“Millions of people are going to starve to death!” That’s how one Democratic TikTok star, Chris Mowrey, described the disruptions to the food stamps program due to the federal government shutdown that his party caused.
In reality, while there is no denying the severity of the situation and the fact that millions of people do rely on food stamps, it’s unlikely that even a single American will “starve to death.” That is a process that takes weeks with no food, and needy Americans will still, thankfully, be able to receive food from local pantries, food banks, and some state-level programs. But Mowrey’s post typifies how unhinged and divorced from common sense the commentary on social media about the food stamps freeze has become.
ILLEGAL MIGRANTS SOAK UP SNAP AND WIC BENEFITS
Video after video has gone viral on TikTok, spreading panic and alarm about the freeze. But almost none of them accurately note that it is only happening because Democratic lawmakers withheld their votes on clean budget reauthorization legislation and shut down the government. And they all ignore the very real problems plaguing the food stamps program, including its runaway spending levels, grave fraud issues, and woefully counterproductive subsidization of the obesity epidemic.
Yet on TikTok, anyone who raises these points is simply cussed out. One viral video with more than 2 million “likes” describes critics of the program as people who “think poor people don’t deserve to eat” and openly says to them, “f*** you.” The speaker adds that she does not care if poor people abuse the food stamp system or use it to buy chips and soda because they deserve a “sweet treat,” too.
This sentiment is widespread. It is also insane.
You don’t “hate poor people” if you oppose taxpayers forcibly subsidizing their junk food addictions that hurt their health and shorten their lives.
According to health news outlet Stat News, Americans spend “billions” in food stamp funds on sugar-sweetened drinks such as soda, so much so that they’re “actually the No. 1 item Americans buy with SNAP funds.” This despite the fact that, according to its reporting, “sugar-sweetened beverages are also the single largest dietary contributor to chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and overweight and obesity.”
We are quite literally wasting billions of taxpayer dollars poisoning our fellow citizens, and those of us who have the gall to oppose that are somehow the villains of the internet discourse over this issue.
TRUMP SAYS NO CONTINGENCY SNAP PAYMENTS — WHITE HOUSE DOES DAMAGE CONTROL
Meanwhile, other viral videos have openly suggested widespread stealing in response to the food stamps freeze. Yet being temporarily asked to pay for your own food is not, in fact, a justification to go on a looting spree. And stealing imposes costs on businesses that get passed along to your neighbors via higher prices and even, when it gets bad enough, job losses and store closures.
None of this is to deny that, despite its many flaws, the food stamp program plays an important role in the social safety net for the truly needy. But as long as the online and legacy media discourse surrounding the food stamps debate remains so deranged and divisive, we’ll never be able to have the serious conversations necessary to preserve the program’s integrity in the long run so it can actually help the people who need it.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.
