There is a particular kind of contempt in America that makes my blood boil.

It isn’t the kind that comes from hate. Hate is at least honest. It’s the kind that comes from smugness, that quiet moral sneer reserved for those who rely on government assistance to eat, to live, to keep the lights on. It is the sneer that says, I did it myself, so why can’t you? The sneer that transforms poverty into sin and need into moral failure.

I see it in comment sections and at checkout counters, in the eyes of politicians who quote scripture while cutting benefits. They speak of “personal responsibility” as if hunger were a choice, as if poverty were a contagion contracted through simple laziness. They act as though SNAP recipients form a lower order of citizenry, a caste of the undeserving. And the more they demean them, the more virtuous they feel, as though cruelty itself were proof of strength.

“A person who lives in a civilized state and does not contribute to the support of society is not paying his rent for the protection it affords.”

Thomas Paine

Let me say this plainly: if you think you are superior to a person who needs food assistance, your hands are not clean. You are not a self-made anything. You are a beneficiary of a system that fed you, schooled you, paved your roads, policed your streets, defended your property, and subsidized your health insurance through the taxes of the very people you now demean. You were not born in a vacuum; you were born into an infrastructure paid for by others. You have been lifted by invisible hands, whether you choose to see them or not.

The neighbor who uses an EBT card to buy groceries is not robbing you. He is participating in a social contract that your country, in its better moments, chose to honor: that no one in the richest nation on earth should starve. The idea that he must be shamed for it reveals not moral clarity, but moral decay.

It’s easy to look at the poor and see fault. It absolves you of introspection. It makes the world simple: the good rise, the bad sink. But that’s not how the world works. Wages stagnate. Health fails. Accidents happen. Factories close. Rent rises. And yet, even as these storms rage, we are told to despise the shipwrecked for not swimming harder.

And what of the corporations whose profits rely on underpaid labor, forcing millions of workers to rely on SNAP and Medicaid just to survive? We call them job creators, and we line up to defend their right to pay starvation wages. But the cashier who earns those wages, she’s the “freeloader.” That’s the sickness of our time: we worship wealth and despise the people who create it.

“Socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.”

martin luther king, jr

There is no virtue in cruelty. There is no righteousness in condemning those in need. And there is no justice in a society that defines human worth by whether someone can afford groceries without help.

I am angry because we are losing our capacity for compassion. Because empathy is being rebranded as weakness. Because we have begun to mistake luck for character.

The measure of a nation is not how proudly it praises the self-reliant, but how quietly it feeds the hungry.

“I don’t believe in welfare. People can work if they want to.”

donald j trump

If you want to talk about dependence, let’s talk about the billionaires dependent on tax loopholes, the corporations dependent on public infrastructure, the politicians dependent on ignorance. Those who rage the loudest about “handouts” are often the ones with their hands deepest in the till.

The myth that SNAP recipients are lazy is one of the most persistent lies in American folklore (thanks especially to Ronald Reagan). The reality is far more ordinary and far more damning to those who believe it. Most people who rely on food assistance are already working, often full-time, in jobs that don’t pay enough to cover rent, childcare, and groceries in the same month. Many are single mothers balancing two or three jobs while raising children alone. Others are elderly Americans who spent their lives working but now find that their Social Security check doesn’t stretch as far as the pharmacy counter. Some are simply people who have been unlucky: who got sick, got laid off, or were born into circumstances they did not choose. Are there abusers of the system? Of course. There are abusers of every system: corporate bailouts, tax loopholes, political offices. But no one points to a crooked CEO as proof that capitalism itself has failed.

The double standard reveals what this contempt really is: not about fraud, but about hierarchy. Who it is we think deserves to eat without shame, and who we think must earn the right to survive.

So the next time you see someone paying with an EBT card, don’t roll your eyes. Don’t assume. Don’t sneer.

You might instead say: There but for fortune go I.

Because you could go there. You might yet.

And if you do, may you be met not with contempt, but with decency.