “get back to fundamentals,” this USA faces the end of the founders’ experiment.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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