Seeing what I did of the rally in Washington followed by the defeat of the Farm Bill by those who thought it didn't punish people for being poor enough, that's what I had to ask myself.
To listen to the speakers at the rally, you would think people not only chose to be poor, but aggressively demanded it.
This picture they draw of an imaginary group of people spending every waking hour figuring out how to waste their lives and scam and steal from all the hard workers
is false, unethical and dangerous.
Contrary to what Margaret Thatcher thought, we DO live in a society. History has shown us time and time again that we ARE all in this together and society cannot really advance properly if we leave some people behind.
Part of this is unseen, as in who knows what inventions or advances those who are not given the chance might have come up with? But part of it is merely unrecognized, as in what victims of crime might have been saved if the criminal was given a different path in time?
You may not see how it affects your life, but the effect is there, nevertheless.
Somehow we MUST get past this false dichotomy. There are not, not in the way it is getting presented, good and bad people. There are people who get breaks and people who don't, there are people who respond to situations differently, maybe better and worse, but ultimately, we are all human beings and God has put us all here for a reason. We need to look at each other with compassion and try to figure out what that reason is.
If instead we allow a small but vocal group to divide us and create distrust and hate, things will get worse.
The ending of this is in our hands.
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