I am a proud member of the middle class, although I don’t mean that my income is between say $50,000 and $200,000. Instead I mean that I live a life in the middle, somewhere between my beginnings in very modest rural circumstances — that could only afford public education — and the educated active life that is often held out as the optimistic future for those with these beginnings.

For instance, my grandfather was the proprietor of a small dairy farm who couldn’t afford to put a roof on a substantial barn to preserve it so that his farm would have more value when it came time to put my widowed grandmother in a rest home.

I went to college to get a liberal arts degree, but that didn’t lead to middle-class life as a teacher because of mental illness.

Instead, because the Constitution of the United States was established “to promote the general welfare,” I live on modest public support and pursue a career as a writer to be true to the education that I received and to maintain my health.

It’s for this reason that I am speaking out against the pervasive cynicism of the man who was elected U.S. president last year.

What I mean is that it’s completely contrary to my experience from birth to think that policies like the persecution of immigrants and LGTBQ people, not to mention well-meaning government employees of all sorts of identities, are effective, even realistic.

I’m not sure they’re effective in dealing with the forces that well-meaning citizens encounter as they navigate their life cycle among the accumulations of exchange value that are supposed to secure a safe and productive existence for all.

So many other people like me have aimed for the moon in employment and performed all the introductory-level tasks of this sort of life. However, for reasons like disability and the sheer callous cynicism that promotes policies that naively believe that the working class is a safety net for class ambition in education, I have failed to find an unsubsidized niche in American society.

The current administration’s policies dramatically make scapegoats of the at-risk, vulnerable and unique elements of the population and curtail the real opportunities of government by which real people grow into citizenship roles.

My situation began in modest means (I’d say poverty, but my family is very proud). I went to school because of government subsidies, and found the superstructure to support my new entrance into society, as a purely exchange value proposition did not yet exist. My situation is one that has made its way because of empathy, understanding and compassion.

The process of creating scapegoats to deregulate and downsize America is doomed to failure. It’s a strategy that has plagued losing societies since the beginning of civilization.