"Picture the elderly person that is in their home, independently living, because that is what is better for them, it gives them the most freedom, and their services do not arrive on time. It takes the social worker, in the darkest hour of the night to go to that elderly person, make sure that they are cared for.
– Diana Lacey, President State Employees Association (SEIU)
This was said this morning on WMUR’s "Close Up" political show this morning – and if you combine this with that, once again you get that cloying feeling that the State has the preeminence in the "caring dept" – the State worries about our youngsters and cares for them, and worries about our oldsters and cares for them. After all, the parents treat them like slaves chattel and obviously ignore their parents!
But that’s not the point of the post – what is the point is this question: is it a false sense of "independence" that is being flogged by this union President, Ms. Lacey?
We have seen the abuse and obfuscation of language before in the attempted service of political aims (the latest being President Obama…
…calling the third war he is bringing the US into as merely a "kinetic military action" – nothing but spin and badly done spin to boot). The unions, during and after their kid level tantrums in WI and in Concord, are trying to redefine the phrase "middle class" and "working families" as being "union" (even as private union members are a mere 6.9% of private sector employment).
Now, they are trying to position themselves as the great "independence givers" as a cover and emotional appeal in trying to fight the State budget cuts that would cause the SEIU to lose members? Sorry, but I cannot agree with her vision, her union definition of "independence". Why? In trying to make her case, she Oh so carefully tries to get across the idea of the nobility of keeping a senior citizen in their own home (a good thing) but ties that oh so carefully to the idea that is it only because of the selfless Union member that this is made possible. Is that independence, really? Or just marketing spin?
No matter, the actual truth is that it is not really independence at all, is it? In reality, independence is exactly that – a reliance on no one for continued living. Yet, what Ms. Lacey subtly tries for is the exact opposite – that only with a reliance on public sector (and unionized) members will that senior citizen be able to make it.
Tell me, where is the family in all this? Or like here, is it a deliberate case of raising the importance of the State over that of the immediate or extended family? It may well be.
So, the idea of independence is being transmuted (and has been for quite some time). True, there are few of us that are truly independent of others; most of us are inter-dependent with other; responsibility and dependence flows vertically and horizontally. We are dependent on our parents as we mature. We depend on our friends and neighbors at different times as well. And often, that dependence flips to being responsible for our friends and neighbors, and as our role switches from being children to being caregivers to our children. As well it should flip as we, the former children, should take on the care of our parents. There should be that moral responsibility (and at times, indignation) tugging on us to "give back" (one of those few times what that hated phrase actually does mean something completely and fully).
Yet, most seniors (Mom being one of the worst offenders) insist on "not being a "burden"; for years I asked, I cajoled, and I begged for her and my sickly step-Dad to move in with us (sure, partly due to the 3am calls for help, but mostly out of that moral responsibility). The problem was the veneer of being independent – for many things, yes, but certainly not for others, and that veneer became much more thin as time rolled along. Near the end of his life, my step-Dad could do little; being in her 80s, she was limited as well. Independence, but only to a degree. It was also one that she would not acknowledge – after all, that once per month check came in every month – that was her independence from her family.
But, it truth, it was not independence at all. She traded her dependence from family (or so she thought) for a different one. Sure, I still got the 3am calls, but that "wasn’t dependence". What she would not face was that she merely freedom from one type of dependence for another – that of being dependent on the Government. Pretty much, that means Social Security.
So, she traded the veneer of freedom from family care to the veneer of independence provided by Government – I contend a false independence. In trading independence from family (or so she thought, as many do), she runs into dependence onto society at large.
It worked for as long as the demographics worked – parents with large families. It worked for as long as the economy worked as well. It worked for as long as the life span correlated with the retirement age. It worked for as long as the "Trust Fund" has real money it in.
Problem is, we are barely as replacement reproductively (avg of about 2.1 kids / family). Economy – well, we know where that’s at. Life span – we now live much longer than the S.S. retirement age; good for us, not so much for the S.S. dollars. And for the first time, less is coming into the Trust Fund than what is going out (and much of the "real money" is now simply I.O.U’s from other Government departments, who in turn, can only replace that borrowed money with additional tax money).
OK, I’ve wandered it a bit, so a last thought: for the vast majority of Americans, independence in the Golden Years is an illusion; dependence on caring family or on total strangers – there is no such thing as a free lunch.
As for Ms. Lacey claim? Yet another way for the State, in the guise, to keep union employment up. No, ma’am.
ut it also brings up the other false sense of independence – the freedom of being a burden on other family members.
