Sometimes I feel like our political leaders are involved in a street fight. And it’s getting ugly and scary and we’re not sure what the fight is really about. And who started it and how it will end. But one thing we do suspect is that when it’s over the blood will be on us.

Or it’s like a domestic squabble where the police are called to figure out what’s going on and in the process one of the cops gets shot. And we’re the cop.

I’ve been dealing a lot in images lately because I feel there is such little straight talk on what’s really happening in the free-for-all over the deficit, spending cuts, tax breaks, tax loopholes, entitlements, revenue increases and the debt ceiling.

We’re just sitting there waiting for the fight to end and see how we get hit.

The president likes his metaphors. He says we have to rip off the Band-Aid. He says we have to eat our peas. Tighten the old belts. I know he’s talking to me when he says that and people like me. But, is that everybody? Are the rich eating their peas?

I’ve pretty much stopped paying attention to political leaders of either side who talk about “our seniors” as if they really care. If you care about “our seniors” you don’t bludgeon Medicare and Social Security. Right now I feel like those of us who thought we could rely on both are being pushed to the edge of a cliff and some people are yelling “save them” and others are saying “jump.”

It’s particularly telling when members of Congress talk about “our seniors” as if they aren’t one of us. The average age of both houses of Congress is 58, which is old enough to be long on the AARP mailing list and to move into a retirement community. You’d think they’d relate but they don’t. Is it because nearly half of Congress are millionaires? So they don’t personally worry about safety nets. And so all the talk is about getting rid of programs rather than figuring out a way to save them.

Here’s another image. We like to say we’re all in the same boat but this one feels like the Titanic.
The rich are on top and the rest of us are in steerage. And when the ship starts to take on water, the people in steerage are the first to drown and the people upstairs keep dancing. But then the whole thing goes under. And even the rich are looking around for the security of a life boat.

A guy I know who works with troubled kids says the more horror stories he hears the more grateful he is for his own childhood. He was never abused. His parents loved and protected him. His schools were safe.

Me, too. I was so lucky that when I went to my first consciousness raising session as a young feminist in the 1970s I had nothing personally sad or bad enough to share. And yet in all my years since, as a journalist, I’ve been constantly reminded of the fragile line between good and bad fortune.

The faithful worker gets downsized. The steady job disappears to Mexico. Riding high in April, shot down in May. That’s life, sang Sinatra.

I would bet that even those cushioned members of Congress who have never personally experienced poverty or want still realize that fortune can flip on a person. And while that doesn’t necessarily turn one into a sympathetic bleeding heart, like my friend and me, it must create some awareness that we are all vulnerable and at times need each other.

Yet, in deciding whether to extend emergency unemployment insurance many of our leaders, largely Republicans, seemed to have locked up their hearts in their safety deposit boxes. No more pity. No more money.

Rachel Maddow assembled some pretty shameful comments by those scornful and suspicious of out-of-work Americans. There was Tea Party sweetheart Sharron Engle saying the unemployed are spoiled and need to go looking for an honest job. Orren Hatch of Utah declared that if you give the unemployed money they’ll use it on drugs. Andre Bauer of South Carolina said providing checks to the unemployed is like feeding stray cats who just keep on breeding.

These people act like the jobless are no longer part of their world. What about the fact that the unemployed use their checks to buy the goods and services that keep other people working? And that unemployment recipients pay federal income tax on their benefits. And that people who are unemployed vote. Plus, they are not suffering alone. A Pew report showed that more than 55 percent of adults in the U.S. labor force are feeling the impact of unemployment or wage and work hour reductions.

Some misfortunes that wipe people out are pure bad luck, like illness, accidents and natural disasters. But those who have lost jobs, homes and opportunities in these bleak times might rightly consider themselves victims of manufactured calamities. Their personal disasters were in large part produced by some very rich and powerful people, bankers, speculators, hedge fund operators and regulators who didn’t do their job. And by the politicians who let them get away with it.

Eleven point four million Americans are out of work and trying to figure out what to do next. For members of Congress, who are always so worried about keeping their jobs, to turn their backs on their unlucky brothers and sisters is heartless and short-sighted. Some might even say un-American.