Andrew Sullivan's blog has been doing a series of posts and letters about "drug addiction in the heartland". This letter from a reader is interesting:
Addiction In The Heartland, Ctd
There's one other factor in rural drug use. There's nothing to do in small towns. Growing up in New Mexico, we were bored. When you're a teenager, you can only watch so much TV. My best friend and I would get high on meth and drive around all night just talking, but we felt great because we were high. All of my friends and a huge chunk of my high school did a lot of drugs and had a lot of sex. When I moved to Seattle and talked about my past drug experience, my new friends looked at me like I was Tony Montana.
Genuinely puzzled, I asked if they'd ever done drugs, and the responses were generally along the lines of, "No, I was too busy with my theater group/after school job/non-traditional sports team/other socially acceptable activity." Weird as is, I think Seattle's dumbass dodgeball league on Capitol Hill is keeping more kids off drugs than all the efforts of all past Drug Czars combined.
It's true! Growing up in/near a small town in the heartland is boring! Good thing my home town had no meth (or at least that I didn't know where to find it).
I am really, really upset about what that lieutenant governor said. I actually looked up on his website and he is a member of a Methodist Church. I would assume, through that that he is at least nominally Christian. I don't even understand how someone who believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God can say "lets not feed the children unless their parent go to PTA meetings". It is stuff like this that makes me want to make a website devoted to refuting things that assholes like this say WITH the sayings of Jesus Christ.
Honestly, it's just the flip side of the proposals you used to hear in the 80s all the time about witholding AFDC payments if kids were late or truant. They're casting around for a stick they use against people for whom they have no understanding or empathy. They really do see them* as animals to be broken, or discarded if they won't get on board. So the sheer inhumanity of witholding food or shelter (from third parties, yet) doesn't even register.
So you take in a stray animal, you give it a few chances, but if it snarls or smells or craps on the carpet you kick it back to the curb. Why not? You don't owe it anything.
They just don't usually say it out loud.
*definition of them being some varying combination of race, class or just poor.
I think his metaphor also really doesn't work on me because I would NEVER do that to a stray animal, let alone a person. But I still don't see how you reconcile that view with being a Christian.
And all this does is take people who are on the edge of poverty, people the the lower working class that I grew up in, and pit them against poor people, so we will never band together and maybe make some actual changes.
If the "lower" classes are fighting among themselves, they won't be fighting the "upper" classes. Until they pause, say "We shouldn't be fighting each other," and we get a full-out class war. The riots of the '60s adn '70s could happen again.
I think his metaphor also really doesn't work on me because I would NEVER do that to a stray animal, let alone a person. But I still don't see how you reconcile that view with being a Christian.
Oh, absolutely. But he's clearly not coming the same baseline assumptions about people or animals. Or Chrisitianity.
Sophia, think of church as the center of his society and a requirement rather than a firmly held belief system. He has probably always gone to church, it is what one does. NOT going to church would not be acceptable for a politician and even prior to politics it would have caused hushed discussions.
It is stuff like this that makes me want to make a website devoted to refuting things that assholes like this say WITH the sayings of Jesus Christ.
I would enjoy that! And possibly contribute to it.
Sophia, think of church as the center of his society and a requirement rather than a firmly held belief system. He has probably always gone to church, it is what one does. NOT going to church would not be acceptable for a politician and even prior to politics it would have caused hushed discussions.
This makes sense. Not to me, because I was not raised in a church and am not even baptized, and doubt I ever can be, because I would always feel like I was lying about believing (unless Unitarians baptize).
I can quote a heck of a lot of New Testament verses from working on Godspell, however.
