Compassion and empathy are gone.
The time we are presently living in, is one of the most economically challenging. To call it tumultuous would be an understatement. Job loss. Foreclosures. People relying on food stamps, unemployment, and free lunch programs are at record high levels. Job creation is at an all time low. The past decade saw a middle class that did not improve. The median salary actually went down. Food and gas prices are at all time highs, as well as health care costs, and no one has a higher paycheck to offset these costs. The middle class is suffering. BIG TIME.
A friend of mine on Facebook posted something yesterday. I read it, and I was stunned. It was titled "A Texan's Answer to Welfare". In a nutshell, it was an extremely unintelligent, piece about welfare recipients, and how they are all freeloaders. It reeked of hatred, and racism. It suggested that if you are receiving welfare, you should only be able to eat rice, and blocks of cheese, and drink powdered milk. It said that women should get tubal ligation's, or be forced to be put on birth control. If you need housing assistance, it stated that you should live in barracks, and have your possessions inventoried, and sold. You also must perform community service in exchange for assistance. And the piece de resistance...give up your right to vote.
Now, I know some people out there actually might agree with this bizarre ideology. Clearly it gained enough popularity to be put on Facebook. It even got a few "likes". "Thumbs up", if you will. I don't know which emotion I have covers the feelings welling up within me.
There was anger. Immediately. I fired back on her post, statistics, and facts. I questioned this post she decided to make public, and wondered why so much hate and anger, resentment, and entitlement.
But sadness is the underlying feeling that is really swelling within me. A class division that I see, not just in an ignorant Facebook post, but in our land. A lack of caring for your fellow man. A view that people needing public assistance, or losing their home, or collecting unemployment, are freeloaders. That families feeding their children on food stamps are dining on steaks, and laughing about "free money".
Is this what the have and the have nots are becoming. Further divided? Further misunderstood? When you see the news, and read the paper, and unemployment is at an all time high, and even the government is having credit problems, this is because people made bad choices? Empty houses and shuttered businesses are just coincidence?
I also read a post from another friend. It said this. "Be kinder than necessary, for everyone is fighting some kind of battle".
I gave this one a thumbs up.
The time we are presently living in, is one of the most economically challenging. To call it tumultuous would be an understatement. Job loss. Foreclosures. People relying on food stamps, unemployment, and free lunch programs are at record high levels. Job creation is at an all time low. The past decade saw a middle class that did not improve. The median salary actually went down. Food and gas prices are at all time highs, as well as health care costs, and no one has a higher paycheck to offset these costs. The middle class is suffering. BIG TIME.
A friend of mine on Facebook posted something yesterday. I read it, and I was stunned. It was titled "A Texan's Answer to Welfare". In a nutshell, it was an extremely unintelligent, piece about welfare recipients, and how they are all freeloaders. It reeked of hatred, and racism. It suggested that if you are receiving welfare, you should only be able to eat rice, and blocks of cheese, and drink powdered milk. It said that women should get tubal ligation's, or be forced to be put on birth control. If you need housing assistance, it stated that you should live in barracks, and have your possessions inventoried, and sold. You also must perform community service in exchange for assistance. And the piece de resistance...give up your right to vote.
Now, I know some people out there actually might agree with this bizarre ideology. Clearly it gained enough popularity to be put on Facebook. It even got a few "likes". "Thumbs up", if you will. I don't know which emotion I have covers the feelings welling up within me.
There was anger. Immediately. I fired back on her post, statistics, and facts. I questioned this post she decided to make public, and wondered why so much hate and anger, resentment, and entitlement.
But sadness is the underlying feeling that is really swelling within me. A class division that I see, not just in an ignorant Facebook post, but in our land. A lack of caring for your fellow man. A view that people needing public assistance, or losing their home, or collecting unemployment, are freeloaders. That families feeding their children on food stamps are dining on steaks, and laughing about "free money".
Is this what the have and the have nots are becoming. Further divided? Further misunderstood? When you see the news, and read the paper, and unemployment is at an all time high, and even the government is having credit problems, this is because people made bad choices? Empty houses and shuttered businesses are just coincidence?
I also read a post from another friend. It said this. "Be kinder than necessary, for everyone is fighting some kind of battle".
I gave this one a thumbs up.
I give your post a "like." We are becoming a compassionless society, and we fail to realize that we are all just one missed step away from being that person we so blithely discount.
ReplyDeleteI found your blog somehow, I don't even know, and have been checking back hoping for something good to come to you and your family, because your story is the story behind the empty house.
I am fortunate (today) to have a decent job. I am not so high on my horse to be smug, because I have a job at the whim of a corporation. It could change tomorrow.
Have you read the book "Return to Love?" It has some really good parts, primarily, there are two places we act from: Love and Fear. If we acted from a place of love, we would always always be the better for it.
I wish there was something I could do for you, but know that even though I don't know you at all, I check your story and hope for good things.
I would like to pose a question to you. Two families: Family number one is a hard working husband, lets call him Bob, with a stay at home wife and two children. Family number two is a dysfunctional married family also with two children but the wife is a drug addict and alcoholic.
ReplyDeleteThe male, lets call him Dan, figure in family number two has never held a steady job; he was a school dropout and troublemaker. Not an unfamiliar male figure in our urban settings.
Dan hates his life so he makes the bad decision on how to change it. Taking to the streets he spies Bill coming home from work. Aha, a mark.
Dan accosts Bill and demands his money and watch. Bill refuses so Dan pulls out a knife and kills Bill. Of course Dan is caught and prosecuted and sent to jail.
Which of these two families will receive more of our taxpayer money? Bills family, the victims or Dans family also victims but of a different nature?
Both families are victims. Bills family is the victim of a murderer and Dan’s family was the victim of a liberal society that allowed this behavior to continue.
Many hard working members of our society are now saying enough is enough. The left says it is unfair for so few to have so much and the right says it is unfair that they have to pay other peoples bills.
There is no law against sending the government more than the required tax. So I would suggest that all your readers that agree with your stance on this send to our governments, Federal, State and local, all their excess money.
@Rich, I don't even understand your post. What happened to Bob's family, from the beginning? Where'd he go?
ReplyDeleteAnd what does murdering someone even have to do with a family who's lost it's job, and home? Next time you post rhetoric, have it make sense.
Thumbs up Trixie!
ReplyDeleteErin, I adore this post. I wish more people were compassionate. I hear it all the time and am saddened by how much compassion has left, especially in times like these. You have hit the nail on the head. Thank you for your amazing blog!
ReplyDelete