- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- news@hexbear.net
- usa@lemmy.ml
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Beyond disgusting. Keep the kids hungry so they can’t learn while sitting in their underfunded classrooms. Uneducated masses ripe for the conservative picking. Can’t see through their lies if you’ve never been taught how to think. I hate it here…
Tearing down women’s rights. Ruining queer people’s life, especially trans people. Making sure children can’t eat for free. Wow. Quite the priorities over at the Republican party.
I’m not American, I’ve just been looking from afar for a long time now. But from everything I’m seeing… it feels like they’re going to be in for quite the rude awakening in 2024.
Unless you’re Russian, you probably aren’t familiar with living in the kind of media environment we have which can cause these clearly absurd ideas to seem normal for people to have. This lunacy is within our overton window. Centrists think it’s about half right. Liberals think it’s wrong but more or less fair to hold these views. A younger and further left contingent which has almost no representation in the government (because we put elecrions upnfor sale in 2010 with Citizens United) but is growing is the only group who finds this kind of thing completely unacceptable.
You know, I try to keep an open mind and try to understand how the other side could come to the conclusions they do, but sometimes they really make it difficult. I genuinely don’t get how this could be construed as anything other than malicious. What’s the benefit in this? How is this “thinking of the children?” How did a political party come to represent views that are so aggressively anti-humanity? It’s such a bizarre platform to attach yourself to so proudly and openly.
Sometime there is no rationality in those people/political party, they exist just to be destructive and promote hatred no matter the reason.
They wanted to promote child marriage. They wanted to rape children and get away with it by forcing them to marry them. They wanted to take out PPP loan on younger generations and tell them to go and fucking die. They wanted to deny student loan relief, even if there are provable economic boon in doing so, because they exist to hate people no matter what. They want to ban abortion without giving any exception even for raped victim or a miscarriage.
I could go on and on and on about it. Sometime, there is no reasoning with monsters and they need to be destroyed, period.
It’s insane seeing how they’ve built themselves on a platform of strictly hate. It seems like they’re never for things only against things. Well I guess outside of the child marriage thing seems they’re pretty for that. It’s so strange to me that in 2023 the republican party has regressed into essentially a draconian early industrial revolution era roll back of rights. I mean they’re even repealing child labor laws. It’s literally like they want to remove all progress from the last couple centuries. It blows my mind that this is acceptable in our country in the era.
It’s because conservatism is fundamentally reactionary. They don’t seem to be professing any particular ideology because they aren’t. They never have. It’s always been about opposing the ideology of others.
It’s also why it’s so insidious. You can’t pin down someone who doesn’t believe in anything.
I’d add to that and say conservatism is an inherently selfish ideology, in addition to reactionary. Every conservative policy, and every value they proclaim, is firmly founded in looking out for one’s self at the expense of their community.
Ah, student loans are, in fact, a problem. One-time relief of student debts is a good thing - provided there are no new debts on such a scale and the mechanism changes after that.
Charity sponsorship of students is a good thing without doubt. Private stipends are a good thing. But when loans which are not going to be returned in a normal way are becoming that common, then something is wrong and should be fixed, not poured more money into.
They are a cause of inflation in education (which, of course, harms the students as well), of people like AOC talking and being listened about economics, because on paper they would be qualified, and so on.
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imagine being in the strategy meeting with your team, when they suggest a play based on suspending withdrawing food from child would go well with your voters.
imagine agreeing to go with it. getting a speech written about it and one day standing at the lectern to say in front of crowd of assembled people “it is not our responsiblity to feed children”. and then pausing for applause and going home and telling your spouse, “today went great”.
in this supply chain of inhumanity, there were so many opportunities for the heart to say “yo…something is off here…cant quite put my finger on it…but it doesnt seem…right ?.”
to sail through all those checkpoints of human decency, and go through with it, is nothing less than psychopathy.
The horrifying thing is that there are people out there who will consider it the right thing to do.
What’s crazy to me is it seems like they just want children to suffer. They want to force women to give birth, but then don’t give a shit about what happens to the children after. On top of that, it’s like they are trying to make them suffer even more for their parents being unable to provide.
I could somewhat get attacking programs for adults. Still disagree, but I guess it’s the “they should be able to provide for themselves” mentality. But then doing this for children when they are literally unable to provide for themselves or have any responsibility for being hungry. Yes, let’s make the helpless children suffer.
