FIGHT POVERTY, NOT THE POOR

by Paul Gibbs


Okay, Utah's Mike Kennedy may have to settle for second place in the competition to see who can make the most outrageous Medicaid related statement this year. In fact, Utah seems to have lost out to (incredibly) a state which has already accepted Medicaid expansion.

Russell Pearce, former Arizona GOP Vice Chair, said on his radio show just this weekend:

“You put me in charge of Medicaid, the first thing I’d do is get Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations, Then we’ll test recipients for drugs and alcohol, and if you want to [reproduce] or use drugs or alcohol, then get a job.”

Wow. Even after getting involved in the Medicaid expansion issue in three different states and hearing a shocking amount of hateful rhetoric aimed at the poor and needy, this one manages to shock and sicken me. This was stated by an actual person in 2014, not the antagonist of a Charles Dickens novel. Thankfully there was enough uproar to force Pearce to resign (after accusing the liberal media of the ghastly sin of repeating what he said and assuming that a party Vice Chair speaks for his party). but that doesn't change the fact that it was said in the first place. He did not apologize or say that there was anything wrong with these words or sentiments. He just blamed the media.

I've heard proponents of the idea that "Class Warfare" is being waged against the wealthy say that the wealthy are being made into "The new Nazis." I find this to be one of the most absurd things I've ever heard. But I can't help but feel that the things I keep hearing said about those who need and use public assistance are sometimes awfully similar to the propaganda the Nazis sometimes used against those segments of society they wanted to devalue. Oh, I know Nazi comparisons are ridiculously overused and almost always hyperbolic. It's become almost off limits to make the comparison (though saying that anybody who doesn't idealize making the rich richer is a communist seems to still be perfectly acceptable). But really, when a politician starts talking about forced sterilizations, I don't think I can be blamed for going there. No, I'm not suggesting the Republican Party is like the Nazis. If I thought that I wouldn't have any conservative friends, and I have a lot  of conservative friends. I'm saying that Russell Pearce seems to have taken the anti-poor people ideas a lot of his party is promoting and taken it to an extreme which does seem worthy of comparison. And that sort of extremism starts out smaller, and if it isn't stamped out, it grows.

I just can't understand it. I can't wrap my head around the idea that hating and vilifying people for not having money seems to be such a widespread concept in our society today. Literally every day I hear some sort of attack on the needy, and each day I feel like more and more of my soul is dying because of it. What is moral, Christian, American, responsible or acceptable about this? How did we get here? It's not even confined to conservatives. When Pearce gets to his remarks about those who receive food assistance, he gets more to the sorts of arguments I sometimes even hear from moderates and liberals:

“No cash for Ding Dongs and Ho Hos, you’d only get money for 15-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and powdered milk – all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want a steak or frozen pizza, then you’d have to get a job.”

I don't know how much evidence there has to be that they majority of people seeking help have jobs before people listen. I don't know what it will take before reason and decency make us stop seeing poverty as a sin. I'm not sure I know any way to fight this kind of ignorance but to keep speaking the truth: that you cannot hate and your brothers and sisters for being poor and still claim the moral high gound.