My wife and I are in Ireland today after dropping our son off at an Irish university here. He chose to study for his undergraduate degree in Ireland because he has special learning needs, and the Irish university offered the best supports. Also, we will save on tuition and give him an international educational experience that was out of our reach at a college in the states. We are very happy for our son and his chosen path. Nevertheless, I feel utterly abandoned by the institutions of higher education in America. The tuition arms race is out of control, and the opportunities for graduates are rapidly dwindling. What are we doing to our children? We need to invest in America and Americans to make it possible for our kids to stay here and have healthy prosperous lives.
I wish there was more than a "like/heart" button. I'd put an "I care" emoji if I could. I'm so happy for your son to have the opportunity to study in a place that honors his different learning style. So sad that this doesn't happen in the USA. I hope he has a good experience in Ireland and prospers as he moves forward in life. And blessings to you for supporting him in thinking and acting outside the box.
I read your Times essay; it was eloquent and evocative. Many thoughts and emotions arose as I read it and the premise of the article demands deeper consideration. However, what comes to mind as I reflect, is that a sense of abandonment is a core aspect of being human. It has been with us from the beginning and haunts our lives. As a species we have tried many ways to assuage the reality of isolation and many have been effective. But they are always illusory or temporary. In the world we live in today, structures of safety and assurance have frayed and too often we reach for the closest explanation or solution. I feel abandoned in multiple ways through loss, lack of true community, feelings of being irrelevant, and more. The only antidote I have found is to have faith in my own integrity and to continuously build resourcefulness, this along with finding others to engage and connect with in meaningful ways. We have created a complicated and in many ways heartless society; I don’t know how or if it is even possible to undo the choices we have made as humans. I do believe that self reflection and self evaluation can make a difference.
I don’t feel particularly abandoned, but I believe that is in part because I got a lot of therapeutic help in my 30’s with the early loss of my father. I spent much of my 40’s and 50’s in supportive groups: group therapy, yoga studios, UU church with a deep understanding that I need people. I rely a lot on groups of people especially when times are rough, including my family. They sometimes disappoint me, but I seem to hold faith in people when I gather with them. Thanks to everyone who I know. Thanks Priya for Art of Gathering.
On a city-wide level(I live in DC) lots of bike lanes have been built, but there’s an abandonment of responsibility to follow any roadway rules. It is now the norm to ride a motorized or electric bike the wrong way on a one way bike lane. There’s no enforcement of rules of the road. I don’t have answers here, but I wonder if at some point now in my 60’s I will give up commuting by bike because it’s too dangerous. That will really be a loss for me and I’m not sure how I would feel.
Abandonment of enforcement of rules, abandonment of collective responsibility, all within the context of a madman doing what he wants with our city without any enforcement of rules or sense of collective responsibility. That’s where I’m at. Thanks Anand. I look forward to reading your book.
I can’t help but see a connection between individualism and consumerism, and the equal and opposite of loneliness and abandonment. We have constructed a society of large private homes and luxurious personal automobiles on one hand, and crumbling institutions on the other.
I find that when people are talking about “personal responsibility” what they’re really doing is asserting their freedom from having to care about anybody else. Which seems great until you feel the earth giving way under your own feet.
It’s less that I feel personally abandoned and more that I see so many things being neglected.
I pivoted from a relatively successful career in big cities to return to the region where I’m from, Central Appalachia, which until recently was completely gutted and abandoned. My husband and I came back to the region during a different America, in 2011, to learn a lot of do it yourself skills and start a farm.
I came back to do something about where I was from, and until 2024, a lot of of us, under the radar, had shifted the narrative for that region about what was possible – – the pinnacles for us being federal investment in training people for renewable energy, and a grant that I helped achieve for regional local foods logistics to support over 40 farms. Both the kinds and sizes of federal investment in people that signaled actual sector build.
During this time, I even wrote a book, reflecting on how the coalfields of Appalachia got here, extracted and abandoned, and traced the mix of private capital, state capital, and federal capital that props up and creates any economic sector in the United States. Working together, a lot of us attempted to mimic that with a different vision for our local future. Both of our federal infrastructure grants around these new visions were killed in the last 19 months.
And suddenly our region is back on the radar to be controlled by data centers, rare earth mineral projects, and sites for large scale industrial projects that people and other places wouldn’t tolerate. But that’s the macro.
Add to this, the flaming medical system shit shows that were the deaths of my elderly parents, one poor, and one middle class, which brought home a different kind of abandonment. A friend of mine and I discussed how, in the end, even being middle class or rich (her family, not mine) in the US is not enough to escape an absolutely undignified death. You needed to be wealthy. You had to be wealthy enough to set it up all yourself, and to your point, to do it yourself.
I roll this into the delusions of my neighbors around libertarian fantasies of radical family and self-care, and their choice to birth at home and, I sit with the knowledge that the healthcare system that was supposed to be a good regional system, failed me in the birth of our son, whom we only found out 10 years later that through the tremendous bungling of his birth, has a kind of brain based blindness. The medical professionals here in the US we paid out-of-pocket (not covered by insurance) to help us figure out why suddenly this very bright child was failing at school, took our money and comfortably misdiagnosed or put him through treatments that were not only expensive, but absolutely ineffective and unnecessary.
I’m still here in the US working. I’m the one to wrap up a lot of the activities on our farm, which we luckily downsized tremendously early last year in the face of what we anticipated to be the tremendous economic downturn that we're in right now and the continued severe escalation of prices to farm. Last summer my son and husband moved for now to Germany. There, while not perfect, within a half hour at an ophthalmologist who sat and listened to us, asked the questions herself, did the examination herself rather than outsource it to an assistant– she came back with what turned out to be an accurate diagnosis of our child’s issue. I had several doctors in Germany and the UK hear the birth story and immediately suggest the potential problem. Had the potential for litigation kept the doctors in the US from suggesting it?
Several years back, my husband and I used to do speaking engagements around sustainable agriculture, and we’d open it with: neither Calvary nor the cavalry is coming to save you.
All of this above is not even counting what we saw near us with Hurricane Helene. The region mobilized first by DIY, because most literally, no one else could get in to save people….
I have a PhD; I’m versed in the language of existential and unfathomable risk.
But most of all, your article brought home for me that my recent self admonishment that I should have known more about birthing my child, that I should’ve taken a full how to help others have a baby class and learned how to birth a baby, that the REAL mistake I made was relying on anyone actually to help us to show up. That I was the problem that I just had not done it myself enough.
I have friends that stockpile thinking they’re going to survive with buckets of beans and cabinets of guns whatever it is that the next proposed apocalypse is supposed to be.
I know that we only survive in community and through communities of care.
There are a lot of rural Black folks where I still live (my family is mostly white), and they have rightly retreated to their farms and their families and their communities for that care because they know no one‘s coming to truly help them and by no one, I mean the people in power.
My late father used to explain to me how older people that could no longer work, and that had no means of paying for medical assistance, all of this prior to Social Security and Medicare, would just sit down on the front porch in a rocking chair and, within short time, die. He reminded me how Social Security was called the communist scourge then. He remembers people just sitting down on the front porch and soon being dead.
I have younger friends and activist friends who deeply participate in mutual aid. It’s interesting that James Talarico leaned on the love thy neighbor message recently. Unprovoked, never with any political message on a T-shirt or on our vehicle, I’ve had people put their hands on me and lash out at me where I live (all and only since 2016). The farm that we bought is now surrounded by white Christian nationalists and replacement theory Libertarians.
My heart goes out to you. Please be gentle with yourself. Sounds like you have done extraordinarily well in finding help for your son. Giving birth in the USA has never been easy and it's even more dangerous now. I'm sorry for what's happening to your vision for the region you live in. Heartbreaking. Please take good care of yourself. Being a visionary is tough.
