Fiddling While Rome Burns

In 64 AD, a conflagration began devouring Rome. 

Emperor Nero bothered not, some say, with buckets, hoses, or help.

Instead, he amused himself by playing his lyre and singing along.

Sycophants partied with him for six days while Rome went up in smoke.

Some claim this story is apocryphal, that Nero was not even in town when it happened.

To bolster their case, naysayers point out that Nero couldn’t have “fiddled.”

He may have “lyred,” but fiddles were about as prevalent as Stratocasters in those days.

Nero was never a popular figure, especially among the Christians he persecuted and for whom he blamed the fire.

Some historians say that the magnanimous Nero opened his palaces to house the victims and organized relief efforts.

We’ll never know.

Nero’s historians could whitewash history better than Saudis with a bucket of gold and a golf course.

The poor of Rome lived in densely packed wooden tenements.

With few resources and no place to go, they either fried in the funeral pyre or survived without housing or belongings. 

The wealthy watched the show safely from their porticos, verandas, and distant country estates.

No matter the real story, people still use the expression “fiddling while Rome is burning.”

*****

Isn’t our version of Rome now burning in so many ways?

And aren’t we fiddling?

Isn’t climate change an existential threat to our planet and species?

And don’t most of us ignore it?

Isn’t wealth inequality in the United States the same iniquitous pattern for us as it was for Rome?

Don’t the poor in our society suffer on the edge of daily existence while the rich drive by them on the way to the Mercedes dealerships, preferring to talk to Alexa?

***** 

Recently, a disabled person in a wheelchair approached me in the parking lot in front of the upscale gym I go to several times a week.

He asked me if I had any spare change.

I said, “Dude, people don’t carry change any more. They don’t even carry cash.”

I did not have any spare change (or any change at all), but at least I left him with some truth and a smile on his face.

*****

How many of us stand by and fiddle while the bitter and disenfranchised walk into schools and unload their semi-automatic weapons on school children while we do nothing to control gun violence?

SCHOOL CHILDREN!

How many grandchildren of Jews from Nazi Germany vote for wannabe fascists as though suffering from collective amnesia?

Poverty in the Land of Plenty?

What’s it like to be poor in the land of plenty-for-the-few?

From “Poverty, by America” by Matthew Dowd [1]:

Poverty is embarrassing, shame inducing.

It’s more socially acceptable today to disclose a mental illness than to tell someone you are broke.

When the poor take to the streets, it’s usually not under the banner of poverty. There is no flag for poor rights, after all.

‘Being poor reduces a person’s cognitive capacity more than going a full night without sleep.’

When we are preoccupied by poverty, ‘we have less mind to give to the rest of life.’

Poverty does not just deprive people of security and comfort, it siphons off brainpower, too.

Black and Hispanic Americans are twice as likely to be poor, compared to white Americans, owing not only to the country’s racial legacies but also to present-day discrimination.

The Black unemployment rate remains nearly double the white unemployment rate, and studies have shown that Black jobseekers are just as likely to face discrimination in the labor market today as they were thirty years ago.

There has been no progress in a generation.

There is no metropolitan area in the United States where whites experience extreme concentrations of disadvantage, living in neighborhoods with poverty rates in excess of 40 percent.

That means that most poor white children attend better-resourced schools, live in safer communities, experience lower rates of police violence, and sleep in more dignified homes than their poor Black and Hispanic peers.

Today, the wealth gap between Black and white communities is as large as it was in the 1960s.

Our legacy of systematically denying Black people access to the nation’s land and riches has been passed from generation to generation.

In 2019, the median white household had a net worth of $188,200, compared with $24,100 for the median Black household.

Poverty is often material scarcity piled on chronic pain piled on incarceration piled on depression piled on addiction – and so it goes.

Poverty isn’t a line.

It’s a tight knot of social maladies.

It is connected to every social problem we care about – crime, health, education, housing – and its persistence in American life means that millions of families are denied safety and security and dignity in one of the richest nations in the history of the world. [2]

What Do We Do? 

We work at often trivial jobs; we wait for two-minute consultations with our doctors; we post to Facebook and Instagram; we imbibe Mimosas at brunch on Sundays; we seek out five-star restaurants for dinners or pig out on fried food and burgers; we plan trips to Europe inspired by Stanley Tucci; we watch Netflix; we play golf, Scrabble, and pickleball; we get Botox injections; we “hang out”; we talk and argue about trivia; we complain about our taxes and the age and stupidity of our politicians; we beat dead horses; and, we look for that lost shaker of salt.

We live lives of self-absorption rather than self-transcendence.

We wallow in the belief that “there is nothing I can do about it, so why bother?”

A mindset of impotence permeates our culture and corrodes motivation.

Impotence justifies fiddling.

So, we fiddle, humming a tune, sleepwalking through life, blind not only to poverty and wealth inequality but to the rise of fascism, the death of trust, melting ice caps, the murder of children, anti-intellectualism, and corruption at the highest level of government.

Clarence! Sammy!

I’m talking to you!

*****

You may not see it from your bedroom window, but our iteration of Rome burns hotter every day.

If it doesn’t already, “uncontrollable” will soon describe it.

The people at the bottom of the food chain, once again, suffer the most.

Late Breaking News 

CitySquare started as a humble food pantry over 35 years ago in Dallas.

It expanded into housing, workforce development, legal services, and health care assistance.

The food pantry served more than 12,000 people a year, coordinated housing for about 1,000 people, and, through its social workers, connected over 2,000 with health insurance.

CitySquare announced recently that it will shutter in December due to a lack of funding – and excessive fiddling.

*****

Right before me,

The signs implore me,

“Help the needy and show them the way.”

Human kindness is overflowing,

And I think it’s going to rain today. 

Randy Newman

*****

Isn’t it time we put down our fiddles and let our voices be heard?

[1] I posted my first article about this topic on March 7, 2024: “Fruit Loops for Dinner, Again?”

[2] All quotes from Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond.