ArcaMax

In America, we have choices. You make the good choice, you get the positive outcome. You make the bad choice, you get the negative outcome.

Social workers talk that way, spitting phrases like "bad choices," "negative outcomes" and "accessing services."

In general, if you make the bad choice, you get the negative outcome, and then you have to access some services.

So, class, what are the bad choices?

Well, you don't want to get addicted to drugs, or have kids with an absent daddy who took off so fast he left skid marks. Also, you shouldn't drop out of high school.

Don't be born poor. And you don't want to be born in a poor place, or around a lot of poor people. Suburbs of Chicago = good choice. Housing project = bad choice. Get rich parents if you can. That's the best thing. Make sure you're born white, too. People (usually white people) say it doesn't help, but it does. Don't get old, either.

If you made the bad choice, traditionally, one of the things you could do was apply for SNAP, which we used to call "Food Stamps," but which in nongovernment talk just means free food so you don't die.

Because of a recent government shutdown, SNAP may not be around next month, which is good, since it will finally force all those lazy 75-year-old Vietnam veterans who receive SNAP to go out and get a damn job. About 1.2 million American veterans receive SNAP benefits.

The shutdown represents a choice, too.

Republicans want to increase premiums for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Often called "Obamacare," the ACA helps to insure millions of Americans who can't afford health insurance. Republicans want premiums to increase by 25% to 100%, which is one hell of a range.

Democrats want to leave the ACA just the way it is, but, by refusing to vote for the Republican plan to increase premiums, they've caused the government to shut down. Either that, or the Republicans have caused a government shutdown by insisting that 20 million of the poorest people in the country should pay more for insurance.

The shutdown may mean the government won't pay SNAP benefits.

So, here's your choice: You can either have SNAP with no affordable health insurance, which is the Republican plan, at least for now, or you can have SNAP benefits and affordable health insurance, which is what the Democrats want.

The idea of people going hungry or not having affordable insurance pleases a lot of people who, like me, don't have to worry about either one. We've got our little house, and we've got our money and our health insurance (Medicare in my case), and we got all those things because we continually made the good choice.

Being superior to the poor means you have the right to punish them for making the bad choice. At the very least, you can't reward them for making the bad choice by giving them enough to eat or free heart medicine. The very idea of everyone having enough to eat is so Christian it scares hell out of most people who go to church. Affordable health insurance, meanwhile, is so Communist that there should be a picture of Stalin on the insurance card.

Every time I see a poor person driving a crappy car with duct tape on the upholstery, every time I drive past a house with peeling paint and a packed-dirt yard, every time some homeless drug addict freezes to death behind the old toaster factory, it rewards me for a lifetime of making the good choice.

The poor exist as a yardstick against which I can measure my own virtue. The poorer they get, the better I look.

To find out more about Marc Dion, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called, "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle and iBooks.