I'm and old female. Born before birth control pills, legalized abortions, before Civil Rights and Voting Rights and non-discrimination laws were enacted and enforced. Told by a man at a job fair for a good paying job-"We're looking for a man," asked to cook things for company events with money from my own pocket, put on job warning when I said, "What the fuck is this doing to help us,? and told for a promotion job I needed to have my hair done, nails done on a regular basis, only wear skirts. Husband had to sign for me to have my own credit card even though I had been employed for a while. Sustained sexual harassment on the job and inappropriate comments. So on that basis, trump/GOP/MAGA/males are going back to vile comments, trying to take our votes away by various measures-Save Act, no children-can't vote on issues involving schools etc., females with no children in retirement should be nannies to other people's children, wives should vote according to what husband says, trump calls females stupid, piggy, ugly in public and no one defends them, states can decide what females can do if they are pregnant, miscarry and prison times are threatened, birth control and abortion pill are on the list of things to deny all females, DEI is gutted, EEOC wants to stop listing gender, race, etc. for a company's workforce, Federal Government and others are free to hire, promote only white males, married people, Christians etc. females are told they should not be working if they have children, pregnant females have done this to themselves by choosing unwise sex partners, poor birth control, rape and sex trafficking are no longer important crimes, ERA has been introduced over and over in US Congress and it is never passed to be an Amendment to be rattified by the States. SO YES females are facing being put back to barefoot and pregnant and stay in a marriage no matter what. Males become the provider of life for females. SO YES FEMALES are ABANDONED from even public media conversations. What is happening is just a given that may never change back to what 50 years of opportunity gave females.
Next, old people and Baby Boomers in particular are widely resented. GOP candidate said publically, "Old people should be banned." Boomers are blamed for our current fascist government. Boomer vote more than any other generation and the rest of the population blames us. Where the F... were the rest of the purely patriotic, democracy loving younger people. Boomers were at its peak 37% of the population-now only about 25%. That means 75% of other voters could crush Boomer votes. Boomers were born in a period when homes were not as expensive, healthcare was paid for at work, unions were honored and used by workers to share the wealth of the company, I was elected union steward, America was rapidly growing and Boomers created vast demand for goods and services so businesses did well, there were not big monopolies fixing prices, Wall Street was not dominated by huge companies or mega-wealthy investment funds, 401K's etc. didn't exist, pensions etc. were often a benefit offered by your employer. IRS tax brackets were progressive. 15-16 brackets from 0, 14% to 70%. People and busnesses paid their fair share. Employers felt a sense of responsibility to our nation not just their wallets. College was affordable for many of us and Boomers flooded the workplace with increased skills. Women flooded the workplace and birth control allowed freedom of choice for their futures. Families had not spread out all over the country and childcare was a bit easier for working parents. We were raised by Great Depression parents and frugality, financial conservatism, planning for the raining day was feed to us everyday as children. They fixed broken things, saved them for somebody to fix if they gave it away, didn't have loads of fancy toys etc. TV's and even electricity were not in everyone's homes. indoor plumbing was still not everywhere, 2 car families almost unheard of. Mothers made clothing, canned food from gardens, helped the neighbors, kept an eye on neightborhood children outdoors, cooked for public meetings. They were frugal but generous with their time. Boomers married, both worked to get a down payment for a home as quickly as possible so they could start a family. Boomers served/were drafted for the Vietnam War and had the GI Bill for college courses. So wages were better, taxes were fairer, employers covered health and retirement, land, homes, goods were not yet as expensive as they are today. Home purchasing were Boomers biggest asset and they learned to flip them to get a bigger, better home. Many Boomers continued with a 2 income budget by choice or necessity. Yes, WE became wealthier than our parents and conserved what we had because of cautious expenditures. WE have money now to retire and people want to blame us for the governments we have, want us to forego healthcare during COVID so younger can live, want us to just die because Social Security and Medicare is too expensive and burden to workers and taxpayers. I understand this resentment but the US Government cuts off SS taxes at $184,000 incomes. All the rest of their income is untaxed for SS and will pay no more than 37% on that income. Lawmakers have made the trickle-down tax structure their goal since 1980's, wanted to break unions, reward Wall Streeters with 25% tax rate on Capital gains, the Big Beautiful Bill was passed by GOP alone. Reagan dropped the simple progressive IRS tax rates and adopted a more regressive one. Also REMEMBER, GOP represents a minority of our population with 2 Senators from each state and very gerrymandered voting districts to favor GOP state and Federal representatives. So how exactly has the Boomer generation done all this domination to create the crisis and chaos today. WE voted, WE saved, WE lived in a different era, WE never wanted our nation to fail. You didn't vote in the percentages Boomers did-whose fault is that.
People are drooling as they wait for Boomers to die and hand their wealth-85 Trillion-to others. Wanting us to die sooner, to be abandoned as human beings as people who lived and worked and paid taxes and Social Security and Medicare taxes without complaint because it is what WE do for others and our country. Yes, I feel completely abandoned by my country and the majority of those with wealth, power, connections and media platforms. I do not understand the hatred, anger, discrimination, misogyny, predation, humiliation, wishes for old people to die because they are a burden and not worthy of any support.
Sorry but you asked and my coffee is acting out. I will go for quiet time in my bedroom, now.
I'm even older than you, Becca ... from the so-called Silent Generation. I can relate to a lot of what you said ... and I have to remind myself that some of the benefits we received were not available to our African-American neighbors.
At 70, that all pretty much rings true to me. With the difference that I don't have a lot of wealth that anyone is going to benefit from when I'm gone.
I'm not wealthy either but just saying 85 Trillion in Baby Boomers hands in money or assets is huge reason to get rid of the burden to care at all for us, though we paid for others to have that benefit while we worked, and to make us pay for everything ourselves or "shuffle off this mortal coil." I understand the crunch but there are remedies that trump/GOP/Oligarchs will never allow. Taxing the wealthy to pay their fair share for society. Thanks for the long read! Take care of you!
I think that provides a very good, comprehensive description of the overall economic shifts over the past several decades.
It was a much better scenario for boomers, but not all reaped the comparatively better situation for the average person during those years. As you probably know, nearly half of the baby boomers have essentially no retirement savings. And soon to face a great reduction in their incomes. Many are in the situation of needing to work until they die, if they CAN work. A lot of the checkers and baggers at my local supermarket fall into this group. Cashiering in their 80s.
And I think that you portray very well the betrayal and deconstruction of the structures, the positive advances in social and economic equities that were being made prior to the 80s.
I think that rentier capitalism - the financier class - will use essentially anything that they can in their campaign to acquire more for themselves, targeting the equity of the boomers is a part of it, but I think that in fact their main accomplishment of neoliberalism is performing this act of wringing and hoarding wealth in every way imaginable.
I was on the leading edge of the bell curve of the Baby Boomer population. I got an education in supply/demand economics etc. in college. I knew things would become more expensive as more Boomers entered the market economy. Reagan changed the tax structure-top tax bracket was 70% and it became 28% in the 1980's. Trickle down economics became popular but what it did was allow wealth to accumulated quickly at the TOP. This lead to economic, political, lobbiests, ivory tower business moguls with little regard for those who work for them or the less fortunate human beings. They became immune to life's challenges and surprises. After the 1980's, everything changed for the worse for workers. 15 years after Boomers graduated from high school, businesses and wealthy figured out how to buy out competition and add it to their business or gut it and make it fold, ship jobs overseas, manufacturing was allowed to die, good-paying jobs, company loyalty etc. was no more. I predicted a disaster coming for ordinary people, older people, education mostly when Boomers hit retirement at 65. WE are responsible for sleeping through the obvious changes happening. WE should have risen up long before what we have now happened. I'm a Boomer who always voted for Dems except once for President and perhaps for state GOP more than once. I was always against this movement to consolidation of money and power because it ALWAYS leads to bad news for the majority of human beings. I volunteered, door knocked when I had spare time during election periods.
Boomers did not DO THIS on their own. ALL of us lay down on the job of protecting our democratic, law/order, republic and being brothers and sisters for the good of ourselves and country.
I agree with pretty much all that you say here, Becca. What I would add to that - the ascendancy of neoliberal economics, beginning particularly in the Reagan years, that changed the economic course - is that there was a concomitant and dramatic shift in the society, a shift in values, and in norms.
