The American Political Climate: Patriotism, Gluttony, and Hungry Americans

America's government is failing to fulfill its responsibilities to its citizens. In a country full of rabid patriots screaming that the United States is the greatest nation on the planet, it is estimated that one of every eight Americans are food insecure. Approximately 13 million American children struggle to eat food every day, often relying on government-subsidized programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the National School Lunch Act to avoid dying of starvation. Why is this atrocious figure not one of the government's top priorities to solve? In class this week, we watched A Place at the Table, a documentary that explores this issue, and exposes the failures of Congress in relation to feeding their constituents. In this film, the language used when discussing programs to feed Americans in need absolutely infuriated me. Certain Republican representatives stated that they "hoped" that they could find a way to feed people, and stated that they "couldn't afford" to increase the budget for programs like SNAP, despite their undying efforts to provide tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations. The actions taken by Congress that harm the most vulnerable Americans contradict the message of one of the most quintessentially American icons - the Statue of Liberty - sends to the world, as America does an absolutely insufficient job caring for its huddled masses. This issue should have wall-to-wall coverage within news media, but articles on hunger in America are rarely written by the most prominent news providers. Instead of spending absurd amounts of time covering the petty politics of the current administration, they should give a voice to those whose only cries are for a stable source of food. My question for America as President Trump gives his first State of the Union address this afternoon has two parts; first, why isn't feeding Americans in need a central part of Making America Great Again? Additionally, what can Americans do to change this?


First, let's address the elephant in the room. The GOP platform under the Trump Administration aims to cut government subsidized nutrition programs, due to several inaccurate beliefs; GOP politicians believe that welfare programs encourage people to be lazy and that there are large swaths of "welfare queens" who eat luxurious meals on the taxpayer's dime. These are both overwhelmingly inaccurate ideas, and these misconceptions only bring harm to America's working class citizens. Republicans have not always voted in ways that harm the most vulnerable Americans.
In fact, the Food Stamps Act was created through bipartisan effort, and it is one of the most impactful bipartisan policy efforts in recent memory, as it provided a lifeline for millions of Americans. The bill was created because the congressmen of the time recognized that food is important for survival and that it was disgraceful for anyone to go hungry in the richest nation on Earth, a concept that many representatives have forgotten in today's world. For example, the representatives of the two hungriest counties in the country voted for a massive reduction of funding for SNAPs. Republican icon Ronald Reagan would have been infuriated by this, as he firmly believed that if there was even one American who had to go hungry, that was one American too many. I brought up the origins of SNAPs because it shows that feeding the needy should not have to be such a starkly partisan issue, as it is in Congress today. Unfortunately, the GOP of today have forgotten their past, and they are firm believers that food is a commodity, not a right. The Trump Administration is far more concerned with corporate profits than feeding our children nutritious food, a fact that should be alarming for every patriotic American. Sadly, there is a significant number of Americans who blindly subscribe to a system of beliefs that value profits far more than the wellbeing of millions of human beings. This is a broken system of beliefs, and we will never be able to end hunger in America if we only focus on adding monetary value to food. The fact that cutting food stamps and other government subsidized nutrition assistance programs is a goal of many people who self-identify as unabashed patriots only adds insult to injury. In my opinion, it is absolutely unpatriotic to take actions that will cause millions of Americans to be hungry in the shadow of abundance.

So, what can we do to fix our broken system, and how do we start down the path toward ending hunger in the United States? First, Americans need to be exposed to the new face of hunger. When asked for a description of someone who is malnourished, most Americans will describe the tragic conditions of Sub-Saharan Africa, the horribly underweight children that we see in commercials during prime-time television. We don't see the face of American hunger, as it isn't as extreme as the conditions we see in the developing world. If Americans were exposed to the levels of malnutrition in the United States we would likely be more willing to fund programs to provide for the famished. Second, we have to decrease how much food we waste. The United States has enough food to provide every American with plenty of calories, yet we have demonstrated an inability to provide adequate access to these calories, and we throw out billions of dollars of food annually. Across the globe, most cultures see the act of wasting food as sinful behavior. If Americans could see the world through this lens, it would be beneficial in many ways, but the benefit that would interest capitalist America the most is financial; every corporation and person in America should be willing to reduce food waste once they realize how much money they will save by doing so. In fact, there could be businesses in America, like those found in places like South Korea and in Europe, that profit off of food waste by turning it into animal feed. The problem with this step is that it will feed into the broken system, rather than fixing the issue at its source. So, the next step we can take to end hunger in America is to view access to food as a fundamental right. This is not the case right now, due to the profit-driven food industry and its practices. The government enables the food industry to extract every dollar out of the pockets of Americans as they can, while simultaneously ignoring the grumbling stomachs of the millions of hungry Americans. In policy discussions, government officials are concerned with balancing the budget, and they provide an insufficient amount of nutritional assistance to the impoverished as a direct result. This happens while the Trump Administration places a heavy focus on cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations, which decreases government revenue by billions of dollars overall.

It is shameful that the GOP refuses to increase the budget for SNAPs, WIC, and school lunches, because they view profit for the millionaires as more important than providing adequate nutrition to the huddled masses. The budget should not be viewed as balanced until it provides for the needy. If congressmen were forced to live on the budget that they provide for the needy through these programs, they would understand how inadequate their programs really are. Even though 26 lawmakers have done so through the #SNAPChallenge, they cannot fully appreciate the hopelessness of the millions of unemployed Americans whose sole source of food are these programs.

In conclusion, our current administration's identity and platform are built off of a web of lies and ignorance. If we really want to Make America Great Again, we would provide sufficiently for the millions of food-insecure Americans in the country. The country cannot be great if we continue to view food as a commodity, rather than a necessity. The country cannot be great if we have an administration that views the less fortunate as lazy free-riders that want to take advantage of government generosity, rather than people who are crying out in their time of need. In truth, our current administration is taking advantage of the most vulnerable Americans, slashing their food budget to pad their pocketbooks while shaming them for being in poverty. To Make America Great Again, the privileged must be philanthropic and use their extra capital to provide for those who cannot afford to put food on the table. We must care for the impoverished. Finally, we must act in a manner that is consistent with the New Colossus, the poem that was supposed to demonstrate the American Dream to the world. I will end with an excerpt from this poem, an excerpt that every person in America should be reminded of;

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

By: Josiah Colby
Word Count: 1,494 words