ANTONIO DI DIO continues his “Brief History of Kindness” series, this time he looks at love in the time of Kamala Harris!

IT’S a funny thing how you can be the biggest in your field and people start predicting your demise. 

Some are calling the US as a “failed state”, moribund and losing its Postmodern Empire quicker than Warnie could run through the Poms. 

They may be right. I’m sure the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans and the 2005 Aussies Ashes side never saw it coming either. I certainly wish them all the best, not the least of which reason is how many of them are hurting right now.

Kamala Harris seems to embody hope. A non-establishment woman of colour, she has risen so high, suggesting that merit still counts for something. What will she do with that power? 

She vice-presides a union where almost 44 per cent of adults work in lowly paid, insecure jobs and a quarter of people die with zero or negative equity to pass on to their (often equally insecure) loved ones.

Many struggle to access health care, perhaps explaining how 4 per cent of the world’s population consumes 59 per cent of the planet’s prescription narcotics. 

The many working poor, often needing to work several jobs to survive, too busy to take a Tuesday in November off work to actually vote, combine with the incredible insecurity of those jobs, to create a precipice disturbingly near to which millions of Americans live their daily lives. 

I was privileged to appear before some Senate Enquiries last year, and got to explain some of this despair in the context of the increasing casualisation of the workforce. 

Did you know that there is a 19-32 per cent increased chance of heart disease in people in casual labour compared to those in permanent roles? 

This makes how we treat each other ever more vital. Sometimes a service person is rude, brusque, tired, or anxious to finish up, and then we judge them according to our ideas of what service should be. Which is dumber than a Mad Monday footy player. 

If a teenager on $9 an hour at a fast foodery takes an Uber home, it’s 20 per cent or more of their entire income. The alternative is her walking home through the park in the dark. 

With poor training they are entitled to make mistakes. With financial desperation they are entitled to take the job. And she’s a kid! And if her dad can’t afford petrol to pick her up from work, or can’t afford a car to fill up, who are we to judge? 

He has already climbed a personal Everest to be working in the servo up the street. If he forgot his meds this morning, because one of the side effects of his medication is forgetting to take his medication, who are we to judge? 

You think I’m exaggerating? These people are real. How dare I judge them, when their effort to put one foot in front of the other is braver than anything I’ve ever done in my whole life? 

Today’s working poor are our pre-unemployed, our invisible vulnerable. Our love should be theirs, not our whining if we got almond milk instead of soy.

I think it’s great that groups of people are emerging with a new and powerful voice. Every night someone on the ABC tells me I’m a privileged bugger repressing them – and that’s important. Because plenty of people need a voice after centuries of oppression already. But as always in this irony soaked world, the awareness raisers seem to be articulate and brilliant, and I don’t see anybody defending the invisible. 

Let’s do it now. We don’t need an interest group, or a leader. We don’t need to appear on talk shows and get awards for raising awareness about a problem. We can just fix the problem. I’m telling you that there’s millions of us and we can do it overnight. 

People are scared and vulnerable and struggling every day. They work in roles that are fragile. They sometimes get frustrated or scared or sullen or tired, and perfectly reasonably act out the insecurity of their lives in roles for which they are unprepared because they have to take them because they have so few choices. 

I hope Kamala rains down love and understanding on the working poor in her land through policy and cash, but you and me and everybody in our little misunderstood bubble can be kind to every person we see and make everybody’s life better. It’s true. Love one another, and let’s change the climate of our society from within. 

Antonio Di Dio is a busy GP in Canberra who longs to live three doors down from Kogarah Oval, specifically 1956-66 inclusive, although turning up to the Raiders every year has its moments. There is more of his “Kindness” at citynews.com.au