There are myriad aspects to it, and to a great extent no single factor determines it, I think that it is just the way that societies work. None of the political or economic changes that came about during the past four or five decades could have occurred without a change in the culture, and I think these arise from all the different social currents. This would warrant an entire discussion.
The good aspect, over the years preceding that change, was a genuine striving, in the society as a whole, toward what is broadly greater justice (social and economic).
I think a lot of what is still occurring is a reaction against the fear that was generated by the social shocks of that time: the war, the assassinations, the general sense of things coming apart. I think that in a way we have never overcome that shock, and also the divisions that resulted from the social movements, and the reactions against them.
If you look at American society over the course of history from the 19th century until now, you do see the same forces contending over that period: the social disruptions that followed industrialization, the ascendancy of market capitalism, power of the wealthy, the waxing and waning of movements to counter that power.
And all of this within a context of the battle between ideologies, which drive individuals and groups in largely unconscious manner. Emotion overrides reason. Always. Bias shapes perception. Inescapably.
I think the worst aspect of what we face now is that our country is riven and driven into enmity-charged factions, exacerbating these divisions. Further polarized by entities that did not exist before, particularly on the right, forces in media, on the internet, that foment discontent. I think that it's hard to really get a handle on what their aims even are - other than in a general sense, authoritarian and oligarchic.
I think the best hope we might have is acquiring - on the part of greater numbers of people - an awareness of the ways that we are being manipulated, in ways that make us act against our own interests.
But yes, I agree: our generation, (at least those of us who actually held the values that are generally ascribed to us - certainly not all did) collectively dropped the ball.
What resonates with me is “acquiring . . . an awareness of the ways that we are being manipulated, in ways that make us act against our own interests.” We liberals/liberated can’t seem to get that message across because many are ignorant/blind to what’s happening. It’s like you don’t know you live in a really dysfunctional family as a kid until you visit other people’s lives and homes and omg life can be better.
I agree and disagree with you as usual. I think there were so many shocks as you noted but as you proposed BOOMER did not drop the ball. AS I said before BOOMER were only at their MAX population 37% of our nation. Yes, WE were taught to vote and WE are still huge voters. But, 37% cannot steer or change the direction of a country by themselves. Others either agreed or sat out all primaries and elections. So here is another point of view-no one can do well when governments do not change representation to show true democratic powers. Too many forces were working against a democratic republic and majority rules. As usual no checking on spelling etc.
I understand your previous point about almost half of Boomers having no retirement savings. My question to you is why do Boomers have such a reputation of being so greedy and controlling of our politics.
The Boomers with no savings also grew older, experienced more of life’s challenges, lost jobs, got sick, had too many children etc. That is just part of life, chance, choices. I don’t feel that stat indicates anything except changes and life.
Many born early in 1946-1954, saw what was happening in the world and politics. In the 1980’s, everything was changing so those of us who saw it coming, those of us who were educated, those of us who were raised by Depression Era, WWII, GI Bill educated parents acted, were taught, thought very differently, grew for 15-20 years-me from age 18 to 38 years old in a period of equality of power at work, businesses who felt some responsibility to workers and our country, government that was more responsive, Wall Street was not crowded with hedge funds, market manipulations, SEC and agencies watched for inside traders and huge buy backs.
This is a big thing. US House of Representatives has had 435 elected Representatives since 1913 when our population was 97million people! Our population is 336 million now. No wonder no one hears us anymore-we feel and are abandoned! In 1980, US pop. was 226,545,805. We added about 110 million people in the last 46 years. In our 250 year democracy, it took only 113 years to add 239 Million people to the USA. Supply/demand, globalization, specialization, monopolies, trade everything changed relatively ‘overnight.” AND our representation in the Federal Government was eroded because 435 House Members represented 239 MILLION MORE PEOPLE OVERALL.
The US Senate is still 100 Senators. GOP now represents a minority of our population and has outsized power compared to the majority DEM representation. 2 Senators for each state is killing MAJORITY RULES. AND, the traditional filibuster of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" days is OVER.
"1975--The Senate lowered the cloture threshold from two-thirds to three-fifths (60 votes) of all sworn senators. At the same time, it formalized the "two-track" system, which allowed the Senate to temporarily set aside a blocked bill and move on to other business without requiring a senator to continuously hold the floor with a live speech."
So, the chamber called the "most deliberative chamber in the world" became just a chamber that can count votes of who wants to kill a bill, even if passed by the whole US House 435 members, with vote by 41 Senators who want to table the bill and move on. 41 Senators who may represent small states like WY, VT, Delaware, North and South Dakota, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Alaska, D.C. Nebraska, West Virginia, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Idaho, Kansas, CT, Arkansas, Mississippi, Nevada, Iows-21 states with 2 Senators each=42 filibuster votes. These Senators with a cumulative total of much less than 21% of US population can in concert ignore a bill voted for approval by ALL 493 OTHER ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES IN OUR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. This can never be majority rules with old representations, old rules, a Congress that makes its own rules.
I remember calling my Federal representative for some help on a financial problem with the Federal Government in the 1970's or 80's. I got almost immediate help with that issue. Try that today and you will never get past the office gatekeepers.
Someone recently said-humans are from the Stone Age, have governments of the Medieval Age, and live in a heavily populated World dealing with the technology of the Space Age. I do not believe humans are equipped to be sane, wise, united in this situation.
Nature does not support a social animal population of 335 Million. Only fish, mammals that are prey, some birds, insects stay together because there is protection in numbers. Predators cannot kill all of us!
I do not believe humans are really that social by nature and prefer to live, thrive in smaller groups, communities. We are forced to live in the WORLD to survive today. There is no smaller group or community to flee to for safety, happiness, freedom, a status etc. Someone more powerful, in control, can deny what we seek to be able to live, thrive, be free.
Humans are stressed too much right now and are trying to get back to smaller groups that they trust. Society cannot add 110 Million people in 46 years, introduce powerful, other worldly, dangerous in the wrong hands technology-internet, social media, AI, hackers and not expect humans to revert to Darwin's "Survival of the Fittest." Just look at the animal world and watch population collapse when too many exist in their groups.
My mind is so full of variables that have brought us to this crisis, I lose my points to make. I love discussions, debates, exploring what you think and I think so forgive my morning coffee again.
Dear Anand, I don't feel abandoned personally, but we live in a society, in an economic and political system that is built on extraction and exploitation, so the situation is structural rather than individual. What would it mean to put care, broadly conceived, at the center of how we organize our lives? This isn't an original idea--there is a whole literature on this now--and it is something to strive for: a society in which we can care for our families, friends, communities and our planet. Emma Dowling's The Care Crisis is one place to start to think about these issues.
I found Anand's interview with Nick Hanauer on Markets for Human Flourishing a hopeful sign that there are people out there working to change the system. I totally agree with you, Gregg, it's the profit-driven system that's the problem. I worked in healthcare and witnessed for myself the effect on providers and consumers when that system changed from person-to-profit centered. I've been retired for almost 20 years and I'm still angry about it.
I walked into my last appointment of the day yesterday and the 14 month old dog in front me growled.
Dad laughed and went back to looking at his phone.
I tried to talk to him about Fear Anxiety and Stress is his dog.
He could not have cared less. His dog just... doesn't like new people he told me.
This is a 14 month old dog, with not a lick of training that the dad just doesn't care if we have to muzzle and pin to do anything with (we didn't cause I won't) that laughs when his dog escalated
My husband is also a vet; he would, I'm sure, echo your sentiments.
Many years ago, a Pit bit off the tip of one of his fingers. The owner asked (with no remorse) if they were going to finish the office call. The staff had to explain that "no," the doctor had to go to the hospital.
