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From: gjk@talcott.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Re: How about helping our own
Message-ID: <199@talcott.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Dec-84 20:58:42 EST
Article-I.D.: talcott.199
Posted: Tue Dec 18 20:58:42 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Dec-84 01:06:22 EST
References: <709@loral.UUCP> <191@talcott.UUCP> <223@harvard.ARPA>
Organization: Harvard
Lines: 68

> > 
> > Bullshit.  You read in the papers about Joe Schmo the farmer who can't
> > afford a second TV set.  In America, the phrase, "there are poor people"
> > means that some reporter found some somewhere and gave it national press.
> 
> Have you ever been poor, Greg? 

Yes.
 
> ...And yes,
> they were always hungry.  Yes, some of them had to quit school to work.
> Yes, many of them couldn't hold a job because they were too
> hungry/tired/uneducated.  You are full of crap if you don't believe that
> there are poor people in the U.S.

I didn't say that there weren't poor people in America.  By the American
definition of poor, there are.  By the Ethiopian definition, however, there
are not.

> > I don't give a fuck about Roberts and Heston.  Damn right it's politically
> > fashionable.  The whole country is starving.  And I don't mean they are
> > hungry or that they eat in a soup kitchen.  Those people are *dying*.
> 
> There are people here dying too, Greg.  Just because they don't go to
> Harvard doesn't mean they don't exist.  Yes, nearly everyone in Ethiopia 
> is starving.  But that doesn't mean that the writer of the original
> article didn't have a point.

"There exists" means "at least one".  I know there is at least one starving
person in this country.  However, the original author was making a
comparison between the US and Ethiopia.  There is no comparison.

> > Johnny the crazy man, who can't keep a job because he
> > forgets he has one.  Sending him food might help some, but Johnny's real
> > problem is not that he's hungry; it's that he's crazy.  And no amount of
> > money in the world will change that.  
> > I don't think we did anything to Johnny the crazy man.  I think he did
> > it to himself.  
> 
> How the f**k do you know?  Who are you to judge why someone goes crazy?
> I don't believe that insane people should be forced to live in the
> streets.  I believe we should take care of those people, because they
> can't take care of themselves.  Who do you think you are, blaming them
> when you know nothing about how they got that way?  If you ever read
> anything about it, you would realize that many of them got where they 
> are now because they *started off* poor.  And never got educated.  And
> couldn't get or keep a decent job.  It ain't easy, Greg, even I know
> that.

According to a recent Scientific American article on street people (one of
the summer issues), a large fraction have mental problems, which is why
they are on the street in the first place.  But you see, Marie, any
Ethiopian would gladly trade death for living on the streets in US.  I know
it "ain't easy", but then again, it isn't Gorky, either.

> So you can say "we should help the starving people in Ethiopia" but
> don't you dare say there's nobody here who needs help!

Need is relative.  Very relative.  Ask an Indain peasant, a Chinese
peasant, a Brazilian peasant, a South African black, a Lebanese teenage
soldier, a Cambodian refugee, an Ethiopian refugee, a Vietnamese boat
person, a Cuban boat person, a Czech political prisoner, a Turkish
political prisoner, a Soviet dissident...
---
			Greg Kuperberg
		     harvard!talcott!gjk

"  " -Charlie Chaplin, for IBM