Taking up where I left off yesterday...

Loaves and Fishes

The apparent ease with which some people act vigorously against their own self interest and well being is a major conundrum for critical thinkers. Self preservation is assumed to be high on the list of priorities for living creatures... right up there with getting enough nourishment and nurture to make going on living from day to day worth the effort.  Daughter Nancy's cats avoid other animals that could hurt them.  When it's time to eat, they always go to the place at her house where she feeds them.  They come close to people they trust when they want to be petted, and they avoid people who have demonstrated a dislike for cats.  The way I see it, they get along with each other while almost always acting in their own self interest.

Why is it, I wonder, that some people who don't, as as my dad would say, have a pot to piss in, get on board with a political organization that acts against the interests of poor people?  While I like to see altruism demonstrated among people who have resources enough to meet their own needs, it doesn't much surprise me when some of them clutch to themselves their excess bounty; but when someone in the state of Texas, for instance, who can't afford basic medical care for themselves and their family seem not to mind that Governor Rick Perry acts deliberately to block a plan by the federal government to make wellness possible for all citizens, I'm puzzled.  It's a puzzle, too, when someone in need of good educational facilities and programs for their own children vote and even Campaign against efforts to make public schools better for everybody... or, for that matter, why a person who is gay would feel drawn to the Log Cabin Republican organization.  Why would any woman support a legislator who insists that she is incapable of making decisions about what should and what shouldn't be done with her body. 

I am perplexed most of all by the alignment of Christian groups with efforts to deny basic health care and access to food and shelter to anybody, but especially to children, to the elderly, and to the infirm.  Have they not noticed that the focus of the Christian Gospel is on service to the needy... to marginalized individuals and groups? What part of the Golden Rule do they not understand?   

Aynn Rand's doctrine of objectivism may be attractive to upwardly mobile seekers of personal riches at all cost; but objectivism's raw,selfishness leaves out and tramples on people who cannot help themselves.  I know someone who's favorite reason for stopping all welfare programs is a hypothetical story about the flagrantly lazy woman who brings into her rent-free home and her bed shiftless Romeos who get her pregnant so she can increase her take at the welfare office. O. K., I get the point.  There's obviously something wrong with that scene, and I'm sure there are men and women and the  children they beget out there somewhere in my city; but for most of the people I know, that scenario is remote from their own lives. It is remote from my life.  What is not hypothetical is that all over America there are thousands of children inadequately housed and fed suffering from treatable but untreated illnesses.  They are often the children who don't go to school regularly so they might gain education and basic skills that would enable them to get meaningful employment.

Until someone of the Tea Party persuasion presents a solution that clearly seeks to remedy the conditions that result in abject poverty for any of my fellow citizens, I don't want hear their demeaning stories.  Let's hear it for citizens who recognize problems in America's social fabric and try to find solutions that empower and enable those who are incapable or heretofore unwilling to take care of themselves.  Let's encourage and support those who choose to search for light rather than curse the darkness. We should drum out of office those elected officials whose salaries and benefits are paid by taxpayers if they don’t demonstrate enthusiasm for providing a comparable level of support for all citizens who are willing and eager to work. Let's withhold our support from members of Congress who are unwilling to work with other legislators to provide the same level of healthcare that we citizens provide for them.