Seeing Food Stamp Use Changed My Mind About Democrats

Seeing Food Stamp Use Changed My Mind About Democrats:
"Mamaw encouraged me to get a job—she told me that it would be good for me and that I needed to learn the value of a dollar.
When her encouragement fell on deaf ears, she then demanded that I get a job, and so I did, as a cashier at Dillman’s, a local grocery store.
Working as a cashier turned me into an amateur sociologist.
...I also learned how people gamed the welfare system.
They’d buy two dozen packs of soda with food stamps and then sell them at a discount for cash. They’d ring up their orders separately, buying food with food stamps, and beer, wine, and cigarettes with cash. 
They’d regularly go through the checkout line speaking on their cell phones.
I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off of government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.
Mamaw listened intently to my experiences at Dillman’s.
We began to view much of our fellow working class with mistrust.
Most of us were struggling to get by, but we made do, worked hard, and hoped for a better life.
But a large minority was content to live off the dole.
Every two weeks, I’d get a small paycheck and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages.
At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else.
This was my mindset when I was seventeen, and though I’m far less angry today than I was then, it was my first indication that the policies of Mamaw’s “party of the working man”—the Democrats—weren’t all they were cracked up to be.
...A big part of the explanation lies in the fact that many in the white working class saw precisely what I did, working at Dillman’s.
As far back as the 1970s, the white working class began to turn to Richard Nixon because of a perception that, as one man put it, government was “payin’ people who are on welfare today doin’ nothin’! 
They’re laughin’ at our society!
And we’re all hardworkin’ people and we’re gettin’ laughed at for workin’ every day!”"