Important Note: I hate the sign above.
Welfare People bashing is in vogue now to my utter disgust.
As people here know, I've been on welfare before in my life. I needed to eat. There was one time I qualified for welfare and put it off for three years letting a church feed me when I needed groceries instead so it wasn't something I was eager to be on. I even was on food stamps in my 20s before they brought the cards in and we used the literal "stamps" that look like colored money. I live in a town that is far wealthier then I am. Sometimes this gets very hard, rich people live in a whole other world. Envy is a sin. I pray to God to allow me a level of wealth of some security one day. Oh most times of welfare, we always had someone working in the household. That's a giant secret they don't tell people, the jobs are so low paying, they don't even pay for a basic life anymore.
However one thing troubles me deeply, how I keep running into people who totally trash those on welfare or food stamps or who ever have needed assistance. Imagine sitting in a group, this is a group of people I'm leaving, and they sit there spouting on about how people on food stamps bought a giant cart of soda pop and then the conversation segues into how welfare people buy lobster, and T-bone steaks. Hate to break it to people but if you buy food like that, for most welfare people unless they are criminally scamming the system and have multiple identities, you would only be eating for 2-3 days and would have nothing else for the month. I can tell these people have never gone to a soup kitchen where they got stuck with old hotdogs and 59 cent boxes of macaroni and cheese to eat for the week.
A second time with that same group of people, two would give Richy Rich a run for his money and are bragging about international vacations while dissing the poor. Sometimes I wonder how some people literally swim in so much cash. They seem ready to burn it in the pursuit of false pleasure. My head is ready to explode thinking their mindless stupid jaunt would buy a good used car for me that would last ten years. They seem so eager to waste endless cash on frivolous and conformist pursuits like sitting on some dull hot beach in a plastic resort making some poor third worlders serve their every first world whim. It seems to be more of the wealthy lack imagination, they are conformists of the highest order and awarded for the slavish obedience to the system.
Another time I was a community center, in the poor area of town, and someone yelled, "People on food stamps are trash!". A lady from my old town told me everyone who came to the food pantry all had new cars! That sounded like nonsense to me too. I didn't see poor people driving Mercedes around and told her so. Maybe a guy with a new Lexus lost his job the previous month but the idea of poor people with new cars was her fantasy.
I'm not worried about Hillary becoming president ,God help us all, they are definitely going to swing things to the right on this next go around and give us some poor-hating, war mongering, overtly bank-loving Republican bootlicker to the 1%. The Democrats don't bother to pretend to love the poor anymore as their millionaire ranks add up, but the Republicans are ready to stomp down the poor as being the reason why the country's economy is failing instead of all the banker bail-outs, and wars. The Oligarchs are having their fun with us. Anyone who is poor, we are kind of afraid now, because sit in public and someone is smashing a pie in your face metaphorically ragging on the poor saying how they are all lazy. The achievement queens will give tell you that your failures are all your fault and you didn't think positive enough or work hard enough and YOU ARE A DRAG ON SOCIETY. I told some guy the other day defending the poor, "Hmm they must have forgotten to go pick their job off the job tree".
Also notice the meme above, it's shoved in your face like every body on welfare dresses like an English Chav or Gang-banger, and is drugging and smoking it up. Probably most people smoking on welfare, smoke to keep awake for their crummy underpaid jobs at Wal-mart. I never have smoked but how many of the people posting meme like this live like Puritans? It gets tiring.
Even if someone is in good mental health, things like smoking is hard to give up. Poverty induces trauma for a person, I don't imagine them giving up these things, nor should it be expected. I've seen them with their little bags of tobacco, and might see them use the beer store, but that only makes it worse for them. But it is a cycle of poverty, and it is overwhelming enough as it is, leave them alone. They have to live off a pot of beans to have those things.
ReplyDeleteAnd it doesn't translate into lobster and new cars, not the same at all. That is insanity.
The food bank in the city here has this saying up on the wall, "If it is to be, it is up to me." While that sounds like it meant for a good intention, it is not good intention at all. That is the cruelest meanest statement and nothing can be further from the truth. It is bashing the poor, saying it is all their fault.
Secular Calvinists are nauseating - they can shove their self-righteous little mantras. I know some people like that - and the idea of visiting them makes me sick ;(
ReplyDeleteI am decidedly NOT a Calvinist, and see Calvin as a false teacher. Sadly a secular version has infused society where the "elect" not only gain heaven but earthly riches as well. Many hold the opinions the poor are poor because they deserve it.
DeleteYes they say smoking is more addictive then heroin, so it is very hard to give up. I think some want to "escape" and that is why the drinking and even drugging starts, it is a way to escape one's pain. It is a bad decision but that is the motive that begins that whole thing. I am angry at the politicians making new laws like they do not want people to buy any steak and seafood is the new one in Missouri, that's dumb I can make 2 stir fry meals out of a 6 oz steak, that cost me 4 dollars. Nope food stamps do not translate into lobster. I hate that poor shaming saying on the wall. Hmm like we are all in control? Just one less mean boss and my household would have been at least working class. The people behind the desks make the decisions and the poor are still blamed for those decisions. I know I am tired of the bashing of the poor.
ReplyDeleteI had a cousin who put down welfare recipients and then I found out he had been on welfare himself. I think it's the lower middle class who are the nastiest. The rich people I know live in their own little world and barely think about poverty.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed this too. Most of the rich live in higher class suburbs or other areas where they do not see the poor. I found out someone mocking me for being poor all the time, had almost been evicted from their apartment several times for non-payment of rent. That floored me. I am poor but we have always kept our rent paid. Some of the worse beyond the lower middle or angry "you poor people are taking all my taxes" segments of the working class,are those who grew up poor and made good as adults either via marriage or finding a decent career. A poor person is scum of the earth to someone like this, and "failure" for not making it like them.
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