Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society
Regarding blaming each other for their misfortune, I have an anecdotal experience I want to share. I don&#x27;t know if that&#x27;s just me or this phenomenal happens to everyone else as well: That&#x27;s the &quot;fuck you&#x2F;who cares&#x2F;deal with it&quot; attitude.<p>The &quot;fuck you&quot; attitude can be summarized as people won&#x27;t go the extra mile to help other people. It is the non-sympathy, non-action I get from everyday people (including the police) when something injustice or misfortune happens to other people or the common interest. It is also the non-forgiving attitude when someone makes a dumb mistake. It is selfish and at the same time not wrong. It reflects somewhat in the Shit Town podcast that I listened to lately.<p>I won&#x27;t go into the details, but personally, I have worked with the local police recently on two separate incidents, and they were surprisingly bad. It was different from my previous experiences when I first moved to the US ten years ago. That &quot;fuck you&quot; attitude is what I experienced and have to deal with every day when I was in Vietnam, my home country. I&#x27;m not shocked, or that annoyed to have to deal with it every once in a while, but I feel it wasn&#x27;t that way when I moved. I feel I get less and less of the extra miles the more I stay in here. I can&#x27;t help but feel that people are getting stiffer and stiffer somehow.<p>For the context, I am and have been living in the midwest. What&#x27;s surprising is that I&#x27;m not even depressed, and life is getting easier for me professionally, personally, and financially. Something just doesn&#x27;t feel right. Or maybe I was just romanticizing my early days in the US for me. Or maybe I&#x27;m about to have another mid-life crisis.