Paul Ryan-1984

I started to do some research this morning on the kerfuffle over Paul Ryan’s C-PAC speech and his hoary tale about soulless school lunches http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/03/06/a-story-too-good-to-check-paul-ryan-and-the-story-of-the-brown-paper-bag/) I was going to look up the cost of Federal subsidies for School Nutrition programs for children in families that have difficulty providing for their kids. I was going to make the obvious arguments about how little school lunches programs cost on a per meal basis, juxtaposed against the costs of some things the government pays for, apparently with no reservation as to the higher moral purpose of the expense. Each FA-18 Hornet military jet, for example, costs $94 million. I was going to look up the seldom mentioned statistics, when Republicans raise their voices on these programs and demonize the poor, that most of the money goes to people that work. I was going to list a handful of wealthy individuals and Fortune-500 companies that have paid little or no taxes for years. Everyone knows that list is quite lengthy, and it goes to the heart of our increasingly heartless society.  

I even researched Laura Schroff and Maurice Mazyck, the two people at the heart of Representative Ryan’s misanthropic vignette.  There has been a fair amount of press on Schroff and Mazyck, and it pre-dates this latest kerfuffle by years. Laura met Maurice on the streets of New York in 1986, when he was an  11 year old boy. He was panhandling for food. She bought him a meal and they became friends. They have been friends since, now almost 30 years. They have been lauded on shows which range from Rachel Ray to Huckabee. Americans see in them the best of what we can be. This is because Ms. Schroff did more than write a check, a charitable donation she could deduct on her taxes. She gave of herself.  Republicans like to pretend that we can cut taxes further because people like Schroff exist, but both Laura Schroff and Maurice Mazyck are advocates for expanded School Lunch Programs and SNAP,  Supplemental Nutrition assistance. Rep. Ryan’s use of their story was an Orwellian distortion of the facts of Laura Schroff’s and Maurice Mazyck’s life.

By some grace my family has been spared the injury of children without enough to eat, or parents making harsh choices between food and medicine or food and rent. As a child my parents did a number of small “c” charitable things that exposed us to the poverty in our community. Thanks to our parents my brother and sister and I knew poverty existed in our hometown of Streamwood, what it looked like, felt like,  even smelled like, and that the circumstances of these people’s lives were barely different than ours. Twenty years later I stumbled into a mentoring program called Big Brothers and Big Sister’s in New York. BBBS is my favorite charity (http://bigsnyc.org/index.php) precisely because it mentors kids for a future path where hopefully they can sustain themselves. While I always consider those who are purely suffering as worthy, the Coalition for the Homeless for example,  (http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/) for years in my own giving I have emphasized programs designed to help young people avoid the pitfalls that lead them to or trap them in poverty, homelessness, and hunger.

When I was a young man and mentoring through BBBS, all my friends knew my “little”,  Calvin. I was proud of what I did and I wore it perhaps a little too proudly. Somehow my friend survived and lives down in the Carolinas now. He has had issues over the years, but like that old Door’s song I like to think that he broke on through to the other side. I seldom speak of that experience now. I think this is partly because that that relationship, no matter my failings in it, was what I, speaking purely for myself, truly consider giving. Everything since then somehow falls short. There is no small shame in that.

So instead of another litany of statistics, let me just say this: Mr. Ryan has his story and I have mine. If sustaining the lives of children with nutritional needs is soulless then I will surrender my soul. It's sort of f***ed up anyway. Just tell me when and where.

We can be outraged over Ryan’s distortion of the truth, but he represents a part of who we are just as Laura Schroff and Maurice Mazyck represent another. When I say part of who we are, I literally mean it. I know it is part of who I am. Most of us are weary at some point or another of the burdens of our society. It’s is easy to feel worn down by the needs of others. Selfishness is a human trait that can only be mitigated by selfless giving.

I make no judgment here on the quality of Ryan’s life, certainly not in comparison to mine. He may be a good and charitable man in his private giving, but the powerful and wealthy forces he represents are another matter entirely.  If Mr. Ryan is a giving man in private, on the public stage he is a scoundrel, selling victimhood to the powerful, and creating villainy out of hunger.  

Finally this, the matter here is not statistics. I have exposed a glimmer of my own journey here precisely because I know that real lives are at stake. I have been in their apartments and homes, felt their struggle, and viscerally internalized their pain. On FB I have read the constant struggle of Colleen and her beautiful, princely, tousle-haired, autistic son, Mathew. Colleen’s whole family endures through this struggle. I am sure many of us who read her regular posts would reach through and extend our hand if we could. Are we to believe that whatever lifeline either the state of Nebraska or the Federal government extends to this family is soulless? I will never accept that. I reject completely Ryan’s Orwellian saga. My soul may be tired but the struggle continues. Mr. Ryan is who he is, but I will never be that cynical.