Why The Victim Must Be Blamed

We can't empathize with others. They don't deserve sympathy, we're told. That poor person can't eat? Too bad. He's lazy and doesn't have the work "ethic" that made this country great. That woman is dying of cancer and can't afford the $150,000 medical treatment to save her life? She should have gotten medical insurance. I, of all people, can't be expected to feel badly for her. After all, it's not _my_ fault she didn't have the foresight to get insurance.

What's that, you say? She did have insurance, but the company cancelled her policy when she was diagnosed with cancer? Tough toenails, lady. Maybe you should have been more responsible and read the fine print. What's that? The fine print didn't tell her that her coverage would be revoked if she actually needed it?

It's just not my fault. She should have saved her money for a rainy day. It doesn't matter that she and her husband spent their life savings to care for her elderly father. They should have saved more, worked more. So what if she and her husband had five jobs between them, just to make ends meet. They should have prayed more, gone to church more. If Jesus didn't provide for them, they couldn't have been good Christians.

What's that? They went to church every Sunday, along with their three children? They should never have had children if they couldn't afford it. I don't care if they're Catholic and the Pope told them not to use birth control. They shouldn't have had sex then. Jesus warns us about giving in to pleasures of the flesh. I'm not Catholic anyway; I'm an evangelical and Jesus loves me because I go to the right church, wear the right clothes, listen to the right music, read the right books, say the right things, and I pray, and I'm in church every week, and I _never_ sin.

And what's more, I'm always the first to...hey! What's this lump in my neck? That wasn't there yesterday...

I wouldn't mind that at all.
:-)

it may give quite a few of them something to think about as they look at themselves in the mirror every morning.

Go ahead - be brave!

We all know these people. We've all read their comments.

It's not possible to plan for everything in life that goes wrong. Sometimes, it just happens. Whether or not we respond with compassion or cruelty is our choice.

who will always jump on board to attack the victims of damn near any injustice. I don't know if this brand of inhumanity is a permanent cancer that's spread throughout our culture, or if it's some kind of sick coping mechanism that some scared witless narcissists use to convince themselves that bad things only happen to those that "deserve it".

People who haven't been around people with cancer are amazingly afraid and uncomfortable. They don't know what to say so they say the stupidest things which are usually meant to comfort themselves rather than the person with cancer.

I have a severely developmentally disabled child and sometimes it seems the only people who can be coherent around him are those who also have family members who are mentally handicapped. For everyone else, it appears that they believe my child is contagious and they do NOT want what he has. The things they say used to be jaw droppingly dumb, but I guess someone would have to come off with a huge doozy for me to even notice anymore.

only they call it "karma." They believe that if you only do good things, nothing bad will ever happen to you. That's just as much bull as what the OP posted.

brought it on herself by working too hard and not being positive enough. My friend's sister told the jerk off, saying that she had no time in her life for toxic people, especially now. She isn't the first person with cancer that I've heard from who had someone tell them that their illness is all their own fault (and no, the cancer is not related to smoking or any other lifestyle choice).

Not being positive enough? Look who's talking! Whatever buffoon actually said that needs to look in the mirror.

Our politicians and our media encourage us to blame the victim. This, of course, is to keep us from blaming the real culprits. Who was really responsible for the banking/ wall street bail outs? What about the housing bubble? How about the homeless? It goes on and on. It's a classic game of divide and conquer. Keep us squabbling, pointing fingers at each other and we'll never band together and lay the blame where it belongs. And we'll certainly never bring the responsible parties to justice.

We're all just dancing puppets in the same old rerun show.

and it keeps the people from demanding any Federal funding for Social programs. There is no social "safety net" in America, and the people think that's the way it should be!

