Jersey Girl wrote:LDSTThe High Priests began talking about the 'bums on welfare', smoking and drinking away government money.
I have to say that the relative that I mentioned was exactly that. I do realize that many or most families are not that. I promote assistance programs in my own work.
But what I do have, LDST, are vivid images from childhood of this person. I remember picking up her baby when it cried while she laid her lazy ass in bed. She had no husband with the first baby and to my knowledge, never worked a day in her sorry life. As I said, after she did marry and visited her home, I remember looking in her fridge and seeing it full of beer. On the shelves was Campbells soup for her kids and cartons of cig's. The last time I saw her she was literally living in a junk yard.
Contrast that with her brother, who had freaking polio and who began making money by weaving leather belts when he was a kid and went on to get married and support his own family.
She had a high school diploma that was considered good for those days and did nothing to further herself in life. She instead sponged off my mother (if there weren't a baby involved, my mother would have never taken her in) who actually received her high school diploma the same year that *I* graduated high school (think about that for a minute or two), and who worked her ass off all her life starting at age 18. My mother worked hard all her life while this relative went about life with her hand out.
So yeah, I am somewhat jaded. Doesn't show, does it?
:-D
Here's what I'll say to that - first, that woman probably needed help that she wasn't getting. But I don't know, I truly don't know so I won't judge beyond that.
Jersey Girl, I grew up in what Americans would call 'the projects' - government housing complex, amongst the poor. I have experienced first hand what happens there. Yes, there is alcohol abuse, but guess what? There's also spousal abuse, child abuse, rotten living conditions, government training programs that don't do crap to help you get back on your feet. There is undiagnosed mental illness, there are lot's of poor, single mothers - either never married or divorced. There is crappy public transit, making it difficult to get to a job that might pay more than minimum wage. There are minorities (in my case, First Nation's People) that bring a host of social issues to the table to begin with and find it hard to escape the cycle. It's a depressing, lonely, bleak life and the gravity field around it is especially strong.
What pisses me off most about people who judge those who are poor is the notion that they are lazy, beer-swilling smokers who leach off of society. Most of the people in that high priests quorum have never been poor, have never interacted with the poor, have never taken a goddamned minute to educate themselves on the complexities of poverty. They perpetuate the myth because of some idiotic notion that "if you just were motivated enough, you'd get your lazy ass off the couch and get a job".
Sorry, I'm coming off angry, but this makes me angry. I'm not angry at you, Jersey Girl. But this is one of the reasons that I absolutely hate the teachings of the LDS church - they breed this right-wing nonsensical view of the world.
H.