Flat Earther

I had a brief 'discussion' on Facebook today. A friend posted some ignorant right-wing comment about being glad Florida was requiring drug tests for welfare recipients. I posted my objections, chief among them being the patronizing and racist assumption that all welfare recipients are drug users, or at least potential drug users. I mean, really, when you hear 'welfare' is the image that comes to mind 'Good Times' or 'Waltons'? Be honest.
   My friend's friend posted how she was happy about the legislation, what do you have to be afraid of if you're not using drugs, things like that. I responded with the proposition that testing for drugs before you can get public assistance assumes that you are taking drugs in the first place and need to be caught, it's a presumption of guilt. Which is against the 5th, 6th, and 14th amendments to the Constitution. She argued that it's common knowledge that people on welfare wear designer clothes and drive new cars, completely avoiding addressing my point and perpetuating yet another racist sterotype. The discussion degenerated from there.
   Every fact you can find on the Web, every statistic from governmental sources, every actual study posted shows that people are on welfare for two years or less, they're usually single mothers in dire straits not drug dealers gaming the system, and that most never go back.
   Yet this myth persists of the welfare cheat getting rich from public assistance, and some people will not be dissuaded from it, no matter how reasoned the discourse. It's like trying to convince a flat-earther that the world is, in actual fact, round. No matter the evidence you place in front of him, he's still going to insist that his version of things is the right one.
   This is the problem we face in politics and society today. Willful ignorance. Flat-earthers. People who are so invested in being right that they refuse to entertain the possibility that they might be wrong. It's childish, really, and divisive. Why try to understand the larger societal problems that create the need for welfare, when you can just repeat ad hominem attacks that would make Archie Bunker blush?*
   We need to get past this, we need to stop insisting we're right and start listening to why we might be wrong. Then we might get something accomplished.


* seems I'm on a 70's TV kick today, just go with it.