The Cult of Cruelty in America

Over the past six years the number of homeless children in America has increased by an incredible 60 percent with 16 million kids now on food stamps. The U.S has one of the highest relative child poverty rates in the world, ranking us with Latvia, Lithuania and Romania at the bottom of the list.

How is this even remotely okay in a country that claims to be the leader of the free world, the country supposedly ordained by God to be the example of democracy for everyone else to follow? Every day there’s a new headline about the improving economy, but that supposed improvement isn’t reaching a whole lot of people. 

What do you expect when one of the two major political parties in America believes that the poor are in that condition because they are lazy and dependent on government handouts? In other words, Republicans blame the poor for their poverty, and constantly demean and demonize the most helpless class of people in the country. People like Cruz and Rubio and Cotton are members of a cult of cruelty, blaming the victim and rushing to unravel the remaining safety net that in some cases is literally the difference between life and death.

Poor children don’t vote, so they mean nothing to Tea Party conservatives. Like everything else conservatives believe, their perspective on poverty is supported not by science or data, but by twisted religious beliefs and a reality challenged adherence to the idea of free markets with absolutely no government intervention. In other words, they would prefer a dog-eat-dog world over even the slightest government regulation.

And who suffers the most in this Ayn Randian nightmare of free-for-all capitalism? Our children, of course. They pay the price for conditions they had nothing to do with creating. The cult of cruelty is the result of white elitists in positions of power who want no government regulation over how they make their money, calling any interference with their schemes socialism. Children are not as important as the bottom line, and neither apparently, is our future as a country.