For working class, the promise of America is slipping away

Some years back, my late father was having a conversation with my sister about how much more stressful life had become for the generations that followed his.

My dad was born in 1926, and he worked primarily for one employer for his entire adult life. He didn't have to worry about whether he would have health care and he didn't have to make major decisions about how to finance his retirement.

His generation was pretty much the last one where a significant percentage of adults spent their whole lives working for the same employer. And even then, many of the folks at the blue-collar end of the spectrum found themselves out of work and looking for jobs in their fifties.

Through the '50s and '60s and even into the '70s, pretty much all the sectors of the American economy were working full-tilt, and it was possible for a guy with just a high school education to have a home, a family and all the other accoutrements of middle-class life.

If I can repeat something I have used numerous times before ...

One of my favorite pictures, one that says so much about the good in mid-century America, is the bridge across the Delaware River in Trenton, N.J.

"Trenton makes, the world takes"

An awful lot of men and women made good livings making things that were sold all around the world, in Trenton and in hundreds of other American cities and towns.

They worked hard and they reached a certain level of success in life.

Most of those jobs are long gone, though, and plenty of folks like the earlier Americans now work two or three part-time jobs and can't have anywhere near a middle-class lifestyle. They're lucky to have benefits at all, and if they do, they're at a lower level than before. Something like a quarter of American workers can't even think about taking vacations, let alone plan for retirement.

So life becomes more and more stressful, and folks who are a little weaker emotionally sometimes snap. Look at all the cases we're hearing about where someone just sort of snaps and shoots someone else. Call it "Stand Your Ground" or whatever, we have more and more people who only feel empowered in their lives when they can show how tough they are.

The shooter

Tuesday evening in Dallas, a 46-year-old man -- seemingly for no reason at all -- shot an 8-year-old boy in the face. Yes, the two were of different races, but I'm not willing to out and out say the man just wanted to shoot a black kid because of racism.

I don't want to justify this in any way, but I think it's at least possible that his life had taken such a turn for the worse that he just snapped and struck out at someone, anyone.

There are too many guns in the hands of too many of the wrong people, and too many right wingers seem only to want to make it easier for people to get guns and to use them. If a guy has a messed-up life, something like Stand Your Ground can give him a feeling -- false, yes -- of control.

We have to find a way to make people matter again. We have to find work for people they can take pride in, and that can remunerate them honestly for their efforts. We can't give people jobs that force them to apply for food stamps just to get by and expect them to take pride in themselves.

If they can't take pride in their lives, they leave themselves wide open to demagogues like Glenn Beck who tell them it's all the fault of progressives and we should hunt them down and kill them.

Sinclair Lewis said it in the 1930s:

"It can happen here."

And if you leave 70 percent of families just getting by and with no hope for truly better lives, then ...

"It will happen here."