 | | The author with Mike Stepp.Nicholas Kristof/The New York Times |
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Can Biden save Americans like my old pal Mike?
This is a column from the heart. At one level it’s about a childhood friend, Mike Stepp, who grew up with me and walked to and from the school bus with me each morning in Yamhill, Ore. He struggled after dropping out of high school, self-medicated with alcohol and drugs, and finally ended up homeless in a city park. |
I would visit him, and he carried signed copies of my books that I had given him in his shopping cart. I know so many rich people who complain about this or that, and Mike was always cheery and would joke about how he was lucky to go camping every day. Privileged people ask me to write articles about the tax breaks they think they should enjoy; Mike never asked for anything. |
He died recently, and so today’s column is about him and an exploration about what went wrong for so many blue-collar Americans like him. I think that many educated Americans, myself included, engaged in a myopia and obliviousness that made things worse for poorly educated low-skilled laborers like Mike, in everything from our attitudes toward unions to our response to environmental threats. Please read. And RIP, Mike.
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