It Ain't What You Don't Know...

by Mona Shaw

Mark Twain once said, “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”

That was me in 2003. I had just survived a total disillusionment after being brutalized by liberal Democrats in New York for telling the truth. I was a well-paid human rights executive who was suddenly homeless.

I didn’t know what to believe at that point. I had just enough to move back to Iowa and forced to abandon all my worldly belongings but for a few boxes I UPSed. I rented a room from a friend with my unemployment compensation.

After a few weeks of self-pity and wound-licking. I knew one thing. I wanted to know the truth. I didn’t care if that led me to become an ultra-conservative Republican. I just wanted to know the truth.

I began to read. I read so many things by so many authors of every political stripe you can name. I watched Fox News and MSNBC and listened to NPR and conservative talk radio. Information on the Internet was still sparse. However, living in Iowa City, gave me access to great libraries. I took advantage of that. I read a lot of books on economics history. I haven’t stopped reading.

I had more disillusionments to endure that would make the experience in New York look like time in a spa. I would learn from those too.

For example, I learned that there was not an epidemic of teen pregnancies. That, in fact, that teen pregnancies had been steadily declining since the 1950s. Sex education has worked.

I had to shift so many paradigms and altered my previous beliefs non-stop. 

By, 2007, I was still learning, but I knew this for sure.  The American Dream is a myth. It’s a big, fat lie.  From our nation’s inception, our economy was constructed by wealthy, white men who only wanted wealthy, white men to be citizens.  Everyone else would have to give their blood for to not be their servants. While, it’s loosely true that anyone can make it in America, not everyone can.  You have a better chance at winning the lottery than dying in a higher economic stratum than the one you were born in.  Sometimes people do win the lottery.

So, when folks respond with the old six-pack of canards that’ve bought at a very high price from Plutocrats who want to maintain the status quo, I know they don’t know as much as I do. Otherwise, they’d offer something original and thoughtful. Supporting those tropes with the first thing they find on Google that agrees doesn’t make this better. Even worse is thinking that anecdotal experiences is empirical evidence. E.g. “I saw a woman buying steak with food stamps!”

That’s all I want to say for now.

P.S. Just because there are employment growth areas doesn’t mean there are enough good-paying jobs for everyone.