this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 86 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Any parent can tell you that a hungry child isn't capable of doing any complex activity. Attempting to educate a kid who hasn't eaten in god knows how long, for whatever reason, isn't going to work.

Beyond that, universal school breakfast and lunch help people who can afford it by removing yet another thing for parents to worry about. And it eliminates the stigma of only the poor kids getting free lunches.

Republicans have been disdainful of public education since before I was born, so they're trying to make it fail by continuing to spend money trying to teach hungry kids.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

And it eliminates the stigma of only the poor kids getting free lunches.

The stigma is the point.

Conservatives believe receiving charity should be shameful.

Because conservatives (and neoliberals) think poverty is a personal moral failure - if you're poor, it's not because society and capitalism and racism and structural inequality screwed you over, it's because you, personally, were lazy or wasted your money or broke the law or didn't work hard enough.

So if a child can't afford a school lunch, it's because their parents are bad people. And shaming that child with an obvious "free lunch" (I remember having a bright red card that I had to show in the cafeteria, and the lunch lady would sneer at me and loudly proclaim "here is your FREE LUNCH" and hand me a cheese sandwich and an apple when the other kids were getting pizza just to make sure everybody knew my parents were poor) teaches the child to be ashamed of their parents and be ashamed of their poverty so they'll work harder to avoid poverty as adults.

And if schools give every child free lunch, not only do they lose that "teaching opportunity", they teach children that food is a right and that everybody, no matter their economic status, should have enough to eat, which is a direct attack on the fundamental principles of capitalism and American society.

Go into a conservative space and tell them people have a right to food and shelter and medical care and watch them froth in rage.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow I never put it together before but you are right, the free lunch was a lesson to work hard and not be poor, and I have to say it worked on me. We had our free lunches provided in a very distinct white paper bag and you had to walk to the office to get it, then walk back down to the cafeteria after everyone was already sitting down. So everyone got to see the white bag lunch as you walked in, and everyone knew what it meant. Would it have killed the school to use the standard brown paper bag, or give it to us on a lunch tray with the hot lunch kids? No but if the reason was to embarrass me into not being poor it worked. I promised myself that my kids would never have to deal with that embarrassment, and so far I've kept that promise.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It's crazy how different things can be in different places. When I was in school, it didn't matter whether you paid or not, everyone got the same thing the same way. Actually, we had no way of knowing what other students paid for their lunch, as we would have an account with the school that you would put money on, and when you went through the line, you would give the person at the end the last 4 digits of your ssn and it would charge you the correct amount and take it out of your account.

Now if you didn't have enough money in your account to cover whatever you owed, then there would be an issue, but I don't remember ever seeing that.

[–] RegularGoose 12 points 1 year ago

Go into a conservative space and tell them people have a right to food and shelter and medical care and watch them froth in rage.

But if you specifically say that they have a right to those things, they'll wholeheartedly agree.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Basic, and higher education should be on that list. I'd aslo argue for utilities, and AFAIC utilities should be public, and include telecommunications companies, not just water, electric, and mass transit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Oh man, that is so fucked up. The UK has its own problems around attitudes towards the poor, but I never saw anything like this in school. My school had cards that you had to load credit onto, and people with free school meals had a standard amount automatically added on each day.

[–] RegularGoose 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Any parent can tell you that a hungry child isn’t capable of doing any complex activity.

Neither is a hungry adult. Free access to food should be a constitutional right.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If we can force all the kids into a school, the goddamn LEAST we can do is toss them some snacks

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Keep them hungry, keep them dumb. Make it so only the already rich have access to education. Keep the power in the hand of the wealthy few.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ohhh, they're opposing universal free meals while wanting to keep the free meals for students from poor families. That makes way more sense than opposing both. Not cartoonishly evil. It's possible that it's for purely utilitarian reasons.

Typical politics taking things out of context and extrapolating.

(No, I am not endorsing the republican party or saying that universal free meals for students should be blocked.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It isn't quite as insane as the headline makes it sound.

But anyway, maybe Republicans are worried that if anyone sees a "socialist" type of program at work they might think it is kind of a good idea in certain circumstances. O noes 😨

[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 year ago (6 children)

what the fuck is wrong with america?

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Republicans.

Well, rightists in general. Unfortunately there is a non-zero percentage of rightist Democrats, as well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's not to say that Democrats are perfect though. With the people who are in charge that are Democrats being severely uneducated, such as Biden saying that cannons and flamethrowers are illegal and impossible to own. Overall the issue is that nobody directly has any opinion or control. We vote for people that make decisions for us and they don't always upkeep their promises and make decisions people that voted for them like. There is no exactly perfect candidate, voting eliminates most bad candidates, but voting directly in as many matters as possible is a much better and reliable democracy than the current system.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

the democratic party is largely a right wing conservative party, so i would assume so

[–] potterpockets 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked.”

  • George Carlin literally decades ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Until you're old enough to join the military.

[–] RegularGoose 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nah, get with the times. They're putting kids back in factories and kitchens now.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

We're addicted to tearing one another down to feel better about ourselves. Our country has become the national embodiment of schadenfreude.

Help.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

this is the whole thing, man.. tweaking freaks for competition 24/7 just for the chance to make SportsCenter..

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As a leftist, I don't want to tear Republicans down. And I'll stop the moment they stop trying to commit genocide against minorities and literally starve children.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There’s always a group of people or party that want to tear others down. From slavery and seceding, to wanting segregation laws and harassing minorities. In other countries you had apartheid and Nazis. It’s a constant battle/struggle against evil and those wanting to dismantle and control others.

[–] RegularGoose 3 points 1 year ago

I'd prefer if you asked what the fuck is right with America so the answer can be two sentences rather than the length of a novel.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

What a repugnant group of idiots.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Just rebrand it to prepaid lunch and they'll stop bitching. They're too stupid to realize that's what it means

[–] potterpockets 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“Something something both sides are the same.”

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

On the one hand, Biden is mostly anti-union and pro-corporate. On the other hand Republicans want your kids to starve to death.

Honestly who can choose these days?! /s

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Your options are tolerant-ish cyberpunk dystopia or neo-fedual theocracy, that's it. At least the cyberpunk one doesn't oppress queer folks or try and shove a religion down your throat.

But maybe we could ... not do the dystopia thing? A little?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

But maybe we could ... not do the dystopia thing? A little?

Sorry, that's communism.

[–] fsxylo 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

But you see voting doesn't work. That's why we keep alternating between democrats and republicans so that we never have to hold democrats to too high of a standard while they bring us back to the status quo of not living in hell.

Meanwhile if the democrats were clearly winning every election, that would give us space to shift the Overton window to the left. But that's not a perfect fairytale solution so we'll all just burn to death instead.