When Do Low-Income Americans Get Their White House Meeting?

[Scootaloo]

63. Plus there's the whole "taboo" thing...

Talking about the poor in America explicitly admits that there are poor people in America. This is something Americans find absolutely intolerable in day-to-day, and abhorrent from their leaders. Even poor people hate to acknowledge it - I've met so many people living in sagging double-wides feeding their kids ramen that insist, with absolute certainty, that they are not poor but are instead middle class!

Acknowledging that the Horatio Alger story applies more or less only to Horatio Alger is a national taboo, and is political suicide.

The other problem is that when politicians start talking about poor people - on the very rare occasions that they do - they run up against the shockingly fascist, eugenics-based attitude Americans hold towards poverty - poor people are poor because they deserve it. They're all lazy, shiftless, ignorant, and probably of poor genetic quality. That being the case, Americans don't WANT these people to be brought into the mainstream, they see the poor as a polluting factor in society, something that will "bring down" everyone else - especially since aiding hte impoverished costs money. And again, even poor people hold this view.

It's not about votes, or belief in trickle-down. it's about a culturally entrenched seething hatred of the poor, internalized so far that even people suffering that situation buy into it.