A confederacy of Scrooges

Tis the season when professional and amateur theaters and drama clubs mount productions of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Some may find the story overly wrought or too sentimental, but no matter how many times I’ve seen it on stage, or in any number of film adaptations, or even in animated form, it still moves me. Taken with his larger body of work, Dickens had a finely developed social conscience.

He railed against the injustices of his time, against the grinding poverty most English were condemned to live. He had little use for the smug and unfeeling wealthy people who might have employed some of their resources to benefit others.

It seems more than apt to remember Dickens as we hurtle toward living under a confederacy of Scrooges in the coming four years. Cutting Medicaid or requiring severely disabled people to work is wrong-headed and mean. This kind of thinking owes a debt to Ronald Reagan’s account of the welfare queen.

Yes, there will be some people who take advantage of the system, so by all means, let’s penalize everyone in need. While we’re at it, let’s give even more tax breaks to the billionaires because they sure are working up a sweat flipping those burgers and staffing those hospitals and digging those ditches.

The point is not just that Scrooge was a miser sitting on more money than he’d ever need, the point is hardness of heart. He didn’t believe in charity for the poor, contenting himself to call them lazy.  Scrooge would rather they be imprisoned or placed in what would be modern-day sweatshops. And if they must die, he wishes they’d do it quickly and “decrease the surplus population.”

And in service of decreasing the surplus population, recently Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lawyer asked the FDA to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine. By all means, let’s bring back polio. It was such a great disease in how it spread and maimed and killed people. Talk about efficiency!

Although it was March when Covid struck the U.S. in 2020, Scrooge’s spirit circulated with the virus as 1.2 million citizens died, trimming the population. Despite saying 38 times during that year that the virus would vanish all by itself, President 45 was wrong every time.

The thing is that it wasn’t really a surplus problem. We aren’t overpopulated. A lot of folks shuffled off their mortal coil when we could have benefitted by their staying around. And if mass deportations do occur, those “Help Wanted” signs are going to start looking like wallpaper. Americans may have to learn to love rice and beans because who’s going to butcher their hogs and cut their steaks if we hollow out our workforce?

Years ago, I spoke with the Methodist pastor in Alta for a story about how the local food pantry had assembled Christmas boxes for families. There was some concern about whether the recipients merited gift certificates to be used at the local grocery store. Some feared that people would purchase cigarettes.

I didn’t know this pastor, but he impressed me with his compassion. He said that maybe a pack of cigarettes was the one thing that person had to look forward to in an otherwise bleak life. Who was he to judge, he said, although it was clear some of his parishioners were more than ready to.

We Americans can be so open and welcoming, but we can also be so blind and hard-hearted. This cowboy mentality of going it alone will kill us in the end. We need each other; all we have is each other. We must find ways to stand together against the encroachment of the oligarchs.

Charles Dickens wrote a piece of fiction in 1843, and while I wish for some kind of transformation in President 47’s heart, his confederacy of Scrooges is already springing into threatening action. In their blinkered minds and hardened hearts, Tiny Tim can go to hell.

Although the tone of this column belies the fact, Joan Zwagerman is looking for the light as we head into an uncertain future.