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The Mandela Effect Trumperates in Conspiratorial Oprahtations!

28 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Burden of Proof, Deplorables, Donald Trump, GOP, Mandela Effect, Oprah, Quotes, Republican Party, Trump

I see people passing this meme around from time to time. It’s pretty devastating, actually, or at least it ought to be. This of course makes the meme an awful lot like a lot of criticisms directed at the Trump camp insofar as one could really wonder why this isn’t an end-game argument? Except, in this case, there is a clear answer. The quote in the meme is not real.

At least, it’s undocumented.

The quote really is just a bit too perfect, really. It seems almost as if it was made up for the sole purpose of discrediting the man along with anyone foolish enough to vote for him. And the unfortunate fact is that it was probably made up for just that very purpose. In any event, there is no evidence that Donald Trump ever really said this.

Too bad!

Maybe this would have got some folks attention.

Then again, so many other things that should have mattered when he ran for President didn’t, not in 2016 anyway, and not now for those still waiting for the second coming of the deplorable messiah.

In any event, a few other folks have checked into this quote (The Reno Gazette Journal, Snopes, Politifact, CNN, etc.); all have found the quote to be spurious. Several noted that the meme itself first made an appearance in 2015, but all of those who checked for an actual source have come up empty.

Significantly, the meme attributes the quote to a statement made to People Magazine in 1998, but the image likely shows an appearance by Donald Trump on Oprah Winfrey in 1988. More on that later…

From time to time, I have tried to suggest that people refrain from passing along this meme as it does not appear to be accurate, and of course I encounter the usual bullshit responses from people too keen on their delicious gotcha-game to give it up on account of pesky questions about evidence. (It’s a little bit more frustrating to see such weak sauce coming from folks you might otherwise agree with than it is to hear it coming from the mouths of the deplorables, but anyway!) I still figure anone who thuinks they have to use a likely fake quote to criticize Donald Trump has not been paying attention to the living train wreck that is his public life.

One thing does fascinate me…

I have frequently encountered people who swear up and down that they have heard Donald Trump make this very statement.

One of the reasons this caught my attention is the fact that I too once thought I remembered seeing a video clip of Trump saying this very thing. In the run-up to the 2016 election, I recall making a point to find the clip so I could post it on every corner of the net that I could reach. (I really wondered why a link to the clip wasn’t the obvious answer to every pro-Trump statement any republican could make? Only I couldn’t find the clip anywhere, nor could I find an audio-recording, or even a credible written source. I did find a clip from the episode of Oprah in which she interviewed him about the possibility of making a run for the Presidency, but Trump does not say this on that clip. (In fact, his tone is wrong for the quote anyway. In the clip, he is trying to sound moderate and thoughtful, not brash and rude as he appears in the quote, or pretty much at any time during his Presidency.) Realizing that was likely the clip I thought I had remembered, I chalked it up to a bad memory and accepted the fact that I was likely wrong on that subject.

Yet people still insist they too have seen the clip and/or that they know other people who can verify that Trump did in fact say the very thing attributed to him in this meme. When I Tiked a Tok about this in 2020, a couple people told me that they would look around the net and get back to me when they found it. When I Tiked another Tok about it a couple weeks back, well over assured that it was real. A few people even got downright testy with me for doubting the matter. All of which leads me to winder…

Is this the Mandela effect in action?

I know, pop-psychology is another net-hazard, but I can’t help thinking this instance might add up to a decent case for it. For those unfamiliar with the term, “The Mandela effect” refers to a shared memory that turns out to be false. It gets its name from a woman named Fiona Broome who had become convinced that Nelson Mandela had died in prison in the 1980s. She was also convinced that thousands of others shared this belief, all of which must have made his tenure as president of post-Apartheid South Africa from 1994-1999 rather surprising). Some might have their doubts about this particular source, but there are plenty of other examples of the Mandela Effect to be found. I’m not entirely sure why the notion of a shared false memory is all that surprising to begin with. We know that memory is a creative process, and it shouldn’t surprise us that perfectly public sources of information could skew the memories of more than one person thinking about any given subject. So, before, anyone goes off to see this as proof of an alternative universe wherein Trump actually did say this…

Oh man!

I suddenly realize I should have written this entire post on the premise that these are memories of an alternative universe in which Trump actually did say this, and perhaps even one where the Mandela effect really is proof that alternative universes do exist, but I can only hope that there exists an alternative universe wherein the American people were smart enough to say ‘no’ to this festering bloodfart back in 2016, but then, dammit, why do I have to live in the one where a whole buncha people just weren’t?

…Okay, so, before you go off thinking this effect points us to alternative universes, let’s just say this is just the sort of distortions that we ought to expect from perfectly fallible people trying to reconstruct our perfectly fallible memories in the present.

