Effing Brilliant

To admit that poverty -- real poverty, not the kind born of laziness (I suspect this is kind of poor is a rare breed) -- exists in this country is to admit that this "great" country can fail...and a lot of people don't want to accept that, because gosh darn it, we're America!

-Sig

This is such an important concept, and one I've danced around, but Sig hits the nail on the head, and it is all so obvious now. We, as Americans, are in so much denial over our reality. It was only recently that I realized that I grew up in the lower class, and that those rich people in town were not upper class, but just middle class, maybe upper-middle. The one bathroom house and two-pairs-of-jeans-per-year childhood of mine surely wasn't as bad as it could have been, but those big screen TVs and spacious kitchens I helped my mom clean when she was subbing for my aunt L's cleaning service weren't necessarily luxuries of the very rich.