Disgusting times we live in.
They want to force children into the labor pool. Can’t afford to eat? Get a job Timmy! Oh and by the way if you don’t pay your school lunch debt, we’re calling CPS and taking you away from your parents. So get to work!
They see poor people as inherently bad parents. They want ways to take away poor minority children from their parents, and lunch debt is a great way to get them on the radar for that.
And where do they intend to place them once they get an excuse to break up the family?
I think the rich well adjusted foster family is largely a TV creation.
Maybe they’ll just straight turn group homes into factories.
What. The. Fuck. Is wrong. With. These people?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I’m absolutely not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or anything similar, but it’s starting to show that all of them have forgotten where they came from or the stories of where their family members came from. Most of these people were raised by Depression-Era parents who, without exaggeration, suffered and died due to lack of affordable food options. I’m sure some Republicans even experienced that same problem themselves in their childhood.
I used to believe the ignorance of how important providing basic nutrition to the next generation is was based on a lack of life experience, and that may be true for some, but there’s no way every single one of them has no surface-level knowledge of true hardship. They have heard about it, read about it, and some have witnessed it firsthand.
So to answer the question, it’s either a part of some long-term plan to control the public for their means (which is evil) or they are selfish pricks (which when you are in government, makes you evil). Unfortunately, it’s looking like both.
It is just so incredibly odd to me. I grew up in a baptist church (would never step foot in one again.) The people there genuinely seemed to do good work, caring for the poor, donating toys to children, food as well. I do not understand where this push from the right came from. This is incredibly cruel and inhumane.
I do not understand where this push from the right came from.
This is incredibly cruel and inhumane.
So, you do understand.
Why…… I grew up on free and reduced lunches. The return on investment here is immense.
I make six figures working at the highest levels of my career in support of government agencies. I used free/reduced lunches my entire schooling. It’s super ridiculous
Same, my property tax for this month alone will have more than paid for my entire schooling career of subsidized food.
Honestly what’s an extra few hundred a year in taxes on the multiple thousands I’m already being asked to pay? Our district went free meals during covid and just kept it up. Free breakfast and lunch and there’s no more stigma for getting it since it’s everyone getting it.
Everyone seems happy about this, and it helps kids do better in school. Better than wasting all that food just because someone can’t pay the $1-3.
Also, Republicans (supposedly) want people to get off of government assistance and earn money for themselves. You know what’s a great way to do that? Get a good paying job. And a good way to get one of those is to pay attention and learn while you’re in school.
However, if your family is poor and you need to skip meals, you’ll be more concerned with when your next meal is. You won’t pay attention and you’ll have limited options to break the poverty cycle when you grow up. This leads to people still needing government assistance.
Just going from the supposed Republican talking points of “getting people off government assistance is good,” free school lunches is a good idea.
And before anyone comments “just give the lunches to the kids who need them instead of everyone”: Social pressure works against this. Kids don’t want to stand out and being the kid that gets the free school meal is seen as a negative thing by many kids. Kids would rather skip meals than open themselves up to bullying like this. By giving free school lunches to everyone, the kids that need it can get their lunches without any social stigma.
Along with funding for libraries, I think free school lunches are a great use of taxpayer money!
Obviously being nice to 1 person just leads to communism! I’ll bet you now believe that people should have access to food, clean water, clean air, health care, and shelter as well? DON’T YOU!?
I do as well. :-)
Don’t you know? The only necessary welfare is mine
british comic stuart lee on the subject.
Why? Assuming this is not a rhetorical question, it follows directly from the core authoritarian principle of Conservatism in the U.S.: Moral Hierarchy. That is to say, Those who rule are privileged above those who serve, and this is the basis of a ranked ever-swelling staircase of privilege.
Any action or policy that supports the hierarchy is divine, and whatever threatens the hierarchy is evil. Free food, or food as a right, is antithetical to Conservatism because it diminishes a key point of leverage held by rulers going up the chain. When a person is fed, they are less inclined to honor the privilege of their supposed rulers. When a person is truly hungry, they are highly motivated to submit, and even to support the hierarchy that provides them with any limited access to food.
In this philosophy, the ROI of free lunch is negative. The same argument applies to most forms of welfare.
The cruelty is the point.
Same here, kept me fed during my high school years. Don’t know what I would’ve done without it.