Anyway, the point, is I can’t help thinking the number of people who seem to remember seeing and hearing this (likely fake) quote might be a good example of the Mandela effect.

Other options?

  • One person told me the quote comes from Playboy magazine, but I have yet to see any direct reference to any specific publication.
  • Others have suggested the quote comes from an interview that Trump did with Howard Stern, but I think this is actually a reference to a clip in which Stern describes Trump as being contemptuous of his fan base. The stern clip is interesting, but its not Trump saying it himself, and I have yet to see any other relevant clips coming from Stern or any of his shows.
  • Quite a few folks have pointed to People Magazine, but this claim has been checked pretty thoroughly (see the fact-check links above), and nobody has found any evidence for it.
  • By far and away, the most common angle is to suggest that the actual quote comes from the Oprah interview that seems to be the source of the image contained in the meme. This is the most common clip from that interview. As you can hear from the clip, it does not contain the quote in question. A search on Oprah’s website, reveals a couple other clips that seem to come from the same interview, which appears to have occurred on April 25th, 1988. What I can’t seem to find, on Oprah’s website or any other source on the net, is any full-length recording of the complete interview. Apparently, others cannot find such a clip either.

The inability to find a recording of the complete Trump interview with Oprah creates an interesting problem. Why can’t we find such a recording? I for one have no idea. I don’t know how Oprah’s archives work, how thorough they were back in 1988, or just how common it would be for people to have at least an old VHS tape (or even a Beta) of the interview. I really haven’t assessed the odds against this absence of an episode actually happening by natural chance. For at least a few folks, however, this is all so damned suspicious. They will commonly tell us the complete clip has been scrubbed from the internet, and that the elites (including Oprah) have conspired to prevent any evidence of the quote coming out. We could talk about how likely this is (and here the Streisand effect might also make an appearance), or we could insist on asking for solid evidence for the authenticity of the quote, rejecting any excuses for the lack of it. That so many people swear they remember hearing Trump actually speak the words contained in the quote doesn’t count for nothing, but eye-witness testimony isn’t the most dependable source of information. It’s a little less dependable when it’s provided by random guys on the net. At the end of the day this leaves us with a larger question…

What do we do when we don’t know?

What do we infer (or simply assume) when we don’t get a definitive answer to our questions?

Short of any substantial evidence in support of the alleged quotation, this effort to suggest the absence of evidence isitself evidence of a larger conspiracy isn’t the least bit helpful. I like my conspiracy talk in the other guy’s camp where it can keep good company with the likes of Q-Anon fans, Birthers, and Truthers, none of whom have anything worthwhile to add to our present-day politics. I think it far more likely that all the people who think they remember seeing and hearing Trump speak the words in this clip are reading them into their memories of the common Oprah clip. It’s a shared memory, but it’s a false memory.

…and Trump is every bit as awful as any of us might remember. That memory isn’t false.

…and we don’t have to make up anything to criticize Trump.

…or the fools who support him.

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Negligence as Principle

05 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Big Government, GOP, Help, Ideology, Joe Biden, Kristi Noem, Libertarianism, Republican Party, Ronald Reagan

“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.”

Ronald Reagan

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help. “

Also Ronald Reagan

***

At times, it seems like there is no real difference between the Democratic Party and that of the Republicans. At other times, the difference seems loud and clear. In other moments you can practically see the gap between the two parties widening.. South Dakota Governor, Kristi Noem’s response to Joe Biden up above is one such moment.

Scratch that: It’s two!

First we have Joe Biden suggesting that he will help struggling Americans once he becomes President.

Then we have Kristi Noem reminding us of the old Reagan quote to the effect that the worst thing you can hear is that someone from the government is coming to help you.

By 2 moments when the gap between Republicans and Democrats widens, you might think I mean, first Biden’s comment, then Noem’s, but I don’t. I mean the Reagan quote and then Noem’s use of it. Those two references reveal the ever-deepening cynicism of the Republican Party.

It was Reagan that really embedded the libertarian themes in modern Republican politics. He did so through folksy statements like the one Noem’s quoted above, statements which contributed to a growing sense that government couldn’t be used to solve real-world problems, and a sense that this view was as natural to any real Americans as life itself. Through statements like that one, Reagan took the GOP in a direction which would become ever more hostile to American government. What might have sounded like skepticism at first, the response of those unconvinced in the efficacy of government aid, has become ever more strident, until we have now reached a moment wherein the faithful cannot bring themselves to imagine the possibility of that government could do anything but hurt people.

The trajectory that takes people from this modest skepticism to the fanatical anti-government stance we see in so many today is a simple shift from figurative speech to literal interpretation. One has only to take Reagan’s clever turn of a phrase literally. One has only to mean it, and to mean it literally.

