I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

Thats a good observation. I wouldn't say I had it completely backwards, after thinking on it, I still feel that many people can't/won't get past their anger and that prevents them from paying into the toll. You didn't specify why they don't want to pay into the toll and anger/resentment could be part of that.

> "People have made decisions to actively harm people I love, and they cheer it on to my face. This is not an emotion, it's a fact."

Does that fact make you angry? Emotional? I suspect you are passionate about the issue. Wouldn't your feelings towards your loved ones and the harm done to them galvanize your stance and give you a sense of conviction? If so, why aren't you doing more to help them, don't you care? Why are you on hacker news talking to some rando instead picketing for your cause, raising awareness and funding?

Apologies, I was being intentionally abrasive, trying to make the point that it is relatively easy to fan the flames of someone's passion into outrage. One can be supportive and encouraging about it and push you towards that conviction/outrage, but it takes more time. If one were to be an ass about it, I bet a dollar your conviction/outrage would be near instant and an order of magnitude greater.

Passion is healthy. Outrage is not. With passion, you are happy with yourself and your effort, perhaps a "live to fight another day" mentality. When you slip into outrage, you are never happy until YOU get what YOU want.

So, if given the choice to feed a group of people, but some of them hurt your loved ones, what do you do? What if it's their kids?

Do you feed the people you hate? Weigh the options? Figure out the percentages? Try to heal? Find a way to exclude the offenders? Or do you just bail completely? Do they have to be near death before you'd offer help? I gander the result depends how outraged you are.

My point is that the more outraged you are, the more morality and validity go out the window, and less likely you are to donate to a school to pay off lunches because you might be doing something to benefit someone you disagree with.

The "vague sense of union" we had was the social tolls that we paid. Like universal praise for donating school lunches. But in today's world, you'll be criticized for donating to the wrong school because there wasn't X, Y or Z. You'll be shamed, maybe doxxed, hated and maybe even physically assaulted. All because an outraged group or person felt like something was taken from them.

So, my model of the world isn't that every view "is equally valid, moral, and unworthy of emotion", it's an awareness that emotions greatly affect people's judgement around validity and morality, for better or worse, and that needs to be accounted for.

I am, by any measure, at least upper-middle-class (though I do have to work for money; it's not free in my mailbox). I don't have kids, so I wouldn't be taking advantage of the public schools I pay for, but I also grew up in a very median-income household and went to private schools (which were much less expensive at the time, though still not cheap). So my parents paid for public schools that neither of their children ever attended.

And summer "enrichment". That was popular among the small group of well-off families that insisted on sending their kids to public schools (in, essentially, a school-within-a-school that actually taught the kids instead of warehousing them for six to eight hours a day). Expensive camps, summer programs in Europe, that sort of thing.

> Yes, I'm familiar with medicaid and some other stuff.

...and you're notably not disagreeing with anything I said about them.

> Your complaint about SNAP ignores foodbanks.

Food banks can safely be ignored. The nearest food bank to where I am currently located is a 20 minute drive, with no public transit that goes there, so you're SOL without a car, and it's run by a church which is extremely conservative (i.e. gay and trans people need to put up with hearing how they're going to hell if they'll be served at all). They're also open 1 day a week.

Food banks are great--but they should not be necessary.

> Medicaid may take months to recieve but it can cover costs incurred since applying retroactively once it is approved.

Do you even know what a poor person is, or do you simply lack all empathy?

Poor people don't get to "incur costs". They simply can't pay for care and then therefore don't receive it. So getting reimbursed for care they didn't receive because they couldn't pay for it, isn't really all that helpful.

You said:

> People generally don't want the Federal government involved, thats where the consensus has been lacking.

So no, your comment was a claim about "people generally".

If you'd like to say you misspoke, fine, but everyone can read what you said, so there's no point lying about what you said.