I've lived a life of abandonment. From being born in between two significant generations (Boomers and Gen X) and never quite fitting into either, to being raised in a divorced household by a single-parent but enrolled in every religious private school my mother could find full of the traditional archetype families that were the American ideal. I was the raisin walking amongst the cookie cutter types, and they showed me my oddness on a regular basis. I'm a divorced, single woman on my own for almost 30 years. Did I mention I've had a career in education and wrote a book titled "Orphaned: The Abandonment of America's Public School Teacher"? I tried to get it published, but...well I think you get the drift. I've been incompatible with American life my whole life.
But I've also not been abandoned. For every rough situation I found myself in where I was alone struggling with systems that don't care and quite frankly don't work as designed, to friends that suddenly turned away, and a work life that savaged my soul, not to mention my health, I've always landed on my feet because I never abandoned myself. Now it did mean that I had to step into situations that were scary, such as moving 5 states away to start a new job. But, wow, have I had so many varying experiences and met so many different people because of it!
That's the paradox of America isn't it? A place, a country, a culture that will absolutely chew up and spit someone out. At the same time, a country that offers a plethora of opportunity if one is willing to take a risk and reinvent. My life has been made richer and more diverse because I've started over, and started over again. And although sometimes the jaded side of me comes out with the urge to just crawl into a hole, I would say I'm more open to diverse ideas, opinions, and people. I understand how one's surroundings shape views and often people just can't break out of it because the pressures inside those same surroundings depend on everyone keeping with the script.
So my answer to the question, "do you feel abandoned?" is yes. Yes by almost all of the ins and outs that make up American life, except one. Myself. I will never abandon myself.
This is the first time in my life I feel the government does not care about me. I feel they are taking every thing- my food, my money, my health without a care in the world.i am dispirited as are many I know.
No matter where I went in the world, I knew I was safe , that America had my back. I no longer feel that. This administration careens around smashing every protection and care we once had happily and proud of itself. We are simply a burden to them.
Hmmm, you can't be the Emily Prager I'm thinking of.
To have worked with O'Donoghue and feel this way for the first time!!??
Can't be. :0)
"This administration careens around smashing every protection and care we once had happily and proud of itself."
-Paints a great picture, thank you.
This administration seems to me likes it's populated by mutant (authoritarian not anarchist) right-wing Bakunins - gleefully breaking up the furnishings of state, and replacing it with some oligarchic cabal.
Your essay was just the right thing for me yesterday. Thank you.
I wrote a letter last week to a friend in Europe who follows all that's going on here. Abandoned was the word I used. I'm a resistor who tries every day to do at least one thing that matters. It's helped me get through the last 20ish months. But now I can't keep my spirits up. This feeling started when Dolly Parton died. I'm no country music fan, but she was different. Her life oozed goodness. For a full week every tribute made me cry. The sadness is about losing an American who's decency was an example to us all.
My situation is mostly about the upcoming election. While Trump shamelessly works to keep us from voting, most Dem politicians have operated as 'business as usual' since January 20, 2025. It's frustrating that they've had my support for decades and here we are: abandoned. What are THEY doing? I'm nearly finished writing postcards to infrequent voters in key states, as I've done since 2020. I've mailed at least 600, and this year's batch brings the total to 800. I force myself to do a few each day. It's painful.
If you gave me 5 minutes to write a list of changes to our system that would not only preserve democracy, but make it work better, I would easily fill a page or two. With this group of do-nothing leaders -- and hopefully some new ones with potential to get things done -- will we make the changes that are so clearly needed? If so, will that happen before democracy is completely gone? I've become cynical and wish I weren't so aware of EVERYTHING.
I appreciate the opportunity to explain my abandonment to you. Looking forward to reading your new book!
Thank you for writing all those postcards. I have to look for signs of hope in order not to sink into total despair. It is my hope that having the underbelly of our nation exposed may be a first step in transforming the consciousness of our nation. Some of the young people running for office give me hope.
I feel abandoned in one important way. For my whole life I have had excellent health insurance as a result of my federal government employment, which also covers me in retirement. But health insurers have been nickel and diming me in recent years. This year my insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, denied coverage for a hyaluronic acid injection for my arthritic knees that I have been getting every six to nine months for several years. As a result I now have excruciating pain and have scheduled knee replacement surgery for October. The injection is quite expensive (around $1500) but knee surgery will be far more expensive. So Blue Cross will end up paying more. I was unable to reach anyone at Blue Cross who could discuss this intelligently and I was never given a coherent answer as to why Blue Cross denied the coverage. Their letter explaining the denial was filled with boilerplate gobbledygook that used a lot of words to say nothing of substance. I'm a lawyer trained to understand gobbledygook if it has any meaning. Blue Cross's language said nothing at all, other than "coverage denied."
" I was unable to reach anyone at Blue Cross who could discuss this intelligently and I was never given a coherent answer as to why Blue Cross denied the coverage."
And there is no recourse. That is what is so incredible. The entire insurance system is one of abandonment. I had an experience, also with a Blue Cross affiliate (it's a huge umbrella), several years ago. A very protracted, maddening experience, that gave my very limited retirement savings a very big hit. Many thousands. It looks like the same branch has changed states, and is continuing the same practice. There is no oversight, no place to appeal. State departments of financial regarding insurance appeals offer no mechanisms to investigate or enforce. It is truly amazing.
Nothing raises my ire more than insurance companies. I know you're talking about Blue Cross / Blue Shield. When I first retired, I was talked into a United Healthcare Medicare Advantage plan. Medicare Advantage (disadvantage) was new back then. I was healthy. And then I got cancer. If not for financial aid from The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, I would have had a lot more out-of-pocket.
Have you seen the new United Healthcare commercials. They show agents going out of their way to care for their customers. I get angry every time I see one. Yeah, right is my response. :-(
Yes, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, specifically an Allstate entity. It was an astonishing experience, and the most demoralizing aspect of all of it was that there was absolutely no recourse, that these companies can act arbitrarily and with complete impunity. It was also spiritually demoralizing simply having to interact with these companies, realizing that there are so many individuals in our society that operate without any moral compass, they are VERY aware of what they are doing.
I'd remembered a phrase that described it, and just now followed up, it is the title of a book that in fact centers on Allstate and State Farm. I was curious, looked into it, they are still continuing the same practices.
Anand, I so appreciate how your essay prompted introspection (at least that’s what it did for me).
My husband was dying of cancer through our Covid (years) of quarantine- and everything got even harder— and the cruelty of this regime and its followers & the dysfunction grew even more intense.
And my husband & I would start and finish the days & our sense of groundlessness with: “Well, we’re on our own.”
But in the midst of all that bleakness, somebody always came through: the MSK nurses who gave him his blood transfusions, (in the quarantined capsule at the outpatient lab) - the masked hospice nurses who trekked from their homes to care for my husband in his final days-
Feeling abandoned feels so primal & really messes w the head - but thanks to the folks back then who helped my husband- I’m trying to remember to slow down that terrifying feeling & say “wait- that’s not entirely true. Someone comes through.”
And after I posted my comment - I realized there were many, many someones who came through for us during that time, including the people (only identified as numbers ) who donated the bags of blood, and the folks who drove us back & forth & the delivery people who brought food.
That’s not even the half of all the someones. Kind of amazing to ponder.
So many people, known and unknown - get us through our days.
My wife and I are in Ireland today after dropping our son off at an Irish university here. He chose to study for his undergraduate degree in Ireland because he has special learning needs, and the Irish university offered the best supports. Also, we will save on tuition and give him an international educational experience that was out of our reach at a college in the states. We are very happy for our son and his chosen path. Nevertheless, I feel utterly abandoned by the institutions of higher education in America. The tuition arms race is out of control, and the opportunities for graduates are rapidly dwindling. What are we doing to our children? We need to invest in America and Americans to make it possible for our kids to stay here and have healthy prosperous lives.
I wish there was more than a "like/heart" button. I'd put an "I care" emoji if I could. I'm so happy for your son to have the opportunity to study in a place that honors his different learning style. So sad that this doesn't happen in the USA. I hope he has a good experience in Ireland and prospers as he moves forward in life. And blessings to you for supporting him in thinking and acting outside the box.
