“Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.” 

Pearl S. Buck, American writer, novelist and Nobel Prize winner

The mind-boggling continuum of what has become a nation in absolute chaos and redefinition – our nation, the one we live in, in all of its most grotesque displays of contradictory dichotomy - sent out another one of its reminders to a Chester County Press reporter last week. 

As he was about to enter Kennett Area Community Service (KACS) on West Cedar Street in Kennett Square Borough, the reporter saw a lengthening line of people patiently and silently waiting outside of KACS’ food cupboard for food, household goods and other items. Their faces were all tilted toward the ground, away from any drivers or passengers or pedestrians who might meet their glance. The reporter looked away from them as he walked, careful and respectful not to make eye contact, but the facts were already upon him.  

He had remembered publishing the story in the Press in early April that detailed the $250,000 worth of federal funding that was pulled from the Chester County Food Bank by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He remembered his tours of the KACS’ Food Cupboard during the pandemic, when shelf after shelf of food and household items – normally a substantial overflow provided by local stores and area citizens – had been mostly depleted. He has been reading about the decimation of food bank supplies all across the U.S. caused by high demand and cuts to federal aid programs that are leaving millions of United States citizens scrambling just to get by.

He walked into the building, but the split-second moment of seeing the people waiting for food had already burned into him like a permanent memory.

*    *    *    *

One day later, the reporter saw that 6,700 troops and dozens of tanks, military fighting vehicles and aircraft had ascended on Washington, D.C. in celebration of the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary. While not the goose-stepping orchestration that the U.S. President saw at a military parade on Bastille Day in France in 2017 and which he expected to see in his own country, it was a noble show of strength, dignity and honor. Yet let there be no mistake that this grandiose show was not solely intended to honor the men and women of one branch of our military force who have selflessly put their lives on the line to protect our freedom. Rather, this event also served as a feather in the cap moment of pure hubris, orchestrated by a Commander in Chief seeking the spotlight of attention and glorification, not for his country but for himself. 

The military estimated the cost of the parade to be somewhere between $25 million and $40 million – all in the shadows of the murder of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband; determining the role of the U.S.’s increasing conflict between Iran and Israel following a strike on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions this past Saturday; and a recent nationwide protest that saw five million people gather at more than 2,000 locations across the U.S. – including West Chester and Philadelphia – to refute the President’s policies.

The parade also happened against the backdrop of a March decision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to cut $500 million from the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which buys food from domestic producers and sends it to pantries nationwide including Feeding America, an organization that serves an essential network of over 200 food banks across the nation. 

The parade also happened when funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – an organization that helps feed families throughout Pennsylvania and is the nation’s most effective anti-hunger program – is at the risk of being eliminated by the federal government, to the tune of more than $250 billion over the next decade.

As he watched the parade unfold on television, the reporter was overwhelmed by the memory of the many men in his family who served proudly as members of the U.S. Army and yet, he was also sickened by the irresponsible misdirection of his country’s priorities to spend millions of dollars on an unnecessary military parade at a time when nearly 50 million Americans live in food-insecure households.

The Chester County Press reporter wondered: How many hungry people in the United States would $25 million feed? How many would $40 million feed?  

And the tanks on the television continued to roll on.