And About Christians...
"An aurora borealis of elitist douchebaggery".
Have people really forgotten Mitt Romney's condemnation of 47% of the people whom he and his rich friends decry as people who are "entitled"? People who don't take personal responsibility? People who are "victims"? People who include the elderly, the working poor, students, veterans, the disabled, low income people with children?
Have we forgotten Jon Stewart's great commentary about this, emphasizing Romney's disdain for those who feel that they are "entitled to foooood?"
A new video to remind us of what Mitt Romney is all about:
After you get done watching, don't forget the usual complaints by the hard-working oh so superior (and often Christian) "makers" against those lazy loafing "takers"..which truly annoyed the hell out of me.. as usual.
From Martin at Progressive Centralists at Facebook:
Listen to Mitt speaking to his 'base' at the fundraiser. if you haven't heard the clip in a while, it's shocking just how relaxed and 'honest' he is with his fellow billionaires while demonizing half the country.
Yep, you've got that right, Martin.
A Christian perspective from "Autumn" on Mitt's lack of concern for the lazy loafers who make up 47% of the population (emphasis mine, bad spelling hers):
So what? Yeah he over-exaggerated when he said 47% as referring to the country at large, but he is right. There are too many people who act like the are "entitled" to free healthcare, food, housing, and many other things. Government programs are good when they are used right. The welfare and social security systems are being abused tremendously. Many able-bodied people simply make up excuses as to why they can't work and need government assistance. They know how to work the system by lying. Get off your lazy buts and try to do something!
People today are lazy. If you give them jobs, they won't take them! I see this every day. It's pathetic how many places are hiring, and there are people walking around saying "I need a job". But if you tell them the Huddle House nearby is hiring, they say "I'm not working at a place like that!". Well YOU NEED A JOB DON'T YOU?!!
I looked up this woman on Facebook. Her page had a number of biblical references and quotes; she was a "Christian." So I took keyboard in hand and replied:
Why do people who lean right always assume that a big portion of the people who are on government programs are abusing them? I hear this kind of thinking over and over: "Well, they are fine for people who really need them, but too many people are just gaming the system." Their stories about people who abuse the social safety net always refer to people they see buying steaks with food stamps and loading them into a Lexus; a lazy brother-in-law who brags about how he is doing nothing while collecting unemployment, a neighbor who is supposed to be on disability but was seen up on his roof nailing down shingles.
They don't consider rich Republicans who got in on government programs, oil executives who lobby for subsidies, or other corporate lobbyists who do whatever they can to pay less in taxes and get more from the government to be lazy or abusive-- it's the guy who got laid off and actually watches t.v. sometimes instead of looking for a job 20 hours a day. That guy is lazy. That's the guy who is "stealing" from them.)
When you challenge these people on reporting these supposed leeches, they always have some excuse: "Well, I don't know for sure." "It's the governments job to police these programs." "Nobody will do anything anyway."
My point is this: If you know one of these lazy moochers taking advantage of you and all of the hard-working people who haven't been fortunate enough to be laid off, to be old, to have some kind of chronic illness or disability, do your civic duty: Report them! Otherwise keep your hypocritical mouth shut and your hypocritical fingers away from the keyboard. (And most of the people who seem to take this point of view seem to be younger, healthier, and have good jobs. I don't see that many people who are old and sick going around trashing other people who are old, sick, unemployed, or perhaps underemployed. I find myself actually wishing that some of these "makers" would have an accident or an illness just so that they can learn the meaning of compassion.)
Since you seem, Autumn, to be intimately acquainted with a whole slew of these lazy moochers, why don't you keep a little notebook with you? When you go up to one of your unemployed neighbors or friends with a Bachelor's degree and suggest they get a job at Huddle House and they tell you that they would much rather live on $300 a week than work at Huddle House, you can write their names down and call them into the unemployment fraud hotline. Now, tell us, Autumn, how many of these lazy down and out people have you actually come across in the past year?
By the way, I know a couple of young people who were looking for summer jobs this past summer. They went to every place in the local area with a "help wanted" sign and talked to whomever they could talk to and left copies of their resumes. They did not get ONE job or one call back from any of those dozens of resumes that they left. They both eventually got jobs through friends and family. It's like the big McDonald's hiring day last year: Hundreds of thousands of people came into apply for about 50,000 jobs. Most of those hundreds of thousands of people did not get hired. What your friend who spurned Huddle House may know is that if he/she has training in some other area or has a bachelor's degree, he/she won't get hired at Huddle House due to that whole "overqualified" bit.
Maybe you will be fortunate enough in the coming decades to be tossed out of your well-paying professional job after decades of solid experience at age 50 or 60 and you too will know the joy of being rejected from lower-level jobs because you are "overqualified".
Finally, Autumn, you and others who complain about lazy moochers often post all kinds of quotes from Jesus or the New Testament all over your Facebook pages. I bet that Jesus actually had a few of his more cynical apostles giving those throngs of people the third degree to determine just how needy they REALLY were before they got any loaves or fishes. I bet Jesus didn't heal the sick unless he thought they were REALLY sick and had a stack of documentation to prove such. After all, so many people who say they need help are just lying! Jesus would weed them out!
I really don't get it: How can the same people who say, "Most of the people who are needy are just lazy and they are sponging off of me" also claim to be Christians? Don't people study the New Testament in Sunday school these days? Is it the same New Testament that I read when I was young? Some people do not have the ability to "walk a mile in another's shoes" mentally... they have to actually struggle to understand what it is like to.. struggle. And others will not understand the meaning of "judge not lest ye be judged" until someone is looking at them as if they are lazy or selfish because they need a government program.
And yet these same people who judge, who are sure that everybody else is a "taker" while they are very superior "makers" call themselves Christians. Shame.
I absolutely agree with everything Molly has to say on this issue. I watched the video. There was a woman named "Autumn" on it, claiming to be a "Christian", that Mr Romney is correct in his assessment that 47% of Americans are just lazy, entitled, and would never take responsibility for their own lives. I have a question. I was raised, nominally in a faith that would be described as "Christian". Not once, not ever, did I hear anyone from the Pastor on down to the youngest child in Sunday School speak in any manner that would reflect on the unfortunate as lazy, irresponsible, and unwilling to take responsibility for their own lives. Quite to the contrary. We were taught that there were many people not as fortunate as we that needed help, and that we should always attempt in any way we could to give that help. I recall rather calls for food drives, to bring a few cans of food to the church that would be donated to poor people.I remember dinners served to the poor in the basement of our church, with the Pastor and other
ReplyDeletewell dressed people serving them at the tables. Not just at Thanksgiving, nut once a month, every month. I remember at Christmas being asked to bring little presents that would be wrapped by volunteers before being distributed to local centers serving the poor. And I remember delivering those presents to other church basements where they would be put around a Christmas tree that the church had donated. I do not recall anyone disparaging of these useless drains on the body politic, as they seem to be regarded now. They were, to us, just poor people who needed some help, and it gave us a good feeling as children to be able to give it. What, int the name of God, has happened to the people ot America the Beautiful?