(Crossposted from OurWord.com)
For several years, I was a Volunteer Facilitator for a Parents Anonymous group in a major metro area. (This is group for parents ar risk of abusing their children.) Most of the clients in my group were poor young mothers who had been court ordered to attend, most were the outcome of generations of poverty, most were untreated victims of sexual/physicial abuse, many did not have very high intellectual capacity, many were addicted, and nearly all were male-dependent on unstable, addicted, abusive men. Child care was provided, so we got to see the kids too.
Week after week we saw physical evidence of ongoing abuse on the kids, and the Moms; we heard verbal reports from them in group, of ongoing abuse inflicted on them and their kids, and ongoing reports of how they themselves were unable to stop abusing or neglecting their own kids.
Week after week, as a mandated reporters, we made calls to Child Protective services, and week after week we was asked if there were signs of bleeding, broken bones or malnutrution, and if there weren’t, well, they were just too backed up and backlogged with the more “serious” cases they was nothing they could do. These caseworkers were not uncaring state clones, either, they saw the same horrors we saw, and suffered like we did because we live in a society that just doesn’t give a damned about these disadvantaged, impaired poor mothers and kids…who haven’t had any real chance to be any different than they are.
This IS the reality for many of our poorest women and kids under todays society values, and the Repugs vaulted “CULTURE OF LIFE”.
If justice really existed, every one of those
chest-beatng Culture of Life bastards who want to take away services, birth control and abortion from these women and kids would have to live a week…just one single week, in the shoes of a young, addiction/abuse impaired young mother who thinks being battered and beaten by her man is a sign she is loved, and who has little to no ability to care for or protect her own child, who will grow up with the same life lessons she has.
But no. Those in power don’t see anything they do not wish to see. They pretend reality is whatever fits their current political agenda.
That is it woman and kids who pay the biggest price for this, is of no concern to them.
Sometimes, when I look at what is actually happening to the most vulnerable of mothers and children among us,, and what is happening to the most vulnerable elderly and disabled, (again, mostly women) the phrase “genocide” comes into my mind no matter how I try to not allow it in.
Socially sanctioned, highly civilized and suble, extremely effective genocide. Let the weakest among us die, so there is more for the rest of us?
Radical words? You bet they are.
A typical emotional “over reaction” on the part of another rabid feminist?
No goddamned way.
American “values voters” have been hoodwinked… and to some degree, so have we. We have bought into this GOP frame that economics and values are separate issues. How often do you here, “I am an economic conservative, but social liberal”? Say what? You can’t separate the two. Economic policy is an extension of your values, not independent from them.
We need to find a way to reconnect the two in the minds of Americans. The average Joe or Jane hears the words their GOP representative says, but they don’t see how their rep. is voting in direct contradiction to their words. The details of governance has been deemed “too boring” for our media to cover.
And it is most definitely an attitude that the poor don’t deserve to live and shouldn’t take resources from those of us who do. They don’t say it so explicitly anymore, (just in code like “The Bell Curve”) but it is an attitude that goes back at least 300 years.
If you will indulge me, this is an excerpt from a diary I wrote many months ago about the origins of this evil attitudeDivergent Enlightenment: Taking Darwin’s Name in Vain”:
Social Darwinism isn’t really Darwinism. The idea that the poor were unfit, and the phrase “survival of the fittest” actually predate Darwin’s publication of “On the Origin of Species” (1859). They are ideas from Enlightenment social economists. These economists’ social ideas inspired Darwin’s biological ideas, and not the other way around.
From the Literary Encyclopedia:
Now who does that sound like? Republicans! 60+ years before Darwin published we have an almost perfect enunciation of the modern Republican philosophy.
[SNIP]
For Darwin, the only important element of fitness is having offspring who have offspring who have offspring, thereby propagating an individual’s traits. In Social Darwinism, fitness typically means acquisition and control of resources. Ironically, those who expend their energy acquiring and controlling the most resources typically reproduce the LEAST. In a Darwinian sense, that makes them the least fit.
Early Social Darwinists recognized this conundrum and began promoting the idea that the reproduction of individuals in the lower classes should be regulated/restricted. The poor were thought to be poor because they are biologically inferior, so they should be prevented from reproducing and passing on inferior traits. Thus, eugenics was a major element of Social Darwinism until it became associated with the holocaust. Even people we now consider liberal pioneers supported eugenics. Margaret Sanger is lauded for pushing for legalized birth control, but one of her motivations was to limit the breeding of the inferior lower class. So here is yet another irony: the teaming of the Social Darwinists with the religious right, which is anti-birth control.
of a “fiscal moderate” (which is what I consider myself), is a person who has no objection to spending money, as long as it’s done wisely.
All too often, well-meaning governments propose projects to help the at-risk community, but the money ends up being devoured by bureaucracy instead of getting where it needs to go. Susan Prather, an activist for the homeless in the Bay Area, refers to these bureaucrats as “poverty pimps”; they have no desire to end poverty, because that would put them out of a job.
Ditto with the military; I have no objection to funding the military if the money goes towards making sure soldiers have proper working equipment and their families at home aren’t going hungry…but I don’t want to see $500 toilet seats, weapons that aren’t worth the metal they’re made out of, and private contractors lining their pockets while shortchanging the troops.
‘Nuff said on that subject — but I absolutely agree with you on this subject; the Right’s “culture of life” is limited to those who deserve it…and if you’re in a bad relationship, or are poor, you obviously have not enough faith in God and deserve all the evil in your life as a worthless sinner…