I read your Times essay; it was eloquent and evocative. Many thoughts and emotions arose as I read it and the premise of the article demands deeper consideration. However, what comes to mind as I reflect, is that a sense of abandonment is a core aspect of being human. It has been with us from the beginning and haunts our lives. As a species we have tried many ways to assuage the reality of isolation and many have been effective. But they are always illusory or temporary. In the world we live in today, structures of safety and assurance have frayed and too often we reach for the closest explanation or solution. I feel abandoned in multiple ways through loss, lack of true community, feelings of being irrelevant, and more. The only antidote I have found is to have faith in my own integrity and to continuously build resourcefulness, this along with finding others to engage and connect with in meaningful ways. We have created a complicated and in many ways heartless society; I don’t know how or if it is even possible to undo the choices we have made as humans. I do believe that self reflection and self evaluation can make a difference.
I resonate with what you say about self-evaluation and self-reflection. So rare and so important.
I don’t feel particularly abandoned, but I believe that is in part because I got a lot of therapeutic help in my 30’s with the early loss of my father. I spent much of my 40’s and 50’s in supportive groups: group therapy, yoga studios, UU church with a deep understanding that I need people. I rely a lot on groups of people especially when times are rough, including my family. They sometimes disappoint me, but I seem to hold faith in people when I gather with them. Thanks to everyone who I know. Thanks Priya for Art of Gathering.
On a city-wide level(I live in DC) lots of bike lanes have been built, but there’s an abandonment of responsibility to follow any roadway rules. It is now the norm to ride a motorized or electric bike the wrong way on a one way bike lane. There’s no enforcement of rules of the road. I don’t have answers here, but I wonder if at some point now in my 60’s I will give up commuting by bike because it’s too dangerous. That will really be a loss for me and I’m not sure how I would feel.
Abandonment of enforcement of rules, abandonment of collective responsibility, all within the context of a madman doing what he wants with our city without any enforcement of rules or sense of collective responsibility. That’s where I’m at. Thanks Anand. I look forward to reading your book.
I have so many thoughts, but i’ll just say this.
I can’t help but see a connection between individualism and consumerism, and the equal and opposite of loneliness and abandonment. We have constructed a society of large private homes and luxurious personal automobiles on one hand, and crumbling institutions on the other.
I find that when people are talking about “personal responsibility” what they’re really doing is asserting their freedom from having to care about anybody else. Which seems great until you feel the earth giving way under your own feet.
It’s less that I feel personally abandoned and more that I see so many things being neglected.
I pivoted from a relatively successful career in big cities to return to the region where I’m from, Central Appalachia, which until recently was completely gutted and abandoned. My husband and I came back to the region during a different America, in 2011, to learn a lot of do it yourself skills and start a farm.
I came back to do something about where I was from, and until 2024, a lot of of us, under the radar, had shifted the narrative for that region about what was possible – – the pinnacles for us being federal investment in training people for renewable energy, and a grant that I helped achieve for regional local foods logistics to support over 40 farms. Both the kinds and sizes of federal investment in people that signaled actual sector build.
During this time, I even wrote a book, reflecting on how the coalfields of Appalachia got here, extracted and abandoned, and traced the mix of private capital, state capital, and federal capital that props up and creates any economic sector in the United States. Working together, a lot of us attempted to mimic that with a different vision for our local future. Both of our federal infrastructure grants around these new visions were killed in the last 19 months.
And suddenly our region is back on the radar to be controlled by data centers, rare earth mineral projects, and sites for large scale industrial projects that people and other places wouldn’t tolerate. But that’s the macro.
Add to this, the flaming medical system shit shows that were the deaths of my elderly parents, one poor, and one middle class, which brought home a different kind of abandonment. A friend of mine and I discussed how, in the end, even being middle class or rich (her family, not mine) in the US is not enough to escape an absolutely undignified death. You needed to be wealthy. You had to be wealthy enough to set it up all yourself, and to your point, to do it yourself.
I roll this into the delusions of my neighbors around libertarian fantasies of radical family and self-care, and their choice to birth at home and, I sit with the knowledge that the healthcare system that was supposed to be a good regional system, failed me in the birth of our son, whom we only found out 10 years later that through the tremendous bungling of his birth, has a kind of brain based blindness. The medical professionals here in the US we paid out-of-pocket (not covered by insurance) to help us figure out why suddenly this very bright child was failing at school, took our money and comfortably misdiagnosed or put him through treatments that were not only expensive, but absolutely ineffective and unnecessary.
I’m still here in the US working. I’m the one to wrap up a lot of the activities on our farm, which we luckily downsized tremendously early last year in the face of what we anticipated to be the tremendous economic downturn that we're in right now and the continued severe escalation of prices to farm. Last summer my son and husband moved for now to Germany. There, while not perfect, within a half hour at an ophthalmologist who sat and listened to us, asked the questions herself, did the examination herself rather than outsource it to an assistant– she came back with what turned out to be an accurate diagnosis of our child’s issue. I had several doctors in Germany and the UK hear the birth story and immediately suggest the potential problem. Had the potential for litigation kept the doctors in the US from suggesting it?
Several years back, my husband and I used to do speaking engagements around sustainable agriculture, and we’d open it with: neither Calvary nor the cavalry is coming to save you.
All of this above is not even counting what we saw near us with Hurricane Helene. The region mobilized first by DIY, because most literally, no one else could get in to save people….
I have a PhD; I’m versed in the language of existential and unfathomable risk.
But most of all, your article brought home for me that my recent self admonishment that I should have known more about birthing my child, that I should’ve taken a full how to help others have a baby class and learned how to birth a baby, that the REAL mistake I made was relying on anyone actually to help us to show up. That I was the problem that I just had not done it myself enough.
I have friends that stockpile thinking they’re going to survive with buckets of beans and cabinets of guns whatever it is that the next proposed apocalypse is supposed to be.
I know that we only survive in community and through communities of care.
There are a lot of rural Black folks where I still live (my family is mostly white), and they have rightly retreated to their farms and their families and their communities for that care because they know no one‘s coming to truly help them and by no one, I mean the people in power.
My late father used to explain to me how older people that could no longer work, and that had no means of paying for medical assistance, all of this prior to Social Security and Medicare, would just sit down on the front porch in a rocking chair and, within short time, die. He reminded me how Social Security was called the communist scourge then. He remembers people just sitting down on the front porch and soon being dead.
I have younger friends and activist friends who deeply participate in mutual aid. It’s interesting that James Talarico leaned on the love thy neighbor message recently. Unprovoked, never with any political message on a T-shirt or on our vehicle, I’ve had people put their hands on me and lash out at me where I live (all and only since 2016). The farm that we bought is now surrounded by white Christian nationalists and replacement theory Libertarians.
Kumbaya.
Bless you!💛 your clarity of purpose, your strength and resilience is incredible! Take good care of yourself. With love🌺
My heart goes out to you. Please be gentle with yourself. Sounds like you have done extraordinarily well in finding help for your son. Giving birth in the USA has never been easy and it's even more dangerous now. I'm sorry for what's happening to your vision for the region you live in. Heartbreaking. Please take good care of yourself. Being a visionary is tough.
I'm and old female. Born before birth control pills, legalized abortions, before Civil Rights and Voting Rights and non-discrimination laws were enacted and enforced. Told by a man at a job fair for a good paying job-"We're looking for a man," asked to cook things for company events with money from my own pocket, put on job warning when I said, "What the fuck is this doing to help us,? and told for a promotion job I needed to have my hair done, nails done on a regular basis, only wear skirts. Husband had to sign for me to have my own credit card even though I had been employed for a while. Sustained sexual harassment on the job and inappropriate comments. So on that basis, trump/GOP/MAGA/males are going back to vile comments, trying to take our votes away by various measures-Save Act, no children-can't vote on issues involving schools etc., females with no children in retirement should be nannies to other people's children, wives should vote according to what husband says, trump calls females stupid, piggy, ugly in public and no one defends them, states can decide what females can do if they are pregnant, miscarry and prison times are threatened, birth control and abortion pill are on the list of things to deny all females, DEI is gutted, EEOC wants to stop listing gender, race, etc. for a company's workforce, Federal Government and others are free to hire, promote only white males, married people, Christians etc. females are told they should not be working if they have children, pregnant females have done this to themselves by choosing unwise sex partners, poor birth control, rape and sex trafficking are no longer important crimes, ERA has been introduced over and over in US Congress and it is never passed to be an Amendment to be rattified by the States. SO YES females are facing being put back to barefoot and pregnant and stay in a marriage no matter what. Males become the provider of life for females. SO YES FEMALES are ABANDONED from even public media conversations. What is happening is just a given that may never change back to what 50 years of opportunity gave females.
