Why are Republicans so cruel to the poor?
- Thread starter signalmankenneth
- Start date
Why are Republicans so cruel to the poor? Paul Ryan’s profound hypocrisy stands for a deeper problem
Paul Ryan has dreamed of slashing Medicaid since his keg-party days — and that blithe hostility is widespread
[FONT=&]Republican Paul Ryan, like most other members of the United States Congress, is a millionaire.
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[FONT=&]Christa Patton is 68 years old. She is frail and no longer able to leave her home. She lives on a fixed income.that she would not be able to eat without the Meals on Wheels program.
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[FONT=&]Paul Ryan is the speaker of the United States House of Representatives. By his own account, in college he used to hang out with his friends and drink beer while sharing his dreams of cutting Medicaid. When Ryan was 15 years old, his father died from a heart attack caused by alcoholism.
Ryan and his family then received his father’s Social Security survivor’s benefits. Ryan used that money to attend college. This was not the only money that Paul Ryan received from federal government. His family built its wealth from receiving government contracts.
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[FONT=&]Like his idol Ayn Rand (who argued against the very idea of government and the commons yet received social security and Medicare). Paul Ryan has combined meanness, cruelty and callousness towards the weak and the vulnerable with gross and unapologetic hypocrisy.
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[FONT=&]Republicans like Ryan — along with the millionaires and billionaires who comprise Donald Trump’s Cabinet and inner circle — literally want to take food, shelter and health care away from poor people like Christa Patton. Today’s Republicans view these Americans as useless eaters to be disposed of by means both passive and active.
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[FONT=&]It is normal to feel aghast at and disgusted by the Republican Party’s war on the poor. The more challenging and perhaps even more disturbing task is to ask why today’s conservatives feel such antipathy, disregard and hostility towards poor and other vulnerable Americans. Certainly greed and a slavish devotion to a revanchist right-wing ideology are part of the answer. But they may not be sufficient.
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[FONT=&]Conservatives are more likely to exhibit social dominance and bullying behavior. This is a function of their authoritarian tendencies. The election of Donald Trump exemplifies this phenomenon.
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[FONT=&]American political elites often use language that robs poor and other marginalized people of their individuality, humanity and dignity. This language also creates a type of social distance between “middle class” or “normal” Americans and the economically disadvantaged.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Conservatism is a type of motivated social cognition that by its very nature is hostile to those groups located on the lower rungs of the social hierarchy.
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[FONT=&]Conservatives are more likely than liberals or progressives to believe in what is known as the “just world fallacy,” where people who suffer misfortune are viewed as somehow deserving their fates. Conservatives are also more likely than liberals or progressives not to use systems-level thinking as a means of understanding that individuals do not exist separate and apart from society. Conservatives are also more likely to defend social inequality as “fair and legitimate.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Social psychologists have shown that, in effect, poor people are invisible to the rich and upper classes.
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[FONT=&]The psychological dynamic known as the “diffusion of responsibility,” in which individuals tend to ignore people who are in crisis — especially if they are perceived to be a member of a different social group, race, ethnicity or class — also encourages a lack of empathy and concern. It undercuts policies meant to offer direct assistance to vulnerable and marginalized individuals and communities. A perverse corollary to the “diffusion of responsibility” can also be used to legitimate punitive policies that target specific individuals and groups.
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[FONT=&]The myth of meritocracy and its cousin the myth of individualism exert a powerful hold over many Americans. This is especially true among conservatives. Social scientists and others have repeatedly demonstrated that American society is not a true meritocracy. Other research has shown that intergenerational income and class mobility are also relatively uncommon in the United States.
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[FONT=&]Likewise, the concept of the self-made person whose success is a function of “rugged individualism” is also a fantasy better suited to its dime-store origins than as a serious way of understanding American society. Nevertheless, these cultural mythologies do the practical political and social work of legitimizing the Republican war on the poor.
By Chauncey DeVega
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The sad thing, in a kinda funny way, is the poor uneducated bums that cheered for him will/would be losing their care/bennies etc......
They will have jobs now, replacing the undocumented in the fields, in the restaurants, in roofing etc etc etc..........
The sad thing, in a kinda funny way, is the poor uneducated bums that cheered for him will/would be losing their care/bennies etc......
They will have jobs now, replacing the undocumented in the fields, in the restaurants, in roofing etc etc etc..........
That hilarious bill considering 70 percent of the left base is the poor, that is why democrats keep them poor
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
The sad thing, in a kinda funny way, is the poor uneducated bums that cheered for him will/would be losing their care/bennies etc......
They will have jobs now, replacing the undocumented in the fields, in the restaurants, in roofing etc etc etc..........
you seem to imply that having a job is a bad thing.......
Citation required.
canceled.2021.1
#AMERICAISDEAD
Why do you think you have the right to others peoples property and how can you define taking from one against their will to give to another as compassionate?
Hiding behind the full force of government may make something legal but that doesn't make it moral
I give s lot of money to the government that is against my will. Quit bitching about paying your taxes and STFU
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
That's not true. A lot of them are Catholics.
cawacko
Well-known member
Your issue with this comment is what Rune?
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
That's not true. Wacko loves poor people. In fact he wishes he could own more of them.
cawacko
Well-known member
So much for the liberal mindset of question authority huh?
Nope. Not gonna be lectured on morality and proper use of public funds by someone who obviously supported the expenditure of three trillion tax payer dollars on the catastrophically stupid and immoral Iraq War Disaster.
Sidebar: feel free to move to a country that does not have a taxation system and does not provide to some extent for the public commons and the public welfare. Somalia, perhaps?
cawacko
Well-known member
Yes! One to bring me my beer, one to change the remote etc.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
To prevent run away inflation that would have a far greater impact. I thought you believed in monetarism or are you still into that supply side mythology horse shit?
cawacko
Well-known member
We were speaking in terms of the poor and those on fixed incomes. Rates aren't at zero to stop inflation.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
I love when trailer park rubes, many living in disability handouts, spout that old canard. Most the Democrats where I live earn better than 6 figure incomes, have graduate level education and work as professionals, entrepreneurs, technologist or in corporate offices.
I see far more conservatives these days who are white trailer trash on the dole and resentful as hell that the modern world has left them behind and they don't have the skills, ability or talent to keep up.
So spare me the empty rhetoric you hear on right wing radio while driving your fifteen year old pick up. I'm trying to enjoy my glass of 18 year Glinlivits and an OpusX that I bought with my performance bonus and your crying is killing my warm fuzzy feeling.
canceled.2021.1
#AMERICAISDEAD
You obviously miss the point. Personally I make sure the gobblement gets as little as possible. You do too.
Thanks for confirming you think you have a right to another's property.
yEP... As I have been saying, it will be funny, in a sad kinda way...
Their mysterious bad backs necessitating their early retirements/disabilities for the rest of their lives when the factory closed......
I had a friend who I once worked w/ many years ago........ True story~ I run into him @ the store & he was most recently working in construction "till he hurt his back" a few years ago.....
He is on some type of perm disability
I asked him whats up today & he says he was going water skiing @ Folsom lake.. We said our goodbyes & I watched him walk out the store holding a 30 pack of bud light, no leaning etc.... Watching a short guy w/ a bad back holding that thirty made my back sore watching him.