After watching the NBC-moderated Democratic debate in Nevada last night, I spent the morning perusing various blogs. I came across a blog I haven’t read before: News and Comment. Allan Nairn, an award-winning investigative journalist focused on U.S. foreign policy, writes the blog. I was so taken by this particular post on the politics of hunger that I have to share. Here is an excerpt:

For rich people, what counts is whether, in the end, your market wins outweigh your losses.

But for people on the edge of survival, one bad loss and the counting game is over.

If a market-induced loss pushes you off the cliff, with a consequence that is irreversible — like death, subsequent market moves that would have been in your favor become irrelevant to you.

And there are a number of ireversibles, or consequences nearly so.

There’s baby brain stunting from a few bad hunger days or weeks, body-growth stunting from bad months, pulling a kid from school so he never comes back and lives forever unable to read, or unable to read any of the billions of pages written beyond his given literacy level.

In South Korea and India there has developed a recent sad tradition of indebted farmers killing themselves, after a bad turn — for them, (they need higher prices) — in the global markets.

Its Indonesian counterpart is Baygon or the chair-and-noose. The Baygon insecticide cocktail tends to be for the girls, the chair-and-noose for the boys — a not uncommon reaction among poor pre-teens who, pulled from school, hurting, choose suicide.

Or what about choices born of desperation brought on by bad fluctuation? A mother becomes a one-night prostitute. A father goes overseas to work. We all know what can happen to family life then. Mental blows can heal more slowly than body ones.

What does this have to do with the Democratic debate? After reading this, I became more cynical about all the candidates who seem to spend more time posturing than exploring REAL issues. We are so self-obsessed in the U.S. We need to pull our heads out of “lobby land” and make change real—change that matters. I just wish I could believe the system would do this.