I'm one of those millions of Americans who is currently under employed (far better than unemployed) and who struggles with chronic illness. My health insurance rates were raised to where I can no longer afford it. I can't pay for the expensive tests or surgeries that I need, so I read as much as I can and self treat. I keep getting sicker, and I know that if I can't find effective treatments on my own I'll become too disabled to work at all. I also know that I'll only have one choice if that happens, and that will be HOW I make an early exit, not IF. The sick part about all of this is that a). there are no local or State agencies that I can turn to for help, and b). even though I have plenty of friends and living family members, I can't ask them for help, nor could the ones who would be willing to help offer anything (they are also struggling). Asking for help in America is verboten-the absolute worst sin of them all! I've already been lectured by friends about how I simply have to meditate and develop a stronger, more positive mind/ body connection to fix it, or that my mostly vegan clean organic anti-inflammatory gluten and sugar free diet isn't "healthy enough", or that I'm not serious enough about getting well because I sometimes feel too faint to give myself daily vitamin injections (the needles are long and I hate needles-so jamming them into my own legs can be tough). The message can't be more clear: you are poor, in debt and very sick it's because you deserve to be, and if you can't fix it on your own then you should do the noble thing and check out early. 30 years ago people would have asked "is there anything I can do to help"? But now? "suck it up, deal with it, and DON'T be a drain on Society!!"

the crap that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get. :puke:

I've heard dickhead Republicans and conservatives say that if somebody doesn't have health insurance, it's their own fault.

:puke: again

bring up that the cancer is not related to smoking or lifestyle choice. What has this world come to where we feel like we have to justify to others (and ourselves) how we ended up in whatever situation that we are in? I often find myself doing this!

Sometimes, shit just happens, no matter what we did/didn't do, and even if it turns out to be something that we may have initially had a choice about, it's all water under the bridge at this point.

Why are we feeling the need to excuse ourselves and loved ones?

It is so frickin' big and so sad, sometimes I have to look away.

Well done.

the fact that children are forbidden from getting up and helping another child in the classroom. Think about it. We spend 12 formative years under the rules of: 1) you will be judged by those in authority 2) don't get up and help someone unless specifically authorized by those in authority 3) being useless to everyone around you is the norm, you are here to work for your own reward (grades).

Lest you think I'm exaggerating, one of the six functions of schooling spelled out by Inglis, the man for whom a Harvard chair in education was named, a man who established high schools as we know them -- was to "establish fixed patterns of reaction to authority". He may have been a decent man or not, I don't know; but there was clearly social engineering going on in the 1910s and 1920s to counteract the growing strength of the lower classes and the labor movement.

We did the same as pilots in Vietnam. "The other guys screwed up somehow, that won't happen to me." was the talk after someone was shot down, the alternative thinking that it could be me was too terrifying.

:thumbsup:

:toast: :bounce: :fistbump:

"I've got mine and screw you."

After all, we've heard countless times to "suck it up". People are praised for not "crying like a girl" whenever their miseries happen tenfold. The "stoic, steely" individual is held with more weight than someone who shows their emotions.

And it has been empathized by the RW media machine when they accuse others about "screaming around racism" or "being bleeding heart liberals".

I wouldn't be surprised if there is one day that all of this talk transforms a generation of Americans into sociopaths.

If we could expose Americans more to the stories of struggle, I believe people would do more to help their fellow man.

Let me give you an example. I grew up in Iowa, and like most Iowa teens I worked at Hy-Vee Grocery Store for a few years. I can't count the # of times an individual would come through my line and pay for their entire order of food (healthy or not healthy) with an EBT card or foodstamps, and then pull out $50-$100 of cash for a couple cartons of cigarettes or their beer (this was when cartons were ~$30 I think). So many people clearly just did not care whether their life went up or down. How is this person ever supposed to get off EBT/food stamps/section 8 if they don't save some of this cash?

That's not the usual, but that's what we SEE. As a middle-class kid, I wasn't exposed to the people on welfare who WERE trying to make a better life for themselves, who were scrimping and saving and trying to get back on their feet. So take me at that age times a thousand, and it's not hard to see where our lack of sympathy comes from.

at Giant Eagle. I really don't need anyone judging me on what I buy (or didn't buy, but should have bought) with my EBT card. Those that have never been there have no idea.