Forgotten men

Last Christmas, one of my nephews became a statistic: 24, unemployed, unmarried, father of three, dead of a heroin overdose.

I disapproved of his parents, my in-laws, and that’s a confession. I prayed for them, but didn’t try to understand them. She was a drama queen before that term leapt into the vernacular, apt to wrest any trivial transaction into Episode 2,476 of Days of Our Lives. He was temper-prone, making for a stormy household peppered with holes punched in the walls.

We speak of “living in the moment” as though that were a good thing—and it is, when understood as being open to life as it unfolds. But for many people, “living in the moment” means they never plan and seldom ponder the consequences of their words or actions—what right now might mean for next year, or even next week. Governed by simple action and reaction, they hopped from one right now to the next without really going anywhere.

Careless child-raising resulted in careless children. The marriage fell apart, and the kids went on to early pregnancies, DUIs, jail time, babies I couldn’t keep track of, and moving in and out of mom’s house because they couldn’t keep a job. Time and hard knocks eventually mellowed the parents, but last Christmas knocked them flat.

He wasn’t an innocent victim, but he was overlooked, especially by people like me who usually noticed when looking down.

The statistics: Heroin use has spiked among young white males (ages 18-25), especially in the Midwest. In 2014 there were 47,000 cases of lethal overdose in the United States, about two-thirds of those due to heroin and prescription painkillers like oxycodone. Cracking down on the over-prescription of “oxy” has probably fueled the demand for a substitute, and the volume of heroin seizures at the Mexican border has quadrupled since 2000.

Meanwhile, the fathers of these young men aren’t doing so well either. Last November Princeton University released a comprehensive study showing a marked rise in early death among white men aged 45-54. Since 2000 the rate has risen by 34 per 100,000, while every other demographic group has seen increased life expectancy, however slight. Causes of death include alcohol and drug poisoning, liver diseases, and suicide. Middle-aged white males also report more ill health in general, more chronic pain, and more alcohol dependence than other groups, even though their skin color supposedly “privileges” them.

The Princeton report got some weekend airtime, then disappeared. Considering that adult white males are still the bedrock of America’s workforce, why did it not grab more headlines?

In a 1932 radio address, President Roosevelt spoke of the “forgotten man,” the man “at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” Amity Shlaes took that term as the title for her 2008 history of the Great Depression: The Forgotten Man. That is, the typical working stiff who bore the consequences of a series of unfortunate events: falling markets, rising unemployment, and—in time—relentless government experimentation that probably made the situation worse. His problems were chiefly economic. What he needed most was a job.

Today’s Forgotten Man needs a future. His culture tells him he’s a bigot, a sexist, and even worse: superfluous. He probably didn’t grow up with his father. His temper was not checked; his appetites were not trained; his virtues were not encouraged. My nephew, I heard, had come to Jesus; but when I accepted his Facebook friend request, my news feed bulged with vulgar memes and images. I blocked him—and forgot him. He wasn’t an innocent victim, but he was overlooked, especially by people like me who usually noticed when looking down.

In the fourth season of Friday Night Lights, talented young quarterback Vince Howard, still hanging with his drug-dealer peeps, finally stops living in the moment: “I’m s’posed to bury my mama! My mama’s not s’posed to bury me!” My nephew never got that message, maybe because he didn’t have a football to hold on to. I hope he had Jesus, but it’s hard to know what to tell his mama. And what can I tell the forgotten man down the road from me?

Email jcheaney@wng.org