STOP BLAMING ME FOR BEING POOR AND DISABLED PEOPLE!!! I HAD NO CHOICE IN THIS!!! The right continues to blame poverty on the poor because they are afraid of acknowledging that they are complicit in causing it, and what a moral conundrum that is. Its easier for Right Wingers to say that poor people are poor because they dont have enough ambition/are lazy than to admit that the very system that they love is actually causing massive suffering and death in people. Rather than changing their worldview to accept their own complicity and the inherent structural problems with free market capitalism, they blame the poor for poverty, the sick and disabled for being sick and disabled, and the marginalized for being so. Cognitive dissonance at its worst. The truth is that those of us born into poverty have almost no chance of economic mobility, at best we can expect to make it to lower middle class, and only then after years of hard work, state assistance and significant educational debt. The myth of meritocracy has been shattered; for most of us born into poverty there is no American Dream no matter what we do. Meanwhile, the right wingers will continue to vote in policies and politicians who hurt those who suffer the most in our society, because they are moochers... I was born poor and raised in extreme poverty, not because my parents made bad choices or were lazy. My father died when I was younger than my son is now, leaving my mother a widow, who then became severely disabled during my childhood. My step-father worked his ass off as a paramedic and LPN, typically working 36 hours straight before a day off. I know that my childhood poverty had nothing to do with how much my parents worked or how much ambition they had and was directly because of our socioeconomic system. Paramedics were paid crap despite the importance of their jobs. Disabled people do not get granted SSI just because they are sick. My mother started becoming seriously ill when I was 10, but didnt receive her SSI until I was nearly thirty. My own personal poverty stems not from my lack of work/ambition, but because I was born into poverty and am disabled. If you look at my work history you will see that I started work (on a horse stable) when I was eleven, thats thirty-two years ago with very few gaps of unemployment (I even worked two jobs as a clerk graveyard shift at 711 and as a tutor while being a single father while attending school full time and retaining a 4pt average for six terms; not lazy by any definition), and have been promoted to management in nearly every workplace Ive been employed at. I also have nearly 6 years of higher learning, specializing in Systems Science and philosophy, 3/4ths of which I paid for myself out of pocket. Yet, because of my worsening illness I am unable to work as a chef anymore and am not drawing SSI/SSDI because I havent had access to quality healthcare. My poverty is not because I am lazy, but because I am sick. Meanwhile, I have family members who are unwilling to recognize this because it runs counter to their fundamental worldview; they say things like If people can afford the internet they dont deserve Food Stamps and If you just worked harder you would succeed, and the worst micro-aggression: but you dont look sick... Im pretty sure if I showed up on their doorstep with my family seeking help, they would turn me away because its my fault. If you are part of the right wing attack on people like me, then dont be surprised if I constantly attack your worldview, it has hurt me personally and continues to hurt those that I love the most. While you sit there complaining about the lazy poor, I watch my direct family suffer from an evil system. My mother, my lover, my children. So, while its an abstraction to you that only registers as further taxation, I see my loved ones in hunger, despair and physical pain. pewstates.org/research/reports/pursuing-the-american-dream- 85899403228 nytimes/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2013/march/us-economic-mobility-dream-data/
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 18:05:12 +0000
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