For the Common Welfare

Consider how organized crime surfaced in this country. Employers refused to hire Irish or Italian immigrants. As a result, many Irish- and Italian-Americans formed gangs. Plenty of hungry people would. So what could we reasonably expect as the consequences of ditching support systems such as welfare?

Many people, most of them well-meaning Republicans, believe that anyone anywhere at any time can find work so long as he or she looks for it. Fifteen years ago, I would’ve stood closer to agreement with these Republicans. However, in today’s world, I see no sanity in the assumption that by removing welfare altogether, everyone currently using the system will simply go out, find a job, and live a productive life.

Many people take advantage of welfare, but many people actually need that systems to survive. If you're on welfare, you either want a job and can't find one (we’ll call this Situation A), or you're unwilling to find one (Situation B). Remove welfare from either of these situations, and the people within them discovers themselves without a source of, let's say, food.

A rumbling stomach makes for a poor conscience. If you find that hard to believe, you’ve never enjoyed honest-to-God hunger. Will the threat of prison prevent criminal activity? No. The threat of prison food holds little weight against someone who’s starving. The threat of a prison cell holds little terror to an evicted person who’s standing in the rain.

While a person in Situation A might’ve gone to college or started a business, they cannot do either once their support system vanishes. True, many people on these systems fall into Situation B, but it’s still better for us all, in the long run, to support them.

Calm down. Hear me out.

If someone becomes desperate for money in an economy that offers few jobs, that person will likely consider crime an option. While such criminal activity provides immediate, bad news for its victims, the situation for the country and its tax-payers sinks to even worse levels after the “criminal’s” apprehension.

It cost far more to imprison a person than to send him or her a welfare check. I know how disheartening, how defeatist, that sounds, but the math doesn’t lie (here’s something else to consider: in most cases, it would prove cheaper to send a person to college than to imprison her).

By removing “entitlement programs,” we risk turning many lazy people, and down-on-their-luck-but-honest-hard-working-people, into criminals. We'll shell out larger sums of money to imprison these people than to just let them continue their existences on welfare.

If we follow the Republicans' line of thinking, we would save money by cutting entitlement programs, but we would create more criminals and spend more money policing and imprisoning them. That equation isn’t even taking into account the consequences of the actual crimes, themselves.

Actually, there's another reason why Republican policies would likely raise crime rates. Remember those “experts” who predicted a massive rise in crime by the early 90s? That increase didn't happen. You know what happened sixteen years before '89? Roe vs. Wade. With that piece of legislation, poor people, who, statistically, would have been more likely to give birth to future criminals (statistically. statistically!) could have abortions. So, if the Republicans ever manage to overturn Roe vs. Wade, it stands to reason that . . .

If the government loosens environmental restrictions on manufacturing corporations (another common, Republican goal), we can assume that said corporations will return to their previous lifestyles of building factories that fail to adhere to those now nonexistent restrictions. Maybe that sounds cynical, but consider the environmental destruction caused in third-world countries, where manufacturing corporations already stand safely out of said restrictions’ reaches.

Such pollution frequently destroys crops and drinking water, resulting in a greater number of hungry people in nations prone to civil violence. That spells political unrest, civil war. Which political party proves more likely to “send in the troops” when civil war erupts in a foreign land? The Republicans, even though war proves monstrously expensive.

It's cheaper to keep the entitlement programs. Let’s use the extra cash to build greater upward mobility through education. Most people want to walk proud and contribute. Many just don't believe, for a variety of reasons, that they can. We need to change that point of view. Fix the sickness, not the symptoms.

This brings us to the subject of domestic jobs. I’ll take another cheap shot at the Republicans here and remind you that they are the party that believes in rewarding corporations, via tax credits, for shipping jobs overseas. Furthermore, the Republicans blocked the Democrats’ “insourcing bill,” which would have provided the opposite effect and helped create jobs here in America.

Republicans blame Obama and his fellow Democrats for our nation’s lack of employment, but we swam in available jobs during Clinton’s lucrative terms. Our current troubles started under Walker Bush’s watch. Yes, we have Obama now, but a Republican legislative branch refuses to cooperate with him, openly preventing Obama from accomplishing anything (“Our goal is to make him a one-term president”).

You could argue (I do) that when Obama first took office, he had a democratic majority, with which he failed to take full advantage. Perhaps Obama wanted to play nice and work with Republicans. (He possesses a habit of surrounding himself with those who don't always agree with him. Lincoln did much the same.)

Clinton placed our country in a fruitful position. Walker Bush reversed that. Obama inherited the aftermath, and the Republicans refuse collaboration in rectifying the mess.

Unemployment leads to increased crime, but whose actions created that unemployment? Whose actions prevent an economic recovery? Perhaps Obama's policies are terrible, but we haven't had much opportunity to discover that on account of Washington infighting. Electing Republicans only rewards them for behaving in such reckless fashion.

Judge so, lest someone fear judging you.

After producing a piece of creative work—a sculpture, a short story, a comic book—you will likely ask someone to review it for you, to tell you what she or he “honestly thinks” about your work. One of two results follows. 1) Your critic tells you that your work is “Wonderful. Don’t change a thing.” 2) Your critic makes suggestions.

While the first consequence is nice to hear, it leaves you nothing with which to work, no direction to follow in improving your craft. This grows maddening. It always feels a bit dishonest, as well. You know that you haven’t yet mastered your craft. Surely, your work cries for improvement. Did your critic believe that you couldn’t handle her or his honest opinion? If so, that opinion must’ve seemed devastating. Now you know your work sucks, but you don’t know why or what to do about it because your critics won’t tell you!

