dehumanization | The Direction of Intention

Somebody. Nobody. [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 29, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The comparatively affluent can withstand the moral effect of being subsidized and supported by government; not so the poor.” ~John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment

It is among the greatest bait-and-switch tactics played on the American public: While the Reagan republicans and the generations that followed crowed that Welfare Queens were robbing the public, 50 trillion dollars moved from the lower 90% into the personal pockets of the 1%. The misuse and abuse of the system was not – and is not – the woman using food stamps to feed her child.

Do you remember the cry, “Waste, fraud, and abuse!” It is the same strawman/woman tactic used to sell The BIG UGLY BILL that is now stripping medicaid, healthcare and food assistance from millions of citizens – all to provide a tax cut for the morbidly wealthy. Consider this: Elon Musk’s personal wealth is built on billions and billions of dollars of government funding, subsidies and tax breaks. His DOGE bros successfully killed any and all government oversight over his business practices and use of tax dollars. His morbid wealth is accelerated by tax breaks and a tax code that shifts the tax burden of the nation onto the poorest citizens.

It is a corrupt band that only has one note in its repertoire: the same gross stereotype, variation on the Welfare Queen, is fueling the rampant misinformation that now leads to mass deportation of immigrants or, to be more specific, the deportation of black and brown immigrants, people who fled violence and came to this nation seeking a better life. The Welfare Queen tactic worked so well to shift wealth into the hands of the few that it is now being used to vilify immigrants. We hear that they are “soaking up tax dollars, afforded benefits that we are not, depleting resources meant for us…”

“Without fail, each Tax Day a prevalent myth resurfaces that conceals the truth about immigrants’ contributions to federal, state, and local taxes. Bolstered by social media and other outlets, it misleadingly asserts that immigrants, particularly those who are undocumented, evade taxes. The facts don’t back up these claims.”

The facts have never backed up these claims.

White nationalist elites are slobbering at the success of their modified Welfare Queen smear campaign, the rapid erection of concentration camps, the shameful support of their false-narrative by the court Supremes. All the while, the president and his men grift and rob us blind; his personal wealth has increased 4 billion dollars since inauguration day.

When fox news poisons the brains of their audience with a cry of “Socialism” or “Communism”, they are utilizing the same stereotype to fuel the same intention: create a fact-free-diversion by fueling fear, all the while moving the wealth of the nation – and the constitutional protections of the nation – into fewer and fewer hands.

When the current occupant of the White House and his Project 2025 co-conspirators cry that illegals are stealing our elections or that women are ruining our nation and should not have to right to vote or that people from Haiti are all rapists and riddled with AIDS…it is the same game, the same gross stereotype used to distract and deflect the public from the real rapists of our society.

It’s an age-old magician’s trick with a pickpocket intention: distract and steal.

Imagine the public good 50 trillion dollars could provide – could have provided – if it was actually dedicated to serving the public? The best healthcare for all. The best education in the world. Safe and secure bridges and roads. Stimulus for small business. World class research. A solvent social security and secure Medicare system. A stable and educated populace that would recognize when they were being fleeced.

Here’s the greater point. Terms like Welfare Queen are lobbed like bombs at us because they dehumanize people. They explode a victim fantasy in the minds of the easily distracted and render the target of their slander as less-than-somebody (“The welfare queen is taking your money!”). Sadly, in the process, we dehumanize ourselves, too. In “doing unto others,” we do the same onto ourselves. We become less than somebody, a disposable people who cannot afford housing or food or the gas in our cars. An easily controlled throw-away mass perpetually fighting each other, blind to the orange man and his tech-bro-party of urchins actively, gleefully, picking our pockets.

There is only one line remaining between our future as a class of nobodies or as a nation of somebodies, a government of, by and for the people, is to vote. Our vote in November will affirm that we are somebody – or it will deliver us into the hands of those who daily reduce us, strip us of our rights and believe we do not matter. Welfare Queen. Illegal. Antifa. Dumocrat. Loser.

Vote as if your life and our democracy depended on it – because it does.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SOMEBODY

likecommentsharesupportthankyou!

Filed under: Awakening, Edges, Merely A Thought Monday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, authoritarianism, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dehumanization, democracy, facts, grift, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, stereotypes, story, straw man, studio melange, taxation, the melange, wealth equality, Welfare Queen | Leave a comment »

Don’t Go Home [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 4, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

House on Fire. 2004-ish. Watercolor. And, yes, I was all over copying Guernica.

“The continual retreat from the discomfort of authentic racial engagement in a culture infused with racial disparity limits the ability to form authentic connections across racial lines, and results in a perpetual cycle that works to hold racism in place.” ~ Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility

I confess to rewriting this post. What I wrote initially was pedantic and preachy. So, this is a second go-round.

We’ve been hearing this question much in these past days: why don’t things ever change? Here’s an answer I learned in school: a society is a living system and, like all living things, it will fight to the death when threatened with change. Why we can’t seem to “solve” our problem with racial disparity and the dehumanization of black people? It’s built into our system. The system, a complex and living thing, will fight to the death to keep the injustice securely in place.

That’s a heady answer and somewhat hopeless. Its abstraction makes it a safe and somewhat antiseptic response.

I lived in Los Angeles in 1992. My apartment was in the hills so I had a good vantage point to watch the rioting and the city burn. When it felt too unsafe, I fled the city. I had a safe place to go.

A few years later, working with a school district, the head of the Black Student Union asked me to come in and work with her students. MLK day was fast approaching and the students, preparing presentations for the day, were in rebellion. They were mad. They didn’t want to read speeches about peace and justice when those ideals were nowhere on their horizon. I thought it was my job to help them give voice to what they wanted to say. It was my first conscious lesson in my white-blindness. The frightened parents of the students descended. I’ll never forget the mother and father that pulled me aside, saying to me, “You don’t understand. If they say what they want to say they’ll be killed.” Their terror was real. They had to teach their children a lesson that was the opposite of what my parents taught me.

To call it a problem is to reduce it to the level of mechanics. It is to pretend (or hope) that a few changes in the law or better policing will do the trick. To treat it like a problem guarantees that we’ll recreate it. This is not a problem, this is a pattern. It is a cycle. It is a relationship.

The pattern is currently in our faces. The pattern is not only the death of another black person. The pattern is also what white America chooses to do – or not do- with the knowledge of it. What is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves that makes it possible to stand in the fire with people of color during the protests but walk-on once the fire subsides? It is simply this: I get to go home. I get to drive out of LA when things feel too unsafe. I have someplace to go. I get to go home when the officer is prosecuted or a law is changed or a commission empaneled, dust off my hands, and say that I did my part.

Why don’t things ever change?

I was stunned when those parents pulled me aside. At first, I couldn’t believe that they were going to silence their children when their children had something so important to say. It made my head spin. And then I went home. And then I realized that they couldn’t go home. There was no place in this “living system” where they were safe. That was what they were trying to tell me. It was what Martin Luther King was trying to tell us. It is what the protesters in the streets today are trying to get us to see/admit/realize. We are watching a living system built on racial division and inequality fight to the death because change is knocking.

What if we realized that we cannot simply go home and forget about it?

read Kerri’s blog post about HOUSE ON FIRE