"Trips Abroad Bring Awareness"

I think the author misses the whole point -- of what she should have learned in her travels -- that "middle class" Americans are the "rich," and not merely deploring the rare (mythical) "rich moguls" they blame for all the great inequities in the world, while claiming that all they have, is merely their own "middle class entitlements." It begins with themselves, and not only some others -- that they can bear witness to the great poverty in the world, while thinking it doesn't mean them -- foremost.

That 50% of the population has a much greater impact on the world than the 1% ever did, and that is why it is so troubling, that they take no responsibility for the problems of the world -- as they demand even more at their salary negotiations and lobbying, which is all the media has become anymore. At the great bastion of liberalism that the universities have become, I'm certain the public relations director receives 2-4 times the median income in the US, which places her in the top 20% at least -- who then point accusing fingers only at the 1% as though they are not part of that inequality -- and are actually the greatest defenders of that status quo.

Thus, in the recent arguments against the 1%, the middle class likes to blur that distinction between the 20% and 1%, and the middle class, as the "poor" in this country -- which they are not. So their rhetoric of protecting the middle class as the poor, is really the defense of the injustices of the educated "privileged" -- such as this individual is -- but she doesn't think so, because she thinks it is somebody else who gets even more.

But those people in the 1% don't get it because they're on a "career track." That kind of wealth and income is only achieved through extraordinary circumstances and conditions -- or we'd all be pursuing it, as a clearly established "career path." But the other 50%, is clearly delineated and institutionalized as the justification for inequalities and inequities that are deemed "proper and politically correct," because they confirm what one already wishes to believe -- and not to awaken any awareness and consciousness to her than to advise all other Americans with more money than they know what to do with, that they should visit the barrios of the world and see what she did, and be glorified in their own virtue.

Just the other day, there was a "liberal" editorial advising Oregonians that if they don't want to have a ban on plastic bags, they should go around and pick up these bags -- without the even better thought, that the author would do society a much greater service than instead of banning such useful containers for those who don't drive around in SUVs with all their reusable bags (the poor), if they would contribute that labor for society themselves. As anybody who has done so, one notices that those bags and litter doesn't immediately reappear the next day, or even after a week, but remains there because nobody does anything but to complain that somebody else should -- and that "somebody else" is anybody but themselves, who challenge why should they do anything.

As we see in the countless editorials which are the problem, people divide themselves into the virtuous and enlightened (aware) and the evil "others" -- which is the violence in the world, and never the (re)solution of anything. Rather than dividing themselves into liberals (enlightened) and conservatives (evil perpetrators), every individual has to see both aspects in themselves -- and own the problems individually, and wholly, and not just project and point to the 1% they claim is responsible for all the inequities and injustices in the world -- that they are just duly reporting as "fair-minded" and "objective" self-righteous citizens.

That would be an awareness worth noting -- and writing about.