Yes, culture is upstream from politics, but there's a level above culture that can't be ignored

I've recently picked up yet another occupation, in addition to magazine writing, music performance and university lecturing. I cover the local-government beat for an array of radio stations owned by one company in my city.

It's not exactly brimming with sex appeal, but I have learned a lot. I sit in on the pow-wows of everything from the County Council to the Parks Board to the Solid Waste Management District to the Human Rights Commission to the school board. It's where the arcane matters that ensure a smooth-running society get worked out.

It's budget time for various departments, agencies, and indeed the overall county and city, and so I'm getting an eyeful and earful regarding just what their line item expenses are.

You know what strikes me? The number of programs and functions that have to do with dealing with society's feral animals. I don't mean cats and dogs. I mean hard-bitten drug addicts who have cast off all vestiges of civilization. Residential treatment programs. Aftercare programs. School resource officers. Jail security technology. Education initiatives.

In the course of this, I've gotten to know our county's sheriff a little bit. (I also have crossed paths with him in Christian-community circles). He's in the middle of all this and sees first hand what ruined lives look like.

He recently posted the following stat on Facebook: "Need something to be mad about? There are half a million kids in foster care. Go be mad about that."

A number of people chimed in on the comment thread, and with due respect to their having meant well, most of their contributions struck me as muddying the waters, citing stats about how many kids each day die from cancer or diabetes. They're missing what seems to me to be the obvious point.

What the point is not, it seems to me, is that a number of children are in circumstances beyond their control generally speaking and that society needs to address those circumstances with increased funding or new initiatives or programs or scientific breakthroughs.

The point is that the American family is eroding as an institution at an alarming rate.

Which gets me to Mona Charen's piece at NRO today. She starts by discussing Matthew Desmond's New York Times article on poverty, which proceeds, as such study-of-a-current-societal-problem pieces usually do, with an anecdotal profile. A lady named Vanessa sleeps in her car with her three children and works as a home health aide. The point Desmond wishes to make is that even if one is diligent about a work life, it is often not enough to keep one out of a state of dire need.

In the morning she takes her one son and two daughters to her mother's house to wash and get ready for school. Vanessa has diabetes. Her work brings in between $10 and $14 per hour depending upon the health coverage of the mostly elderly patients she cares for. But because of her responsibilities to her children, Vanessa works only 20 to 30 hours per week. That doesn’t provide enough to keep this family of four above the poverty line.

Yes, Vanessa gets government benefits. Between the Earned Income Tax Credit and child credits, she received $5,000 from Uncle Sam last year. She also gets SNAP (food stamps), but when one of her daughters qualified for SSI last year due to a disability and began receiving $766 per month, the family’s SNAP assistance was reduced from $544 to $234 per month.

And so, they struggle. When they can find an apartment Vanessa can afford, they have a home. But they fled the last one when a young man was shot and killed nearby. When they have no fixed address, they often eat grab-and-go food, which tends to be unhealthy, especially for someone with diabetes. The local food pantry offers mac and cheese, which is also an undesirable option for a diabetic, but it’s her son’s favorite. Vanessa’s son has gotten into trouble at school for fighting. Her father became ill and she nursed him too, spooning food into his mouth and changing his bed pans.

Desmond’s aim in this profile of poverty is to challenge the assumptions that many Americans harbor about the poor. “In America, if you work hard, you will succeed. So those who do not succeed have not worked hard.” This is the idea Desmond describes as “deep in the marrow” of the nation. He suggests that this is mostly myth, but the data he cites are carefully phrased, and frankly, misleading. He juxtaposes a survey showing that most Americans believe the poor don’t want to work with the following statistic: In 2016, “a majority of nondisabled working-age adults were part of the labor force.” Yes, but the data are quite different for the poor. Census Bureau data show that among adults living in poverty aged 18–64 in 2015, 63 percent did not work, 26 percent worked part-time, and 11 percent worked full-time, year-round.

But there are some other circumstances about Vanessa's situation one needs to know:

Desmond cites changes to work itself. Vanessa’s story is meant to be emblematic. “Millions of Americans work with little hope of finding security and comfort. In recent decades, America has witnessed the rise of bad jobs offering low pay, no benefits, and little certainty. When it comes to poverty, a willingness to work is not the problem, and work itself is no longer the solution.”

It may well be true that low-level, unskilled jobs are less of a ladder out of poverty than they once were. But the other aspect of Vanessa’s plight, and that of her children, Desmond and most analysts resolutely refuse to grapple with. It’s familial. We learn that the father of two of her children has made erratic child-support payments, and apart from one trip to Chuck E. Cheese, has played no role in his children’s lives. The father of the youngest was sent to prison when she was 1, released when she was 8, and murdered shortly thereafter. There is no indication that Vanessa was ever married.

Work is available in America, but for those with low skills and major family responsibilities, one income is simply not enough, especially for three children. According to US News and World Report, home health aides average $23,600 per year. If two home health aides are married, they earn enough to be comfortably in the middle class. They will almost certainly not face homelessness.

The New York Times Magazine was attempting to spotlight the failure of work to solve all problems. But it felled a straw man. Who thinks work alone is sufficient? And it failed to address the root of so much dysfunction in America — family dissolution. 

Larry Elder and Heather MacDonald are two other writers who also understand that  family dissolution is at the root of our current social chaos. Their main focus is urban gangs and the attendant massacres on our nation's streets, but that, too, involves drugs and the utter absence of role models.

And actually, family dissolution is still a level up from the core issue: the utter absence of God from so much of post-American life. With no Biblical instruction or exposure to the concept and practice of fellowship, a huge number of people have no compelling reason not to live like feral animals.

Culture is upstream from politics, but there's a wellspring one level above culture that must feed it if any kind of straightening-out of all this is going to get underway.

I'll close with my lone contribution to the thread under the sheriff's post:

Over 90 percent of our social ills are a result of cultural deterioration. No program or initiative or new laws are going to move the needle until human hearts undergo a transformation.