So I’m skimming my Twitter feed this morning when I see @CatholicDems share this Wall Street Journal link. Shortly thereafter my head exploded. Warning: profanity ahead.
Go ahead, read it. I’ll wait.
Paul Ryan has a better grasp of Catholic social thought than many of the American Catholic bishops? Seriously? Are you fucking kidding me? Okay can we stop the nation? I want to get off. No, no I NEED to get off.
Can I just say something here? Oh look. I can. Turns out it’s my blog and I’m all fired up this afternoon.
I’m nothing if not blunt so let’s all be adults here, let’s all call a spade a spade here. You know what? Some people just don’t like poor people and that’s that. I’d rather they just come out and say it rather than couch it in political/religious mumbo jumbo. Just come out and say, I don’t want my tax dollars to go to that crack whore up in North Philly.
You know what else? I get it, I do. I get bitter about middle class families receiving no help at all. I get bitter because there’s no help for my little family even though we are drowning in medical bills. I get bitter when I hear that a friend was told her little family makes too much money for help with their medical bills even though they had no insurance at the time. It’s hard, but we’re plugging along. And my friend’s family? They too are plugging along.
So what of the people who can’t plug along? What about that crack whore up in North Philly with 3 kids? So what of those who don’t have jobs for any number of reasons? What about the drug addicted and mentally ill? Should we just let them lie in gutters and die of starvation and exposure and disease then pick them up like road kill? I mean what is the answer? Do we really want to live in a nation the Paul Ryans and Mitt Romneys and any number of other conservatives who don’t want their money to go to the poor propose we do? I remember a great many people complaining about the Occupy Wall Street camps and the dirt and disease they were going to bring upon society. I heard a lot of people complaining about the OWS people pooping and peeing in the streets. Where exactly do they think the thousands of homeless that cutting social services will create will poop and pee? I find myself wondering if they think the poor and the sick will just magically disappear when we stop feeding, educating, and providing medical care for them.
I wonder if they have really thought about what a nation without social services provided by the government would look like? Smell like? I wonder do they understand there would be beggars in the street, a skyrocketing mortality rate for and a skyrocketing infant mortality rate to go along with it and a plummeting literacy to boot. I invite them to go on a fact-finding mission to third world countries then come back and tell me if they want New York City, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Los Angles to look like that.
I want to ask the Paul Ryans of the world what exactly they would like for us to do with the poor and sick, who cannot help themselves? I wonder do they have a grand plan that does not leave small children begging in the streets and dying of diseases long since cured? If they don’t want the government to give money to the poor via social services what exactly do they want to happen to the poor, the sick, and the unemployed. Are they okay with stepping over the sick and homeless and the mentally ill as they make their way to Capitol Hill or -God Forbid- the White House? If they cut off social services that is exactly what will happen.
And okay, now that the pro-business, pro-rich-people politicians have freed up all the tax dollars the poor put-upon rich people previously spent on social services (why yes, that is sarcasm) are they going to use those spare millions to improve this country’s failing infrastructure? Are they going to give the armed forces raises? Will the politicians insist that the now unencumbered business owners bring all the jobs back from overseas or give the working poor, who work for them, raises to make their lives a little easier? I really don’t see them having the spine to do that. And at what point will these companies fail because the working poor can’t afford to smoke cigarettes or buy new cars, new guns, new houses, or new school clothes?
And at what point does the world economy collapse? This country, this world, this universe, everything is built from the bottom up. There cannot be castles in the sky that float on air. Everything needs a foundation. So after they’ve broken the rapidly disappearing middle class who is going to pay them to be arrogant assholes with entitlement issues?
I swear to God, it’s nonsense like the above article that makes me want to throw ice cubes at people. Yes, our system isn’t perfect, And yes I get bitter that we just scrape by and that sometimes life isn’t fair. But until these politicians who continuously blame the poor for the rich’s woes actually take their heads out of their collective asses and realize that a society that doesn’t care for the least of its people looks a lot like a third world country I’d thank them to shut up and stop talking like idiots.
