The Age of Wrath: Part 3

Stories from a Middle Class in Panic

I pull on a pair of plastic gloves and get in the serving line, and a cook hands me two plates through the flap. They’re serving salad with mushrooms and radishes, chicken and enchiladas.

Where is the woman in the yellow vest who oversees the food distribution? She waves to me and points to where the next serving should go. Children first, parents next and singles last. The diners wait in silence to be served. People who just a few months ago had worked 40, 50 and up to 60 hours per week now wait for their much-needed meals.

“The American middle class is disappearing,” says Jonathan. It’s being “eliminated” is how he puts it.

I put the plates down in front of a mother and a little girl, perhaps 10 years of age. “Enjoy.”

To drink, there’s water or cold, pink lemonade. The people concentrate on their meals and eat in silence.

After dinner, Jonathan asks me how I felt. Only one word comes to mind: humble. It was a humbling experience.

Outside the hall, the endless sky has turned pink and the mountains reflect the sunset.

Evenings in motels along Route 66, I read Steinbeck during my journey through America. That, and a current book about America: Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart,” a study of the deep divide in the United States. The upper crust lives worlds’ apart from the rest of the people, Murray argues. People in the powerful upper class live in their own world, in carefully protected enclaves, with their backs turned on their fellow citizens. The poor are plagued by the erosion of the family, their solidarity and their hopes. And caught between the two extremes — eroding, worried and often panicked — is the middle class.

The Dancing Eagle Casino is located on an Indian reservation in New Mexico where gambling is legal. My 100 budgeted dollars wander across the tables there as I sip gin and tonic and lose and lose.

Lana, who runs the roulette wheel, asks me where I’m from. “Germany?” Then she grins and asks me, “You think you’re going to throw Greece out of the EU or will you let them go broke?” I ask her which choice she would make. No idea, she says, adding, “We’re a lot like Greece, except our Germany is called China. And we’re really screwed, too.”