Next, old people and Baby Boomers in particular are widely resented. GOP candidate said publically, "Old people should be banned." Boomers are blamed for our current fascist government. Boomer vote more than any other generation and the rest of the population blames us. Where the F... were the rest of the purely patriotic, democracy loving younger people. Boomers were at its peak 37% of the population-now only about 25%. That means 75% of other voters could crush Boomer votes. Boomers were born in a period when homes were not as expensive, healthcare was paid for at work, unions were honored and used by workers to share the wealth of the company, I was elected union steward, America was rapidly growing and Boomers created vast demand for goods and services so businesses did well, there were not big monopolies fixing prices, Wall Street was not dominated by huge companies or mega-wealthy investment funds, 401K's etc. didn't exist, pensions etc. were often a benefit offered by your employer. IRS tax brackets were progressive. 15-16 brackets from 0, 14% to 70%. People and busnesses paid their fair share. Employers felt a sense of responsibility to our nation not just their wallets. College was affordable for many of us and Boomers flooded the workplace with increased skills. Women flooded the workplace and birth control allowed freedom of choice for their futures. Families had not spread out all over the country and childcare was a bit easier for working parents. We were raised by Great Depression parents and frugality, financial conservatism, planning for the raining day was feed to us everyday as children. They fixed broken things, saved them for somebody to fix if they gave it away, didn't have loads of fancy toys etc. TV's and even electricity were not in everyone's homes. indoor plumbing was still not everywhere, 2 car families almost unheard of. Mothers made clothing, canned food from gardens, helped the neighbors, kept an eye on neightborhood children outdoors, cooked for public meetings. They were frugal but generous with their time. Boomers married, both worked to get a down payment for a home as quickly as possible so they could start a family. Boomers served/were drafted for the Vietnam War and had the GI Bill for college courses. So wages were better, taxes were fairer, employers covered health and retirement, land, homes, goods were not yet as expensive as they are today. Home purchasing were Boomers biggest asset and they learned to flip them to get a bigger, better home. Many Boomers continued with a 2 income budget by choice or necessity. Yes, WE became wealthier than our parents and conserved what we had because of cautious expenditures. WE have money now to retire and people want to blame us for the governments we have, want us to forego healthcare during COVID so younger can live, want us to just die because Social Security and Medicare is too expensive and burden to workers and taxpayers. I understand this resentment but the US Government cuts off SS taxes at $184,000 incomes. All the rest of their income is untaxed for SS and will pay no more than 37% on that income. Lawmakers have made the trickle-down tax structure their goal since 1980's, wanted to break unions, reward Wall Streeters with 25% tax rate on Capital gains, the Big Beautiful Bill was passed by GOP alone. Reagan dropped the simple progressive IRS tax rates and adopted a more regressive one. Also REMEMBER, GOP represents a minority of our population with 2 Senators from each state and very gerrymandered voting districts to favor GOP state and Federal representatives. So how exactly has the Boomer generation done all this domination to create the crisis and chaos today. WE voted, WE saved, WE lived in a different era, WE never wanted our nation to fail. You didn't vote in the percentages Boomers did-whose fault is that.
People are drooling as they wait for Boomers to die and hand their wealth-85 Trillion-to others. Wanting us to die sooner, to be abandoned as human beings as people who lived and worked and paid taxes and Social Security and Medicare taxes without complaint because it is what WE do for others and our country. Yes, I feel completely abandoned by my country and the majority of those with wealth, power, connections and media platforms. I do not understand the hatred, anger, discrimination, misogyny, predation, humiliation, wishes for old people to die because they are a burden and not worthy of any support.
Sorry but you asked and my coffee is acting out. I will go for quiet time in my bedroom, now.
I'm even older than you, Becca ... from the so-called Silent Generation. I can relate to a lot of what you said ... and I have to remind myself that some of the benefits we received were not available to our African-American neighbors.
Thanks!
At 70, that all pretty much rings true to me. With the difference that I don't have a lot of wealth that anyone is going to benefit from when I'm gone.
Wow, that must have been a double espresso. :0)
I'm not wealthy either but just saying 85 Trillion in Baby Boomers hands in money or assets is huge reason to get rid of the burden to care at all for us, though we paid for others to have that benefit while we worked, and to make us pay for everything ourselves or "shuffle off this mortal coil." I understand the crunch but there are remedies that trump/GOP/Oligarchs will never allow. Taxing the wealthy to pay their fair share for society. Thanks for the long read! Take care of you!
Thank you for taking the time to write it, Becca.
I think that provides a very good, comprehensive description of the overall economic shifts over the past several decades.
It was a much better scenario for boomers, but not all reaped the comparatively better situation for the average person during those years. As you probably know, nearly half of the baby boomers have essentially no retirement savings. And soon to face a great reduction in their incomes. Many are in the situation of needing to work until they die, if they CAN work. A lot of the checkers and baggers at my local supermarket fall into this group. Cashiering in their 80s.
And I think that you portray very well the betrayal and deconstruction of the structures, the positive advances in social and economic equities that were being made prior to the 80s.
I think that rentier capitalism - the financier class - will use essentially anything that they can in their campaign to acquire more for themselves, targeting the equity of the boomers is a part of it, but I think that in fact their main accomplishment of neoliberalism is performing this act of wringing and hoarding wealth in every way imaginable.
I was on the leading edge of the bell curve of the Baby Boomer population. I got an education in supply/demand economics etc. in college. I knew things would become more expensive as more Boomers entered the market economy. Reagan changed the tax structure-top tax bracket was 70% and it became 28% in the 1980's. Trickle down economics became popular but what it did was allow wealth to accumulated quickly at the TOP. This lead to economic, political, lobbiests, ivory tower business moguls with little regard for those who work for them or the less fortunate human beings. They became immune to life's challenges and surprises. After the 1980's, everything changed for the worse for workers. 15 years after Boomers graduated from high school, businesses and wealthy figured out how to buy out competition and add it to their business or gut it and make it fold, ship jobs overseas, manufacturing was allowed to die, good-paying jobs, company loyalty etc. was no more. I predicted a disaster coming for ordinary people, older people, education mostly when Boomers hit retirement at 65. WE are responsible for sleeping through the obvious changes happening. WE should have risen up long before what we have now happened. I'm a Boomer who always voted for Dems except once for President and perhaps for state GOP more than once. I was always against this movement to consolidation of money and power because it ALWAYS leads to bad news for the majority of human beings. I volunteered, door knocked when I had spare time during election periods.
Boomers did not DO THIS on their own. ALL of us lay down on the job of protecting our democratic, law/order, republic and being brothers and sisters for the good of ourselves and country.
I agree with pretty much all that you say here, Becca. What I would add to that - the ascendancy of neoliberal economics, beginning particularly in the Reagan years, that changed the economic course - is that there was a concomitant and dramatic shift in the society, a shift in values, and in norms.
There are myriad aspects to it, and to a great extent no single factor determines it, I think that it is just the way that societies work. None of the political or economic changes that came about during the past four or five decades could have occurred without a change in the culture, and I think these arise from all the different social currents. This would warrant an entire discussion.
The good aspect, over the years preceding that change, was a genuine striving, in the society as a whole, toward what is broadly greater justice (social and economic).