This proves remarkably irritating after you’ve gone through the trouble of joining a writer’s workshop, perhaps one at your local university. You and your classmates exchange your works (I am assuming in this case that your work involves writing, a short story perhaps). You go home, read your classmates’ stories. You struggle to offer your most sincere thoughts regarding it.

Afterwards, everyone returns the stories (critical analysis affixed) to their owners. You eagerly scan your returned drafts, but discover only useless scribbling to the tune of: “Good job” or “I liked it.”

Even your professor returns a paper with a weightless, red checkmark on it and nothing more. You deflate. You wanted nothing more than a list of helpful suggestions, thoughtful considerations regarding your protagonist and how to improve her. You want naked, heartless criticism.

Until you acquire it.

I imagine that everyone goes through the same stages when she or he finally receives an honest list of suggestions, opportunities for improvement.

·         Stage One: Denial. Your critic is an idiot. He clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He clearly failed to grasp the point of your work. He clearly lacks the intelligence to “get” your work.

·         Stage Two: Reconsideration. Hmmm. Not everyone’s a genius. If you’re writing only for the super intelligent, you’re not going to sell many copies of your work. Perhaps you ought to dumb-it-down a bit. Perhaps you ought to rework your material so that the average person (whatever that is) can “get” what you’re trying to say. How to do that . . . Oh! That’s right. Your critic’s advice. Surely, it can’t be good, but it’s all you have. You might as well try it.

·         Stage Three: Experimentation. Against your better judgment, you undertake your stupid, moron critic’s advice. The strangest thing happens. Your work’s better now, clearer.  You don’t want to believe it.

·         Stage Four: Acceptance. Your critic isn’t such an idiot after all. You grow suspicious that when a reader fails to “get” your work, perhaps the failure is your own as a writer. Hmmm.

Even the nastiest, snottiest, dumbest critics can offer the most priceless guidance. It’s never worthwhile to dismiss a critic, not if you want to polish your work into the best possible version of itself. Sometimes though, it can prove an effort to wallow through all the nastiness and snot that some critics spew while sniffing their own asses.

I don’t encounter a lot of nastiness or snot in writer’s workshops. Every contributor faces the same firing squad; they don’t want the negative karma. However, nameless, online critics do not face such a firing squad.

Sometimes, I suspect the best critics are those whose own projects are approaching their début. Notice that I say “best,” not “only acceptable.” The more critics you have, the more criticism you receive. So much the better. Just follow the stages to Acceptance and a better, finished project. Your ego has no place in revision.

Critics of entertainment—may they discuss movies, books, television, video games, or whatever else—used to serve two important purposes. 1) They identified for entertainers the weaknesses and opportunities of their published projects for consideration upon future endeavors. 2) They suggested for the entertained where they ought to invest their time and money. However, over the years, the role of the critic has morphed into something hideous, something that serves neither of the aforementioned purposes.

I suppose it started with a critic who made jokes about those movies, shows, or games that she or he didn’t advocate. Eventually (and I am still speculating, here), the jokes grew more insulting. The fun caught on.

Now, audiences turn to critics not for constructive guidance, but for humorous trash-talk served against those who risk everything in the hope of entertaining the masses (and making money, I imagine, though there are far easier ways of obtaining it).

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. If you can’t entertain for fear of sarcastic critics, become a critic and entertain via sarcastic criticism. It’s not as if critics have critics of their own.

If there exists an audience hungry for these sorts of roastings, are the roastings bad?

The Escapist, an online magazine featuring movie- and video game critics, employees the talented Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw. He calls his hilarious video publications Zero Punctuation

Yahtzee mercilessly insults the video games he reviews, and his language and references are not for the easily offended. However, his publications lack the spite-for-spite’s-sake formula that has crept into so many other critics’ works. Furthermore, Yahtzee’s ridicule often targets Yahtzee. Most importantly, he offers criticisms that call attention to his subjects’ missed opportunities, granting those game creators useful considerations for their future endeavors.

Video game designers can learn a lot by checking their egos at the door and humoring such a critic. I walk away from Yahtzee’s videos with a solid idea of whether or not I would want to spend time playing a game he has reviewed (the answer is usually “No,” but I’m more of a bookworm).

Even the meanest critics offer a seed of good opportunity. Humor them. Try every suggestion, no matter how absurd or malicious. The road to great opportunities is often paved with bad intensions.

As much as we want to report optimistically when reviewing a friend’s stinker of a project, sometimes it’s shortsighted to consider that friend’s feelings over the wellbeing of her or his project.

If someone asks you, “Does my butt look big?” the obvious answer is, “Of course, not. You look perfect.” Depending upon with whom you’re dealing, that might prove your best move. Then again . . .

·         Stage One: Denial. What an insensitive jerk! How could he say something like that to me? My butt does not look big.

·         Stage Two: Reconsideration. Hmmm. I suppose that I asked. Let’s face it, we live in a society where looks count. While my butt looks perfectly normal, “normal” might not cut it. Perhaps I ought to humor the shallow pig and speak with a personal trainer.

·         Stage Three: Experimentation. My trainer agrees with my shallow, significant other. I could stand to lose a pound or two. My trainer and I are going to work on a reasonable exercise schedule, and I’m going to drop the doughnuts from my diet while continuing to eat sensibly.

·         Stage Four: Acceptance. I dropped the weight. I look better. I feel better. I’m healthier. When I ask my “shallow,” significant other if my butt looks big, he says, “No,” and I know he means it, because he would say so otherwise.

Not everyone can digest honest criticism. Few people are graceful at presenting it. The trick is knowing when someone is asking for honest criticism, and when they are not. If you ask, accept that you may receive. Which do you want more, a nurtured delusion . . . or constructive advice with which you might struggle to turn your delusion into your reality?