Heard this story coming back from my guitar lesson about Tea Party Republicans cheering the unfunding for healthcare for women and Pell grants for students.
Cheering.
Then read that my own state Republicans are cutting taxes in the face of deficits.
The stupidity and callousness is amazing. Blinding stupidity matched with a "fuck anyone in need" mentality that just makes me ill.
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I have been listening to Bill Bryson's "At Home." Fascinating book; one of those where i feel like I am a better person for having "read" it.
Relevant to this post, in the chapter that deals with the bedroom, Bryson begins a discussion about lower class living. The overarching sentiment in the Victorian Age from the upper class was that any welfare at all was a disincentive for the lower class to work. Be it assistance with food, finding jobs, housing...any assistance at all was seen as liability and the upper crust was convinced that the lower class would stop being productive at all.
The discussion went on to describe that work provided to the lower classes was designed to be as horrifyingly dismal as possible. In return for housing and some food, families were split apart and worked different shifts, no talking at meals, massive hours...etc etc. Joyless. The hope was that the lower classes would then move out and move on. Instead, go figure, they often died of massive diseases and infections given the terrible working conditions.
Sure, this was England in the Victorian age, but this sounded, oh, i don't know...what's the phrase I am after....
I get the sense from so many conservatives, Smitty, that they really dislike poor people, and want them to either suffer or rise to their level. Never mind that they (middle to upper class) benefitted from those ladders or help from the government or taxpayers or whatever. Never mind that.
Given the Tea Party's view on women, let me just say that the connection to the Victorian era is not very odd.
I fear for the spiritual condition of many of these Tea Party types. Christ calls us over and over to look outside ourselves, to love our enemy, to welcome the stranger, to love and serve others. This tumor of the soul infecting this group is poisonously selfish in ways that very damaging to themselves.
I don't know why they seem to not only ignore the poor but actively dislike them, unless it comes from projecting fear of being poor themselves.
But Christ is somehow mystically present in the poor of the world, and when we serve them, we serve Him, that is the historic understanding of the Faith.
I suspect these attitudes come more from John Lock and Ann Rand than they do from sacred Scripture.
May God have mercy on us all.
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