I think a lot of what is still occurring is a reaction against the fear that was generated by the social shocks of that time: the war, the assassinations, the general sense of things coming apart. I think that in a way we have never overcome that shock, and also the divisions that resulted from the social movements, and the reactions against them.
If you look at American society over the course of history from the 19th century until now, you do see the same forces contending over that period: the social disruptions that followed industrialization, the ascendancy of market capitalism, power of the wealthy, the waxing and waning of movements to counter that power.
And all of this within a context of the battle between ideologies, which drive individuals and groups in largely unconscious manner. Emotion overrides reason. Always. Bias shapes perception. Inescapably.
I think the worst aspect of what we face now is that our country is riven and driven into enmity-charged factions, exacerbating these divisions. Further polarized by entities that did not exist before, particularly on the right, forces in media, on the internet, that foment discontent. I think that it's hard to really get a handle on what their aims even are - other than in a general sense, authoritarian and oligarchic.
I think the best hope we might have is acquiring - on the part of greater numbers of people - an awareness of the ways that we are being manipulated, in ways that make us act against our own interests.
But yes, I agree: our generation, (at least those of us who actually held the values that are generally ascribed to us - certainly not all did) collectively dropped the ball.
What resonates with me is “acquiring . . . an awareness of the ways that we are being manipulated, in ways that make us act against our own interests.” We liberals/liberated can’t seem to get that message across because many are ignorant/blind to what’s happening. It’s like you don’t know you live in a really dysfunctional family as a kid until you visit other people’s lives and homes and omg life can be better.
I agree and disagree with you as usual. I think there were so many shocks as you noted but as you proposed BOOMER did not drop the ball. AS I said before BOOMER were only at their MAX population 37% of our nation. Yes, WE were taught to vote and WE are still huge voters. But, 37% cannot steer or change the direction of a country by themselves. Others either agreed or sat out all primaries and elections. So here is another point of view-no one can do well when governments do not change representation to show true democratic powers. Too many forces were working against a democratic republic and majority rules. As usual no checking on spelling etc.
I understand your previous point about almost half of Boomers having no retirement savings. My question to you is why do Boomers have such a reputation of being so greedy and controlling of our politics.
The Boomers with no savings also grew older, experienced more of life’s challenges, lost jobs, got sick, had too many children etc. That is just part of life, chance, choices. I don’t feel that stat indicates anything except changes and life.
Many born early in 1946-1954, saw what was happening in the world and politics. In the 1980’s, everything was changing so those of us who saw it coming, those of us who were educated, those of us who were raised by Depression Era, WWII, GI Bill educated parents acted, were taught, thought very differently, grew for 15-20 years-me from age 18 to 38 years old in a period of equality of power at work, businesses who felt some responsibility to workers and our country, government that was more responsive, Wall Street was not crowded with hedge funds, market manipulations, SEC and agencies watched for inside traders and huge buy backs.
This is a big thing. US House of Representatives has had 435 elected Representatives since 1913 when our population was 97million people! Our population is 336 million now. No wonder no one hears us anymore-we feel and are abandoned! In 1980, US pop. was 226,545,805. We added about 110 million people in the last 46 years. In our 250 year democracy, it took only 113 years to add 239 Million people to the USA. Supply/demand, globalization, specialization, monopolies, trade everything changed relatively ‘overnight.” AND our representation in the Federal Government was eroded because 435 House Members represented 239 MILLION MORE PEOPLE OVERALL.
The US Senate is still 100 Senators. GOP now represents a minority of our population and has outsized power compared to the majority DEM representation. 2 Senators for each state is killing MAJORITY RULES. AND, the traditional filibuster of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" days is OVER.
"1975--The Senate lowered the cloture threshold from two-thirds to three-fifths (60 votes) of all sworn senators. At the same time, it formalized the "two-track" system, which allowed the Senate to temporarily set aside a blocked bill and move on to other business without requiring a senator to continuously hold the floor with a live speech."
So, the chamber called the "most deliberative chamber in the world" became just a chamber that can count votes of who wants to kill a bill, even if passed by the whole US House 435 members, with vote by 41 Senators who want to table the bill and move on. 41 Senators who may represent small states like WY, VT, Delaware, North and South Dakota, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Alaska, D.C. Nebraska, West Virginia, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Idaho, Kansas, CT, Arkansas, Mississippi, Nevada, Iows-21 states with 2 Senators each=42 filibuster votes. These Senators with a cumulative total of much less than 21% of US population can in concert ignore a bill voted for approval by ALL 493 OTHER ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES IN OUR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. This can never be majority rules with old representations, old rules, a Congress that makes its own rules.
I remember calling my Federal representative for some help on a financial problem with the Federal Government in the 1970's or 80's. I got almost immediate help with that issue. Try that today and you will never get past the office gatekeepers.
Someone recently said-humans are from the Stone Age, have governments of the Medieval Age, and live in a heavily populated World dealing with the technology of the Space Age. I do not believe humans are equipped to be sane, wise, united in this situation.
Nature does not support a social animal population of 335 Million. Only fish, mammals that are prey, some birds, insects stay together because there is protection in numbers. Predators cannot kill all of us!
I do not believe humans are really that social by nature and prefer to live, thrive in smaller groups, communities. We are forced to live in the WORLD to survive today. There is no smaller group or community to flee to for safety, happiness, freedom, a status etc. Someone more powerful, in control, can deny what we seek to be able to live, thrive, be free.
Humans are stressed too much right now and are trying to get back to smaller groups that they trust. Society cannot add 110 Million people in 46 years, introduce powerful, other worldly, dangerous in the wrong hands technology-internet, social media, AI, hackers and not expect humans to revert to Darwin's "Survival of the Fittest." Just look at the animal world and watch population collapse when too many exist in their groups.
My mind is so full of variables that have brought us to this crisis, I lose my points to make. I love discussions, debates, exploring what you think and I think so forgive my morning coffee again.
Dear Anand, I don't feel abandoned personally, but we live in a society, in an economic and political system that is built on extraction and exploitation, so the situation is structural rather than individual. What would it mean to put care, broadly conceived, at the center of how we organize our lives? This isn't an original idea--there is a whole literature on this now--and it is something to strive for: a society in which we can care for our families, friends, communities and our planet. Emma Dowling's The Care Crisis is one place to start to think about these issues.
I found Anand's interview with Nick Hanauer on Markets for Human Flourishing a hopeful sign that there are people out there working to change the system. I totally agree with you, Gregg, it's the profit-driven system that's the problem. I worked in healthcare and witnessed for myself the effect on providers and consumers when that system changed from person-to-profit centered. I've been retired for almost 20 years and I'm still angry about it.
I walked into my last appointment of the day yesterday and the 14 month old dog in front me growled.
Dad laughed and went back to looking at his phone.
I tried to talk to him about Fear Anxiety and Stress is his dog.
He could not have cared less. His dog just... doesn't like new people he told me.
This is a 14 month old dog, with not a lick of training that the dad just doesn't care if we have to muzzle and pin to do anything with (we didn't cause I won't) that laughs when his dog escalated
That's abandonment to me
My husband is also a vet; he would, I'm sure, echo your sentiments.
Many years ago, a Pit bit off the tip of one of his fingers. The owner asked (with no remorse) if they were going to finish the office call. The staff had to explain that "no," the doctor had to go to the hospital.
I do not feel as abandoned as I feel lied to and misled about many things.
I've lived a life of abandonment. From being born in between two significant generations (Boomers and Gen X) and never quite fitting into either, to being raised in a divorced household by a single-parent but enrolled in every religious private school my mother could find full of the traditional archetype families that were the American ideal. I was the raisin walking amongst the cookie cutter types, and they showed me my oddness on a regular basis. I'm a divorced, single woman on my own for almost 30 years. Did I mention I've had a career in education and wrote a book titled "Orphaned: The Abandonment of America's Public School Teacher"? I tried to get it published, but...well I think you get the drift. I've been incompatible with American life my whole life.
