Raise your hand if you don't get petitions to sign, and requests for political donations, all day, every day. Yeah, that's what I thought. Most of the petitions make sense, but some don't. The requests for money are infuriating, because no matter what happens, and no matter what anyone says or does, someone wants you to make a donation. It's usually urgent, and the amounts aren't in themselves much. But, as I always say, if I gave the minimum requested donation to every person and every organization I thought was worthy, I'd go broke fast. So I more or less arbitrarily choose certain ones, I give them a donation once a month or once a year, and I don't add to it every time something happens or someone says something, or every time they come up with an emergency, which they always do.
The stuff some people get is about how terrible Democrats are. The stuff I get is about how terrible Republicans are. Today, I got something from some organization called the "Crazy Eight PAC," and it was about something said by a guy named Mark Bishofsky, who's running for Congress from Minnesota. (I'm going to set aside why I never, ever give money to candidates or PACs, because it's antithetical to the democratic system we supposedly have in this country, but which we've replaced with a plutocracy.)
Anyway, Bishofsky said "I want to make it clear that if we were to implement and legislate all of our conservative values onto people, there will be people that (sic) will suffer. Like, I think we give too much welfare to people." This was presented by Crazy Eight PAC as a "confession" and a "truthful moment of clarity" by a Republican. They distorted Bishofsky's comment into an admission that the goal of Reps/cons is to make people suffer.
(I'm also going to set aside Bishofsky's phraseology of implementing and legislating an agenda "onto" people, as if he somehow recognized he was proposing to heartlessly impose a burden.)
As I said, I never, ever respond to communications like this by making the requested donation, and I usually just ignore them altogether. But this time, I replied.
I asked Crazy Eight PAC to remember that there are 350M people in this country, that many of them are Reps/cons, and that their positions should not be dismissed as terrible any more than the positions of Dems/libs should be dismissed as terrible. We don't have to agree, but we have to listen, and have the conversation.
I asked them to consider that the "we give them too much welfare" position could represent something other than just the anger, contempt, and selfishness we usually get from Reps/cons. I reminded them of Bill Clinton's much more decent way of trying to thread that needle, proposing to offer "a hand up, not a hand out," and I asked them to think beyond anti-welfare Reps/cons, and beyond anyone's impulse to solve the problems of this country, of which there are very many, with welfare upon welfare. Welfare doesn't address the underlying problems that lead people to need help. We ought to address those problems.
Mark Bishofsky, as evidenced by his comment, phrased as it was, sounds boorish and simple-minded, and he does not strike me as suitable, adaptive, and workable legislative material. But I'm not sure he was entirely wrong. As I wrote to Crazy Eight PAC, it's likely he doesn't have the mental range or the disposition to consider more clearly and broadly what he said, and what he could have meant by it. If some people are not self-sufficient because they can't earn, and if they can't earn (or make enough money at the jobs they can get) because of something like prejudice, and being placed at a disadvantage from birth, then we ought to use our resources to correct those problems, instead of just shrugging, and sending them a check. (Or expecting them, against all odds, to find a way to swim, which they commonly don't, or sink, which they often do, since we make success so uniquely arduous for them.) Bishofsky might have been right, but for the wrong reasons.
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