I don't know what's going wrong in America, but somewhere along the way it has become okay to shit on poor people.
Recently a woman in Georgia was trying to buy groceries at Kroger for her family using her food stamp debit card. Some kind of error occurred on the cash register and she was told she owed $10 because some of her food items were not eligible for food stamps.
The woman, Cindy Nerger, stood her ground stating that the items were in fact legitimate food stamp purchases. A manager came over and fixed the problem, but then hurled insults at the woman essentially calling her a freeloader and loser, while reminding her that real Americans work for a living. Cindy was horribly embarrassed in front of the other shoppers and began to cry. When she later called the customer service hotline to complain, the company offered to send her a $15 gift card as an apology (albeit the most insincere and almost insulting apology one could imagine).
The manager in question was not fired, but was transferred to another location.
The thing is, this is a country that identifies as Christian perhaps more than most other democracies around the world. We pledge allegiance to the flag and God, we put God on our money, the Ten Commandments in government buildings and bemoan the lack of prayer in schools. Yet when it comes to actually following Christian values taught by Jesus, we fall a long way short.
Among many Americans there is a horrendous attitude towards the poor. Instead of treating them with compassion as Jesus instructed, we keep them as the objects of hate and ridicule. But unlike racism, it is considered acceptable by many because of the false assumption that a good dose of hard work and all of life's problems are instantly solved.
Of course this is a total fallacy. Numerous studies have now shown that upward mobility in America is stalling and becoming less and less likely, and as with so many other issues we are falling behind many European countries and other countries around the world.
As as for Cindy Nerger, she has kidney failure and has to spend 12 hours a day on dialysis but dreams of one day getting a transplant so she can return to a normal life and rejoin the workforce. Her husband is a carpenter (like Jesus), but his income can be low in months when he doesn't land enough contracts for work. And this is why this family need government assistance.
They are not lazy freeloaders, they are not scum, they are not stupid, bad or wrong. They are Americans and deserve to be treated with the same respect and dignity as anyone else.
Part of the problem here too is the broken system of welfare. Giving people special cards and letting the government determine what poor people are allowed to eat is humiliating and outrageous. It's bad enough that people end up in this horrible situation of poverty as it is, without shitting on them from a great height and forcing them to advertise in public that they are not like us.
I'm from one of those terrible socialist countries Republicans like to warn us about, and in my homeland, if you are on government assistance, they just deposit money into your bank account. You are then free to use that money as you see fit, just like every other free citizen. But sadly here in America we like to make people feel guilty about their financial situation and have some misguided belief that humiliating the poor will make them determined to work hard to change their situation. The problem is; we are starting with the false assumption that being poor is always the fault of the person who is poor, and that they deserve to be punished for it. I disagree.
