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think4yourself:

robot-heart-politics:

Why? Because someone at the homeless shelter had a cell phone and used it to take a picture of Michelle Obama, and clearly, if you can afford a cell phone, why the hell are you visiting a soup kitchen for homeless people? Nevermind that we have no idea if the guy was even homeless, or if he was another volunteer or if he was just someone who came to take a picture because he’d heard Obama was there. Nevermind that many homeless people have jobs, families, and other responsibilities that might make it not only possible for them to have cell phone, but also important for them to have cell phones. Nevermind that many homeless people are not the crazy mumbling weirdos who’ve been living on the streets for years (if not decades), and particularly at this time, are often people who have only recently lost their jobs and homes, and are still trying to get back to their previous lifestyle. Nevermind that cell phones are comparatively VERY affordable, when you think that rent on a home with utilities costs several times more than a single cell phone plan, and so it is not unbelievable that someone without a home might still have a phone. Nevermind that all of these conservative rants about homeless people are based on a very narrow stereotype that is in no way reflective of reality, particularly at a time when a record number of Americans are without a home, many for the first time in their lives.

What arguments like this drive home for me is how utterly lacking the conservative definitions are for poverty, homelessness, and financial struggle. For them, everyone who struggles must be a fat, lazy, mooching slob who doesn’t deserve our pity, and it is this view of other human beings that informs their callous policies toward other human beings. I think to allow this kind of delusion to continue to inform national economic policy is, at best, madness. It is at worst greedy, self-serving, and doomed to fail.