Xenophobia?

[Angrboda]

I once had a social worker who was responsible for certifying that I was eligible to receive welfare encourage me to defraud the system. He even gave me step-by-step instruction on how to do it. True story. (And yes, I did commit welfare fraud like he suggested.)

What I'm sensing here is a lot of ideological distortion. Looking at an issue, and without understanding the full details, overlaying a moral story on top of the cherry picked details to bolster an ideological agenda. I see this a lot in people who argue that this or that person with a mental illness should be able to work (sometimes as bad as the stereotyped, "why don't they just pick themselves up by their bootstraps"). I myself have been called "a waste" and "a drain on society" by otherwise reasonable people; at the time, it was largely just random lashing out on account of something I'd said, but the attitude is pervasive, and I deal with it a lot. (And this from people who know me well and know what I go through.) There's an ideological strain which seeks to blame and castigate the weak and the sick, blaming them, accusing them of being immoral in their weakness, and faulting them for not being able to take care of themselves. The prejudice comes first; the rationalizations come later. (This moralizing of economic disadvantage seems to be a drumbeat among Libertarians.) I don't really care to enter this discussion, largely because I don't care to do the necessary research and documentation, but I rather doubt the points of a Tiberius. I've seen it too many times and refuted it too many times to take such claims on face value. As a more or less permanent member of the underclass, the prejudice is just one more handicap I have to deal with, in addition to my other handicaps.