I just got back from watching my rented DVD of Sicko. I know that Michael Moore has a habit of sensationalizing, but frankly, I don't even care if I was emotionally manipulated; a lot of what I saw in that documentary flat-out disgusted me.
I love living in America and being American... but one thing I genuinely hate about this country is how we treat our poor. Because in the end, it's the poor who most lack health care; it's their children who are forced to attend the poorest, most dilapidated public schools; it's them who end up on the streets or in prison for the rest of their lives when they develop a serious mental illness.
And the worst thing is, nobody cares. Nobody even tries to care. Not just the government, but our society as a whole; if there's one thing I've learned from observing other city dwellers all my life, it's that upper-class America is all too willing to mistreat "lesser" people. To act as if they were dirt, to completely dismiss the entire issue with some flippant, over-generalized remark: "Oh, they're all homeless because they're too lazy to work." As if it could really be that simple.
And yeah, it is simple for people to dehumanize the less fortunate or justify their being stuck in a failing system; it takes a lot more effort to actually give a damn.