But I've also not been abandoned. For every rough situation I found myself in where I was alone struggling with systems that don't care and quite frankly don't work as designed, to friends that suddenly turned away, and a work life that savaged my soul, not to mention my health, I've always landed on my feet because I never abandoned myself. Now it did mean that I had to step into situations that were scary, such as moving 5 states away to start a new job. But, wow, have I had so many varying experiences and met so many different people because of it!
That's the paradox of America isn't it? A place, a country, a culture that will absolutely chew up and spit someone out. At the same time, a country that offers a plethora of opportunity if one is willing to take a risk and reinvent. My life has been made richer and more diverse because I've started over, and started over again. And although sometimes the jaded side of me comes out with the urge to just crawl into a hole, I would say I'm more open to diverse ideas, opinions, and people. I understand how one's surroundings shape views and often people just can't break out of it because the pressures inside those same surroundings depend on everyone keeping with the script.
So my answer to the question, "do you feel abandoned?" is yes. Yes by almost all of the ins and outs that make up American life, except one. Myself. I will never abandon myself.
Bravo for your courage and for not abandoning yourself!
This is the first time in my life I feel the government does not care about me. I feel they are taking every thing- my food, my money, my health without a care in the world.i am dispirited as are many I know.
No matter where I went in the world, I knew I was safe , that America had my back. I no longer feel that. This administration careens around smashing every protection and care we once had happily and proud of itself. We are simply a burden to them.
Hmmm, you can't be the Emily Prager I'm thinking of.
To have worked with O'Donoghue and feel this way for the first time!!??
Can't be. :0)
"This administration careens around smashing every protection and care we once had happily and proud of itself."
-Paints a great picture, thank you.
This administration seems to me likes it's populated by mutant (authoritarian not anarchist) right-wing Bakunins - gleefully breaking up the furnishings of state, and replacing it with some oligarchic cabal.
Your essay was just the right thing for me yesterday. Thank you.
I wrote a letter last week to a friend in Europe who follows all that's going on here. Abandoned was the word I used. I'm a resistor who tries every day to do at least one thing that matters. It's helped me get through the last 20ish months. But now I can't keep my spirits up. This feeling started when Dolly Parton died. I'm no country music fan, but she was different. Her life oozed goodness. For a full week every tribute made me cry. The sadness is about losing an American who's decency was an example to us all.
My situation is mostly about the upcoming election. While Trump shamelessly works to keep us from voting, most Dem politicians have operated as 'business as usual' since January 20, 2025. It's frustrating that they've had my support for decades and here we are: abandoned. What are THEY doing? I'm nearly finished writing postcards to infrequent voters in key states, as I've done since 2020. I've mailed at least 600, and this year's batch brings the total to 800. I force myself to do a few each day. It's painful.
If you gave me 5 minutes to write a list of changes to our system that would not only preserve democracy, but make it work better, I would easily fill a page or two. With this group of do-nothing leaders -- and hopefully some new ones with potential to get things done -- will we make the changes that are so clearly needed? If so, will that happen before democracy is completely gone? I've become cynical and wish I weren't so aware of EVERYTHING.
I appreciate the opportunity to explain my abandonment to you. Looking forward to reading your new book!
Thank you for writing all those postcards. I have to look for signs of hope in order not to sink into total despair. It is my hope that having the underbelly of our nation exposed may be a first step in transforming the consciousness of our nation. Some of the young people running for office give me hope.
I agree with all that you said, thank you!
I feel abandoned in one important way. For my whole life I have had excellent health insurance as a result of my federal government employment, which also covers me in retirement. But health insurers have been nickel and diming me in recent years. This year my insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, denied coverage for a hyaluronic acid injection for my arthritic knees that I have been getting every six to nine months for several years. As a result I now have excruciating pain and have scheduled knee replacement surgery for October. The injection is quite expensive (around $1500) but knee surgery will be far more expensive. So Blue Cross will end up paying more. I was unable to reach anyone at Blue Cross who could discuss this intelligently and I was never given a coherent answer as to why Blue Cross denied the coverage. Their letter explaining the denial was filled with boilerplate gobbledygook that used a lot of words to say nothing of substance. I'm a lawyer trained to understand gobbledygook if it has any meaning. Blue Cross's language said nothing at all, other than "coverage denied."
" I was unable to reach anyone at Blue Cross who could discuss this intelligently and I was never given a coherent answer as to why Blue Cross denied the coverage."
And there is no recourse. That is what is so incredible. The entire insurance system is one of abandonment. I had an experience, also with a Blue Cross affiliate (it's a huge umbrella), several years ago. A very protracted, maddening experience, that gave my very limited retirement savings a very big hit. Many thousands. It looks like the same branch has changed states, and is continuing the same practice. There is no oversight, no place to appeal. State departments of financial regarding insurance appeals offer no mechanisms to investigate or enforce. It is truly amazing.
Nothing raises my ire more than insurance companies. I know you're talking about Blue Cross / Blue Shield. When I first retired, I was talked into a United Healthcare Medicare Advantage plan. Medicare Advantage (disadvantage) was new back then. I was healthy. And then I got cancer. If not for financial aid from The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, I would have had a lot more out-of-pocket.
Have you seen the new United Healthcare commercials. They show agents going out of their way to care for their customers. I get angry every time I see one. Yeah, right is my response. :-(
Hi Linda,
Yes, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, specifically an Allstate entity. It was an astonishing experience, and the most demoralizing aspect of all of it was that there was absolutely no recourse, that these companies can act arbitrarily and with complete impunity. It was also spiritually demoralizing simply having to interact with these companies, realizing that there are so many individuals in our society that operate without any moral compass, they are VERY aware of what they are doing.
I'd remembered a phrase that described it, and just now followed up, it is the title of a book that in fact centers on Allstate and State Farm. I was curious, looked into it, they are still continuing the same practices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay,_Deny,_Defend
I missed the commercials - bailed out on TV in the late 70s.
Glad I missed those commercials, and most of everything else that I was spared since then.
(Although there were some good Netflix serials that I watched on DVD - the David Chase and David Simon works. Those were great. The Wire!)
Insurance companies ... the bane of our existence! I feel for you.
Anand, I so appreciate how your essay prompted introspection (at least that’s what it did for me).
My husband was dying of cancer through our Covid (years) of quarantine- and everything got even harder— and the cruelty of this regime and its followers & the dysfunction grew even more intense.
And my husband & I would start and finish the days & our sense of groundlessness with: “Well, we’re on our own.”
But in the midst of all that bleakness, somebody always came through: the MSK nurses who gave him his blood transfusions, (in the quarantined capsule at the outpatient lab) - the masked hospice nurses who trekked from their homes to care for my husband in his final days-
Feeling abandoned feels so primal & really messes w the head - but thanks to the folks back then who helped my husband- I’m trying to remember to slow down that terrifying feeling & say “wait- that’s not entirely true. Someone comes through.”
Thank you for this.
I would say, only somewhat qualified: Someone (sometimes) comes through.
And when they do, it can shift everything, perhaps most importantly, our frame of mind, our view of all this, and each other.
True! And sometimes someone comes too late.
And after I posted my comment - I realized there were many, many someones who came through for us during that time, including the people (only identified as numbers ) who donated the bags of blood, and the folks who drove us back & forth & the delivery people who brought food.
That’s not even the half of all the someones. Kind of amazing to ponder.
So many people, known and unknown - get us through our days.
So yes - that shifts everything, like you said.
I feel abandoned by the promise that the meek shall inherit the earth.
I am unusually fortunate in my life AND am daily crazed by the corruption and hostility of our
national government. Certainly my sustaining values are being trampled on as our Mafia Boss-
in-Chief spews hatred every day. If there isn't a Blue Wave at the midterms I will definitely
feel abandoned by the obliteration of fair governance.
As I said, I am one of the lucky few who are living their deepest values in a life of service
which is like breathing to me. However, it hurts to witness so much suffering.
I appreciate that you are a voice crying out in the proverbial wilderness. Like Jon Ossof and
James Talarico and those not too afraid to speak truth to power. Bless all of ;you.