School shootings generate an almost queasy level of excitement and attention in our nation - but, as often as we hear the statistic that twenty percent of our children suffer from deprivation, the excitement (the outrage) just isn't there for headlines without the perverted appeal of gruesome and random barbarity.
But hunger is NOT unpredictable. It is NOT random.
And the wealthy in power are more concerned about THEIR PERSONAL WEALTH than other people's children (or other people at all). There is no tenderness for children suffering in ordinary ways. Hunger doesn't have the shock, commerce, or (let's be frank) entertainment value extreme violence does. And it doesn't make anybody a buck, not reliably.
So bills like this week's watery soup get passed, and we try to consider it a triumph.
It is not.
And the kids aren't mine, so perhaps I am the perverse one. Because I do care - and I know I don't do more than work the food bank on rare occasion, or the Salvation Army holiday charity event, or sign petitions (the link is a petition focusing on gun violence, not on hunger) ... an otherwise just go to my job, pray in thanksgiving and in supplication for those in need, and giggle about my new pets in my nice warm house. I suck.
As the wealthy in power work hard to sin outright against everyone but themselves.
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