Stories like this highlight the vast dividing line between rich and poor.
I've been fortunate to grow up middle class. I've had every opportunity to succeed. My parents were not so lucky. Both came from poor country stock and both carry the attitudes and proclivities of the poor.
Those attitudes impacted me in a significant way--making me sensitive the the plight of the poor and downtrodden. These lessons, more than anything, explain my tendency to support the many over the few--the weak over the strong. Essentially, growing up with middle class resources, but a lower class mindset shaped my political values.
For many decades now, a scary, class-ist, and ultimately aristocratic attitude has governed our society. Hopefully, its final expression in the Bush administration and their mouthpieces in the press (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck to name a few..) will be nothing more than a death shudder of a narrow and mean view of society.
Policies enacted over decades make it easier to exploit those with little social power. Greed--encouraged by an ideology of self-reliance and a laissez-faire agenda reminiscent of pre-Depression era government and country, has resulted in an exploitative society that is nothing less than predatory.
It's time we own up to meanness. It's time we live united as a people. Too long have self-interest and the narcissism of certain self-satisfaction governed our land.
We should begin by treating the poor as people instead of like peasants to be abused for our own gain.
If we fail, then it won't be too long before our aristocratic tendencies lead to our undoing.
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