Telling it like it is

When I was comparing minorities in France to minorities in the USA of course I meant by percentage. When I am talking about something like this I always mean percentages. I hate those graphics you sometimes see in papers where like California leads the nation in DUIs while Wyoming comes in last, and of course that just tells what state is more populous, has nothing to do with who drives drunk more. That kind of thing drives me nuts.

That upper peninsula case you cite doesn’t make any sense to me. There are certain rules about how much money you make etc, that determine whether or not you get welfare. To claim you should get welfare because Blacks get it, is like claiming you should be able to sell cigarettes tax free because Indians do it. I’m also going to not believe that story about poor whites not knowing that they could get welfare until they heard blacks got it. I believe the local people tell stories like that, but if you think about it, it doesn’t make any sense either.

The point I was trying to make was that one reason we have so many poor people is because many of them are blacks and white people tend to not want to give money to blacks, and here we have your statement:

‘In those days I was against welfare, and the fact that most of it was going to Blacks probably had something to do with it.’

And there it is. It logically follows that if you thought the money was going to whites you would have been more generous in your thoughts about welfare (and when I say ‘you’ I am speaking of white people in general) and they would have got more money so their kids would more often be born in good conditions and they would get good food to eat, so they would grow taller, and overall we would measure up better to the French, who don’t mind giving their money to less fortunate Frenchmen.

And along the same lines, there is always this thing where people are taxed to help out people generally in another country, but it could be in another state of another city within their state and they write those indignant letters to the editor about why are we helping out the poor in faraway places when we have plenty of poor people right here in River City. Like somehow the poor in faraway places are less deserving than the nearby poor.

Of course what is really going on is those writers to the paper basically just don’t want to pay the tax period. But they don’t want to seem uncharitable so they come up with this dodge.

If you don’t want to help the poor, just say you don’t want to help the poor, don’t pretend that if these poor lived closer you would be opening your wallet. And if you want to go to war with someone, just go to war with them, don’t pretend that it’s only because the only thing the other side understands is force.

If you want to make an argument, make a strong argument, don’t use trite and meaningless phrases just because they sound good.

There, I’ve said it.