Recently, we have been bombarded with statements that Social Security Disability is handed out to the undeserving. We are being told that the judges who decide these cases are under pressure from the Social Security Administration to approve claims and that the rate of approval by Social Security Administrative Law Judges is sky-rocketing. Others have written on the statistics that prove these statements to be false.
So why is misleading information being disseminated to the public?
Dehumanization simply defined means to deprive of human qualities, personality, or spirit. Dehumanization is routinely used in war. It is easier to support a war if you do not view the enemy as individuals or humans. During the Holocaust, Nazis called Jews "rats". The Hutu involved in the Rwanda genocide called the Tutsi "cockroaches". In the Social Security Disability world, people are not people, they are "claims".
Why dehumanize people who need help? Why wage war on the disabled? Throughout history disabled people have been tortured emotionally and physically. The false information being disseminated to the public is only a continuation of this torture.
In this country, we have put protections in place for disabled and elderly workers. The Social Security Act being one of them. The attacks on the Social Security Act began with its inception and continue even now. As an American, a woman, a lawyer, a wife and the daughter of two disabled workers, I see the faces of Social Security Disability, not the claims. Please join me.
Resources:
- http://finance.yahoo.com/news/judges-social-security-pushes-approval-172927324.html
- https://www.disabilitylawfirmnc.com/social-security-disability/?swcfpc=1#Overview_of_the_Disability_Process
- http://www.thespectrum.com/article/20130705/OPINION/130705003/Article-judges-full-holes?nclick_check=1
- http://socsecnews.blogspot.com/
- http://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their-victims-as-less-than-human
- http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/dfrankl/CURR/kin385/PDF/History-of-Treatment-of-the-Disabled.pdf
- http://www.ssa.gov/history/1930.html
