The two key words here are “rues” and “agency”. I suspected that “rue” had Anglo-Saxon, specifically Germanic roots, and I discovered that it did. Generally, it meant and continues to mean “feel sorry over,” but in the Middle Ages the nuance “repentant” was added—tuck that thought away for later. “Agency” has special significance for this news story. “Agency” howls with the shrill note of bureaucracy and its manifold screw-ups and buck-passing. “Agency” is the ultimate source for the standard comment, “Shit flows downhill,” to which I would add, “And the lower downhill one finds oneself, the deeper the shit.” The human functionaries in agencies have developed carefully articulated ways of stating how things are done in certain ways, and when those certain ways result in large catastrophes (Remember “Good old Brownie” during the bloody sludge of Katrina?) all sorts of cover language is mounted to offer how sorrow everyone is and how they all wished that they had done things differently—if only they had thought to…
Indeed, things coulda, shoulda and woulda been different for Ms. Grimmer and her two kids if someone among the endless agencies she encountered and pleaded with had only thought to… What if those various social service people had taken a longer look at and investigated more thoroughly into the pallor on the faces of the children and the squalor they were living in? Once he was told by Ms. Grimmer that she had a gun, what if the deputy had bothered to ask why or where she kept it? What if the people who saw the children walking bare foot had asked if they needed help?
One answer to these questions and to all the questions that are so obvious in the context of Ms. Grimmer’s story is that in our culture as they register statistically, the physical lives of human beings have a low priority. Everything falls under a grand scale of individual responsibility (except for those in the agencies) and of general accounting. How much is it worth in the long run? Do we need to fund these agencies forever? Or as the Victorians during their Dickensian days would say, “It is necessary to have the poor among us so that we can best display our charity.” The local, state and federal agencies are the accountants, and, similar to financial accountants, a large part of their responsibilities is to obfuscate and redirect the truth. In addition to re-reading Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” this holiday, you can get an American version of what I’m writing about in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” The agency mindset prevails in both. Dickens added remunerative repentance for Scrooge to his story; Melville, however, wasn’t feeling so generous. Melville always scrupulously studied the American way of doing things.
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I AM re-reading "A Christmas Carol" this holiday season. Oh, how Scrooge best depicts Republican/Tea Party politics:
Some gentlemen appear at Scrooge's business to request a donation for "some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessities; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons," asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"They are Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour then?" said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
....
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer....I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned; they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
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