I’m aware of the problems of our government. I can also simply look at the budgets and see the money is going somewhere. As I said, I worked in government. I also worked in a company that helped people get their Medicaid benefits. I’m not unsympathetic, but, here’s the problem:
You don’t start with your story. You say you texted someone and didn’t get a response, so I say to text someone else, then, and only then, after I’ve said it, you come back with more story of more attempts at contact. We talked about these things months ago, and you never mentioned an LGBT support group in FL. Did you google it because I showed you that such places exist, and then used that name as part of your story about a place that ignored you? Are you claiming that this place, with a budget, with a contact form, does nothing but ignore anyone who contacts them?
You bring up seeing people who aren’t getting enough food assistance. Again, I know that happens. I know there are people who are dying of starvation in this country of abundance. I’ve studied that, I’ve sent food to the places that try to help them. I’m not stupid. But you seem to think I am. I get that you are living on the edge, scraping by, but you haven’t complained much about hunger. So why bring it up all of a sudden? What are you trying to prove?
I can’t remember the podcast, but I heard a great distinction once. A guy worked with boys who had disadvantages due to where they were born. He knew the Republican approach, of having people pull themselves up by their own bootstraps was bankrupt, and he saw the Democrat approach as equally failing because it focused on societal ills and helping victims but only after they became victims. Democratic programs don’t focus as much on empowering individuals.
In his position, he recognized the societal problems, but when he spoke to a young person, he spoke to their ability to overcome those limitations. He knew that there was plenty of support and information for those boys to internalize the victim mentality, to believe their status was not their fault and that there was nothing they could do about it and nobody cared about them. He knew they had fewer opportunities, so he encouraged them to recognize any opportunity and take advantage, instead of claiming the opportunity wasn’t good enough or the agency had not returned phone calls before or some other program didn’t work for their friends or the whole world was out to get them and nothing will ever get better.