Oh, you're gonna hate this post…

I want to bring your attention to this story about a correlation between poverty and incidents of child abuse, in this case shaken babies.

This is going to hurt, but the findings show that people with less money have less humanity. They have lower empathy, and so when their baby is crying they don't try to sort out what's wrong. They shake the baby and say "Why won't you be quiet!"

This is just another facet of humanity's dark side, and sometimes, I almost feel bad for dragging this stuff out. But it's become clear that many of you don't see these stories, and don't understand how terrible you're becoming as a global society. So when I speak out without posting links, you think I'm just being paranoid or making shit up. And given that I'm a fiction writer, I can see why I need to provide links and let you see for yourself what I'm seeing.

Lots of you must think I'm a glass half-empty person. But I'm not. What I see is that there's a crack in the side of the glass, and I'm suggesting we fix the leak and refill the glass.

I'm crazy, so I get why it may be hard to take me seriously. But if you've clicked on every link in every post, I would hope that I'm presenting solid enough evidence that I'm not making this up, and I'm not trying to be mad for myself. And I'm not doing it just to say "You're all assholes!" I'm trying to convince y'all to stop acting cruel to each other. This is damned difficult because EVERYONE feels justified in doing it.

I always hated how politicians used the kids as a rally cry for every bad idea they had. It drove me nuts, and every utterance of "let's do it for the children" made me scream, "Oh, fuck the children!" But that was figurative fucking, not actual instructions. I didn't realize we could ever reach a point where I might have to agree with protecting kids from adults. But the people that kids need to be protected from aren't strangers with candy on the playground. The worst dangers are the angry unemployed parents at home. Which will make a whole lot of parents defensive. But if you don't hit or shake your kids, obviously, I'm not talking about you.

This lack of empathy and need to stay indignant is what money does to people. At times, I hate that I'm poor. But then I see the terrible things that people do after they've got money, and I see the things people do to hold onto it. And now, here's a story to show what happens to people with no hope of stumbling into wealth. I think, "If I had a kid, would I be abusive like that?" And what makes me ill is, I think only a moment later, "Yeah, probably."

Money may be the root of all evil, but it seems the lack of those roots somehow results in an evil comfortable with abusing children. And here, I don't have any calls to action or shouts that you should do something. Because I wouldn't even know how to begin teaching people empathy. There's no easy solutions like "just add or print more money." (That leads to worse inflation, actually.)

This time around, I'm just bringing this to your attention and I'm going all emo and wondering why there's so little humanity left in the human race these days.