Mike CernovichVerified account

The worst part about growing up poor is other poor people. You leave your bike out, it might get stolen. Your windows might be broken. You might get jumped. There are a thousand annoyances like this, large and small.

When you're poor, you're stressed. On edge. Life sets you off. Physiological level stuff. Multiply that across a neighborhood and you have a lot of street fights, domestic violence, drinking, smoking. That was when I grew up. Then people turned to meth and now opiods.

The thing about being poor....Everyone gets is wrong. My dad was high IQ, but there weren’t any jobs. Start a business! Selling to whom? Everyone was broke. These are complicated issues, I have an education, I lived in poverty. And the answers? I legit don’t know.

I do know that my life would have been different without Christianity. Poor people have the same problems, but poor Christians avoided the vices like drinking and smoking, and philandering. They had hope. Probably that’s why I’m such a pro-Christian...who is not a believer.

Marx called religion the opiate of the masses (though there is more context to what he meant). Poor people lost religion and found....opioids. Religion offered hope of another life. We can empirically see what post-Christian America looks like. A stadium of overdoes a year.