It took me a long time to figure out that the secret to Facebook happiness was not to offend easily. And I don't...but sometimes you just have to respond to nonsense.
Someone posted this meme yesterday. Not overly clever, and not overly interesting visually, but it expressed a sentiment that I’ve seen a lot of on Facebook. I get the point…but that point doesn’t matter.
Anyway, here's the meme:
As one of those dreaded freeloaders (I haven't been able to work for a while, and live off a miniscule Social Security Disability allowance) I took no offense at this, though I certainly could have. My current income is so phenomenally low that I fall below the IRS's you-can't-afford-to-pay-us-anything threshold. To be blunt, by this person's perspective I am (as this meme implies) of less value than a taxpayer. His/her point of view appears to be that those like me ("freeloaders" as he/she labels us) are of less value than "taxpayers" (which, I assume, would include the Koch Brothers, who probably pay less taxes than his/her family).
(Have I over-done the parentheses yet?)
I mention all of this to let you all know where I'm coming from, because I think that might be important in light if what I'm about to say. You see, whoever made this meme had a point to make, and certainly had every right to make it, but there's a far more iomportant point that they have entirely missed.
The real point, the point that this person doesn't get and probably wouldn't agree with, is that everyone matters, the rich no less than the poor, the hale no less than the infirm, the productive no less than the lazy. And no more than, either. If we start thinking that people can be rated according to their value to society, we’ve started down a very dark road that winds through some very dark places on its way to something nightmarish.
Euthanasia is on that road. So are death camps. So is ethnic cleansing. I’m not saying that they’re just around the corner, far from it. Far from where we are now (at least I hope so). But we don’t have to walk down that road at all. We can value people for who and what they are, rather than for their arbitrary worth to society.
I cannot help but think that the person who made this railed against Obama’s “death panels” (which never actually existed, but never mind). I do not know that, of course, but to me it seems likely. In any case, the meme they produced is ample evidence that they themselves (them self?) are thinking along those same lines.
You see, this meme appears to foster the belief that people can be rated according to their value to society. And I'm not saying that they can't...I am saying that they shouldn't be.
(And I know that it’s just a matter of time until some individual posts some lame-ass Stairway to Heaven Led Zeppelin quote in response, because it's sooooo obvious, but I thought that since I am obviously the King of Lame that I’d go first: “Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run / there’s still time to change the road you’re on.”)
The Blues Viking
The thoughts expressed here are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.
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