The whole point in these kind of moves is to cause congestion and exhaustion in political movement.
It’s a struggle to campaign for actual improvements when we’re all stuck fighting garbage like this all the time.
It’s deliberate obstruction and a standard GOP play
It’s just cruel. A disgusting, cruel mindset from those who genuinely just want to hurt others.
Anyone supporting this lacks the most basic of morals. There is no excuse for this.
it’s a weird mindset.
Literally everyone in this comment section is missing “regardless of the individual eligibility of each student”. Everyone is getting hysterical over something that isn’t even in the cards.
Of course a lot of kids rely on free school lunches and they aren’t trying to take that away. They’re trying to restrict free lunches to kids with parents who are actually incapable of feeding them. If parents can afford food for their kids, feed your fucking kids.
The problem is that, when free lunches are restricted to only kids who can’t afford lunch, there’s a social pressure NOT to get the free lunch. Kids don’t want to stand out as “that poor kid.” They’ll skip lunch instead of being singled out.
Free lunches for everyone fixes this. Kids can’t tell if Jimmy is getting the free lunch because his parents didn’t pack him one or because his parents can’t afford to feed him. The cost to feed the kids is low and the reward - kids learning, doing well in school, and having a better chance to break the poverty cycle - is high. It’s well worth the cost.
The problem is that, when free lunches are restricted to only kids who can’t afford lunch, there’s a social pressure NOT to get the free lunch. Kids don’t want to stand out as “that poor kid.” They’ll skip lunch instead of being singled out.
that’s another factor–even at my school, which was extremely heterogeneous in terms of wealth, this dynamic was pretty obvious. you can’t really hide that you get free lunch, because everyone’s in a line with you when you pay
My school district found it cost more in administrative overhead to determine who was eligible for free lunch and who wasn’t than it was to simply offer it to everyone. We ended up with something resembling the UK medicine model where the basic offering was free to all and “upgrades” were available for a cost. In many students minds, the upgrades sucked. The “rich” kids brought lunch from home.
They’re trying to restrict free lunches to kids with parents who are actually incapable of feeding them. If parents can afford food for their kids, feed your fucking kids.
i honestly have to ask here: who cares if the children of people who can afford to feed their kids benefit from this policy? means testing is dumb in basically all circumstances, you can’t count on parents to do this (and if a child goes to school without a lunch they should still be able to eat!), and even if you don’t care about those considerations the policy as a whole is basically a budgetary rounding error. this isn’t the F-35 program, your tax dollars aren’t being thrown into a black hole because someone with an income of $100,000 has a child also being fed by universal school lunch.
If you want to make that argument, great! I pretty much agree. What’s deeply upsetting to me is that this entire comment section is willfully misrepresenting the move as “haha they want children to starve”. I guarantee you that everyone here will also claim to be super concerned about how far political rifts have become. Republicans do a lot of awful shit but this is just choosing to characterize people as deeply cruel villains for the sake of entertainment. I can’t blame “casual conservatives” from looking at responses like this and deciding that their characterization of the left as overzealous is completely true.
What’s deeply upsetting to me is that this entire comment section is willfully misrepresenting the move as “haha they want children to starve”.
okay but they kinda do. you are giving charitability to people (Republican politicians in Congress) who have clearly demonstrated they do not deserve it and that what they want is for people to be worse off–whether they accept that or not. more children starving because free school meals are restricted to certain income groups is possibly the most straightforward cause-and-effect outcome there can be. the benefits of having them (without means testing) are also undisputable. we literally just had those for two years without issue during the pandemic.
No, see, this is a willful mischaracterization of their ignorance. These are people who are convinced that parents who can afford their feed their children just will if they lack other options. The idea that some would simply choose not to anyways or that means testing is often faulty is further than they’ve ever actually thought about it. Still cartoonishly evil? Yeah, but it’s not “haha I sure do love kids not eating”, it’s a lack of empathy of a different sort. Telling people that they want children to starve when that’s the last thing that probably crossed their mind will never, ever sway someone’s understanding of a problem. It will only convince them that your position is based on a strawman. We need to appeal to people’s sense that they’re good people who want to do good things.
