Hungry In America

In the richest country in the history of the world, people go hungry. In many cases, hunger that could be prevented won't be, because of a pervasive anti-government attitude that's dominated political discussions for decades and is hurting state budgets now:

... [T]hose people going around saying things like "government is the problem" are either complete idiots or, at best, people who don't bother thinking things through with enough effort to avoid sounding like complete idiots. When they say "government is the problem" what they're really saying is "Having a state police force is the problem." Having a justice system is the problem. Having schools is the problem. Providing care for the indigent elderly and the physically or developmentally disabled is the problem. Public transportation is the problem. This is what they're saying, whether or not they care enough to realize that this is what they're saying. And what they're saying is indefensible and abysmally stupid. ...

The levels of preventable want and poverty that exist in the United States are, in many senses, immoral. Particularly as much of it has been caused by people who say that having government food assistance foor impoverished families or school lunches for poor children is the problem, which is immoral twice.

Once immoral just to make the argument that feeding the poor is wasteful, twice because of the undeserved respect given to this dishonorable idea.

Media and political culture in the United States has been so given over to petty guilts and stupid outrages (via) that when faced with a real crime, another human being going hungry, the horror of the situation raises little alarm. We are too shocked that some attractive young singer or actor with a lot of oppotunities has behaved ... like a young person with a lot of opportunities. We are too shocked that a young person living in poverty might sometimes turn to crime to be shocked that they were living in poverty and that their family often went hungry.

There are big crimes all around us that we have been taught not to see, not to take seriously. We have been taught to become accomplices to the sins of the great because we fear to be among the ostracized.

If hunger should be solvable anywhere, it should be here, in the United States. Help now, please. The food banks are going bare and there are families who can't wait for politicians to finish arguing about how much should be spared from bailing out banks and their shareholders to help those who are truly suffering.

(Photo credit: visualpanic on Flickr.)