Weekend Thoughts About The Job From Which I Can't Yet Retire

Often it seems that folks like me are paid by Washington citizens to do what they not only cannot do but refuse to do themselves ... get involved with the needy.

I suppose you could call me a professional getter-involved, do-gooder

... or perhaps a surrogate who acts for all those who could but won't

... or perhaps welfare workers are like those hired by early "patriots" to fight in the revolution so they didn't have to.

Regarding the homeless ...

the poor ...

and right now particularly, the veterans.

If we can't see them they don't exist in our moral conscience.

They are subject to priorities governed by agency number crunchers governed by legislatures governed by political considerations and misguided perceptions of how the public feels about it's poorest segment of society.

Welfare reform as legislated nationally by the Thuglican Gingrich-America-contractors in the mid 1990's was primarily driven by negative images designed and created by the framing forefathers of the current swift-bloat crowd that can turn Johnny Appleseed into Oil Can Henry.

Images... of a single mother standing in the grocery checkout line with a child sitting in the grocery cart and with food stamps in her hand surrounded by presuming non food-stamp patrons smug in their awareness of being "better-than" and resentful of that young mother who more than likely cheated on her application in order to qualify for food assistance.

Furthermore, I've met smug Daddies who - not knowing what I do for a living - have bragged about their sons' macho-ness; their procreative studhood and ability to seduce girls, dodge responsibility and accountability when that studdiness results in conception;

... Daddies my age who are jerk baby boomer dorks who actually insist that the slut who lured their wunderkind son into bed deserves what she gets and despite birthing his grandchild, deserves nothing from their son but contempt.

What happens in a society when a father teaches his son irresponsibility and that it's okay to whisper anything necessary in the dark in order to get the clothes off?

And then find the junior-high-level maturity of that lover-boy stud in a tavern bragging pridefully about how they did it while whining morosely if the Division of Child Support comes knocking?

Single pregnant females of course are accountable and responsible for their pregnancy as well as the males. But we as a society tend very much to blame the mothers almost entirely, look the other way regarding a criticism of the father because he's out of sight and therefore out of mind.

That's the same sort of thing that drives public apathy toward the homeless.

If I arrive home from work upset, more often than not I'm angry at the mindlessness of agency bureaucrats or the cowardly indifference of absent relatives of the needy.

And don't get me started about churches who get all straining and diahhretic about what gays are doing but don't pour out of their churches and into the street in moral outrage about how a nation stays bereft of real morale values while worshipping consumption.