Just in time for Christmas, Fox News has found time to publish distorted information about American beneficiaries of disability insurance. On their community website Fox Nation (a notorious peddler of lies), they posted an item sourced to the uber-conservative CNSNews that expressed concern that there are “More Americans on Disability Than Population of Greece.”
SO F**KING WHAT?
The apparent purpose of this ludicrous comparison is to stir up animosity toward people who are already suffering. It’s a recurrent theme for Fox who are also hostile toward the poor, the sick, victims of discrimination, veterans, etc. However, their attempt at fomenting faux outrage fails at the outset.
First of all, the number of disability beneficiaries in the U.S. is about eleven million and, yes, that is slightly more than the population of Greece. What that has to do with anything is a mystery? It is also only about 3% of the U.S. population. What’s more it includes a couple of million children and spouses of disabled persons. But driven by their hunger to disparage these folks, the Fox Nationalists took the number and shopped around for a small nation whose population was lower. And if silly, unrelated comparisons are all they are interested in then they might want to take note that there are more people on disability…
- …than saw The Hunger Games last Saturday
- …than are vegan.
- …than condoms used in 18 days.
- …than people who like to watch bowling.
- …than people who watch Fox News (three times more).
Stupid comparisons notwithstanding, it is obvious that Fox is focused solely on making the lives of people who are already struggling, even harder. It’s fair to say that the point they are making is not that the population of Greece is too low. Consequently, it’s clear that they are advocating a reduction in benefits for the disabled, just as they do for recipients of food stamps and the unemployed. And they went out of their way to make this point in the days before the celebration of the birth of their savior who is so well known for refusing to help those poor, sick, hungry, moochers. Merry Christmas.
It doesn’t appear to be a Fox only article this time – I typed in that title into Google so I could read the article myself and LOTS of similar articles came up – not sure why, but several groups felt the need to write something about it. If I were to take a stab at why people are writing about this or any related issue – it’s to show how more and more people are living off the system and fewer are actually working to support it. Regardless of why a person is collecting something from the Federal Government – the trend cannot be maintained without a huge increase in the working class. If you scratch deeper, it’s the same old truth as to why progressive-socialistic policies eventually collapse financially. This could, of course, be done without focusing on one group only – they could drive the point home with overall numbers and just list the different categories of direct federal aid.