Telling people that they want children to starve when that’s the last thing that probably crossed their mind will never, ever sway someone’s understanding of a problem.
too bad? literally just don’t advocate for policy that’ll starve children if you don’t want to be accused of making children starve–again, we had universal, non-means tested meals in this arena for two years and nobody complained about it then. if you’re the type of person who objects now, i don’t think that’s worth coddling–i think it’s worth begin honest, which is that it’s a policy that leads to more starving children and it’s a deeply inhuman policy overall. you should feel bad for agreeing with it as a person.
We need to appeal to people’s sense that they’re good people who want to do good things.
as for this legislatively: me trying to nicely appeal to a Republican legislator is never going to make them see reason here and not starve children. these people are bad, their policy is worse, and trying to coddle them in particular is a waste of time. they know what they’re doing.
This whole reply makes me even more negative towards the future of humanity than I was. Discourse like this is exactly why things are as bad as they are.
Given that the Republicans are nominally a Christian party, has no one in the party had a look at what Jesus taught about feeding the hungry? It is pretty clear, and it is NOT this.
The problem is, they’re ignoring Matthew 25:35 in favor of 2 Thessalonians 3:10.
The children yearn for the mines, for only the mines make them worthy of a hearty meal.
Also thank you for addressing the “but the bible is progressive akshully” bullshit. No it’s not. Never has been. The new testament is less backwards, but to dismiss the old testament entirely is hypocritical and maybe even heretical. The bible is problematic if you look at it objectively, as is any form of moral prescriptivism from millennia ago.
How did this get normalized? Why is this even something that is even considered debatable? As a society, feeding our children should be the first priority.
I’m flubbered.
Echo chambers that reinforce the lie that democrats want to take your money to pay for irresponsible people’s children.
Maybe they are irresponsible, but that’s not their kids fault. Feeding kids regardless of who their parents are, is a basic morality thing.
But that is the whole point of this. These people making and advocating for this kind of stuff are abusers. The GOP is a pro-abuse party. We need to stop pretending otherwise. The goal is to enable abusers. When these people talk about “parental rights” that is what they mean. They believe they have a right to abuse their kids including starving them. They also believe that anyone who tries to assist their children—even so much as feeding them—is interfering with their right as a parent.
I know this because my step-dad was exactly of this type of mindset when I was a kid. They don’t see children as having rights or dignity. They are just property of their parents with zero personage to them. Food insecurity even when the parents have the ability to feed their children is used as a form of control. “If you won’t do as we say you won’t eat” was very much a thing in my household and a lot of others I knew growing up.
Allowing free breakfast and lunch at school usurps their ability to use hunger and starvation as a punishment. I know it’s dark but it’s worth noting.
Why do they want the children to suffer for it though??? ~Cherri
the unplanned kids that arrived under anti abortion laws.
i understand its a bullshit argument, but even if were true, idgaf why kids dont have food, i want them to get food one way or another
Well, sweeping chimneys and working night shifts in abattoirs is a good way of acquiring the money for it!
/S
Literally everyone in this comment section is missing “regardless of the individual eligibility of each student”. Everyone is getting hysterical over something that isn’t even in the cards.
Of course a lot of kids rely on free school lunches and they aren’t trying to take that away. They’re trying to restrict free lunches to kids with parents who are actually incapable of feeding them. If parents can afford food for their kids, feed your fucking kids.
I’m admittedly not familiar with how the program works but I suspect that “totally bulletproof and unbiased eligibility criteria that can’t / won’t be weaponized against specific people groups” isn’t something that it guarantees
Just evil… no nuance needed.
Yes. it just breaks my heart that people seem to have a goal to make the lives of the vulnerable as hard as possible.
Really putting evil front and center this time, huh.
I personally cannot stand the idea of children from low income househodls having something to eat
Nothing would surprise me from them, I wouldn’t be surprised if they announced wheelchair bans. For a party that openly promotes misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, and transphobia… I wouldn’t be surprised if they went full tilt into ableism.
I imagine they twirled their mustaches and maniacally laughed while announcing this. How much more cartoonishly villainous can they get?
Have they started tying women to train tracks yet? I feel like that might be a literal next step at this point.
I can just picture Ted Cruz covering his mouth and Muttley laughing while children starve.
“Those who seek abortions will now be executed by steam-powered vehicle.”
They’re not even bothering to lie any more, and yet everyone still votes for them.
You know that scene in Final Fantasy 8 where Edea announces her evil plan to a huge crowd and calls them morons and they all clap and cheer? This is like that.
