I am lucky and I know it. I won the lottery at least three times, first when I was born in the USA at a time after the Great Depression when jobs were available, second when I was born into a family that believed in hard work, education, tolerance and equality for all, third by having the intelligence and health to make my own way in this world.
I live in the same small town in which I was born. Been here all my 53 years except for when my father was in college when I was young, my own educational years, and lots of holidays and vacations. I have been dealing with the same ignorant, racist, intolerant people all my life. Don’t get me wrong. There are good liberal thinking people in East Texas. (yes, you capitalize east) And actually some of the ones that are aggravating me at this time are physically in other locations now, but they were born and raised here the same as me.
My husband asks- Why are you arguing with idiots on Facebook? My answer is I don’t know and I guess that is why I am on this rant. (and why I am breaking my mostly lurk policy to get help from the community here)
This is the question I keep asking myself and my liberal friends : Is it possible to get through to the tea bagger idiot..no. no..wait- that is too confrontational- I am working on being “kindler and gentler” - let’s call him my Tea Party Adversary who believes that everyone who is not as well off as he, is slacker, lazy, free loading bum?
The way I see it. I have been lucky. Good genes, semi-intelligent. I have good health, a couple of college degrees, a good job that allows me to make enough to live on and still save for holiday escapes from life here behind the pine curtain. I have suffered no major illness either myself or in my immediate family. Both my parents were healthy and intelligent working people who not only encouraged but financially provided for myself and my siblings to attend college.
LIving in the small town where I was born and raised, I have known most, if not all, the folks in this area all my life. Unlike people who have left their home towns for greener pastures and associate mostly with people of similar economic means and educational backgrounds, I know and visit with people of different economic and educational backgrounds on a daily basis. I visit them in their homes, take a casserole when someone dies. I know their parents, their children, their crazy uncle who went to the mental hospital when you were both in high school. We have shared experiences. We have shared community knowledge(some might call that gossip)
Because of that small town knowledge, I know that many of my grade school classmates have had less good luck and some have even had a whole mess of bad luck. I know, and know well, people that have had difficult times in their life and, heaven forbid, looked to the government for help. When their jobs got cut to 2-3 days a week they have relied on food stamps to put food on the table to feed their children. Others have taken advantage of government assisted housing because when you have spent 10 years staying home taking care of children then your husband dies or leaves, you can’t pay $800.00 a month rent making minimum wage. Still others have been helped by government programs for retraining after they suffered on the job injuries or the when the plant where they have worked for thirty years closes.
A high school classmate came to me for help just last week. I didn’t recognize him. Life has been hard on him. He was hurt several years ago and has been trying to get Social Security disability ever since. He has no family and no close network of friends to depend on since he spent his life going from one job to another. His savings are gone, he has no health insurance and he has been waiting on a hearing for disability for two years. He is a working person who has fallen on hard times, has had bad luck and you are going to judge him as a lazy no working freeloader?
My tea party adversary says.. I get it your friend has just had bad luck, but what about the ones who just don’t or won’t work. Young women and men, without visible physical disabilities using a food stamp card at the grocery store. Or as he commented “ the lazy slob using a WIC card...we need to cut out the entitlements”
To respond to that sort of generality I try to point out their ignorance. WIC is not an entitlement. From the fact sheet “To be eligible on the basis of income, applicants’ income must fall at or below 185 percent of the U.S. Poverty Income Guidelines (currently $41,348 for a family of four).” Median income in my home county is approximately $40,000. Teachers, policemen, firemen, foundry workers, hell probably the majority of the working people in my area make less than $40,000 a year. This “lazy slob” the tea party idiot is ranting about could be the wife of any working man in town, perhaps she had to quit work because of a problem pregnancy. Besides the financial need requirement, WIC also has medical and nutritional needs that have to be proven and covers only certain nutritional items. The person in line, assuming he didn’t make up the whole damn story, was probably not using WIC, but using a LoneStar card, which is a SNAP(food stamp) debit card.
Back to the question: Why do the idiots assume that people that need assistance are “lazy slobs that just won’t work”? and is there any way to get through to them?
The same tea party adversary commented once on a link about the economy with “freeloading welfare moochers paying for their cupcakes with food stamps” I know there are people in this country who could work and should work who may scam the system and get food stamps. Most of the ones I see in court for welfare fraud are working people who neglected to report their high school child’s summer job, or that their husband received a full 40 hour week instead of the 20-30 hours he had been getting for months.
Many of the people that I know that receive assistance such as SNAP may appear perfectly healthy and the tea party idiot in the line behind them at the grocery store may see them as a freeloader. But if he were to ask he might discover that they would much rather be working or have the physical or mental abilities to be working for wages that would allow them provide for their families needs.
The truth is they may just have had some that bad luck that he and I have avoided, but I can’t figure out why he can’t see that.
A childhood friend of mine is one of those people that probably drive him crazy. She dresses nice, clothes bought in better times or hand me downs from friends and family. She has no obvious physical limitations but she can’t work and hasn’t for years. She has always been slow, not real bright, and she knew it. She had trouble in school, probably dyslexic with other learning disabilities, but no one knew about those things back then. She always worked around her limitations then she started having mental issues and problems at work, then problems with her family and finally after losing jobs and her husband she was diagnosed with a mental illness. She is helped by medications, but the medications keep her from being able to work. She would much rather be working than drawing disability and existing with the help of subsidized housing and food stamps. She is not a mooch and she is not a free loader she is a working person who paid into social security and still has to have additional help to feed herself mostly because of the cost of her medications.
She was unlucky in life and for the life of me I can’t figure out why the ones of us who had better luck shouldn’t help her out freely and happily instead of acting like assholes about it.