One of the ironic things about Reagan’s anti-government rhetoric? It came from a fan of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the architect of the New Deal, a President who did more to insert government into American lives than any President in American history. Reagan was fond of saying he wasn’t the one that changed; it was the Democrats, but this is plainly not true. Reagan changed from a man who could celebrate a champion of big government to one who preached against government programs every chance he got.

Statements from Reagan like the one Noem chose to quote above helped to build a new anti-governemnt ideology that now underscores the ideology of modern Republicans. Those seeking government aid are not merely wrong-headed, they are a source of positive evil. You can see this world view in Newt Gingrich’s contract With America, and in the careers of every pundit with a prominent place in the right wing echo chamber. You can also see it in the Oklahoma City Bombing, and in the rhetoric of local ‘militia’s’ all over the United States. More to the point, you can see it in Noem’s glib dismissal of the possibility that a new President could actually help the American people during a time of crisis.

What we see in the modern GOP is a cult which takes Reagan’s maxim quite literally. This is not mere skepticism; it is a pious confrontation with evil itself, or so they imagine. What they see in any effort to use the power of government to help Americans is nothing less than a genuine attack on the American people. The horrors they imagine to follow from government aid are more real to the true believers in the Republican Party than the realities of Covid19 or its economic consequences. The possibilities of government aid seem more terrible to them than the actual deaths of their friends and family. We are thus left with a political party that not only fails to take reasonable steps to combat a pandemic, it actively resists those efforts and even takes steps (such as Trump rallies) to endanger more people.

What does it take to make sense of the Republican Party and its refusal to take responsible measures in combating this life-threatening disease? One needs only to take them at their word.

People like Kristi Noem do not think government can help people.

So they don’t try.

She will not protect her people. To do so would be a heresy against Reagan’s old maxim.

Instead, she lets them die.

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What Donald Trump Can Teach Us About Political Correctness

18 Thursday May 2017

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics

≈ 29 Comments

Tags

Cultural Consideratism, Culture Wars, Donald Trump, GOP, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Prejusice, Republican Party, Russian Connection

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard the phrase “political correctness” used approvingly and without irony. I’ve long since lost track of the number of times I’ve heard it used derisively. I regard it as one of the central ironies of modern politics that it hasn’t been politically correct to be politically correct since the notion first became a household term. This hasn’t stopped people from proudly proclaiming (often to great applause) the brave mantle of ‘Political Incorrectness’. Indeed, countless courageous souls have made sure we all know how little regard they have for political correctness. The near universal disregard for political correctness, as such doesn’t seem to faze its detractors. It pretty well goes without saying that if the subject is political correctness, the correct thing to say is that you’re against it. Do that, and you earn all kinds of points for being a independent minded maverick of sorts.

Just like all other independent mavericky people.

In fact, that story-line is so damned pat, you’d think even the dimmest among us would have second thoughts about it, but I guess not. The narrative is just too damned strong, and the benefits to plotting your politics inside it too great to resist. So, it pretty well goes without saying that anyone worth his salt would proclaim himself to be politically incorrect.

It’s the American thing to do!

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve heard the stories too, the PC-horror stories, I mean. Some of them piss me off too, and some of them are utter bullshit. It’s a big topic, and I could type out a lot of things about it, but for now I want to explore just one particular part of it.

That would be the part where a Presidential candidate and then a President (Donald Trump) would proudly proclaim his own political incorrectness. Among all the many absurdities that fly under the banner of the politically incorrect, there is at least one that is fairly unique to Donald Trump’s use of it. Because if there was anyone that we might expect to be politically correct, that we might actually want to be politically correct, you would think it would be the President of the United States.

Yes, I’m serious.

I realize that in most circles ‘Political correctness’ simply means whatever lefty political agenda people feel like dismissing at the moment, but if you stop and think about the phrase itself for just a minute, you might see some trace of a meaning that isn’t quite confined to that sort of canned polemic. Indeed, there is no particular reason respect for Christian values, honoring the troops, or celebrating a conventional American family would count as any less politically correct than support for gay marriage, celebration of black history month, or avoidance of any number of racial epithets. In principle, right wing causes could as easily count as political correctness as those of the left, and make no mistake about it; they are as likely to produce the sort of toxic pettiness that fill so many of those PC-horror stories people tell sometime between their second and third beers on a Friday night. We seem only use the word for left-wing causes, but there are numerous comparable cause in right wing circles. And if there is any trace of a positive meaning in that phrase, it’s this; that political correctness can mean thinking about the consequences of what you are about to say before you say it, taking into account the feelings of others and their likely reactions to your words before you decide what to say and do. That same notion may produce all sorts of stories about censorship, professional victimhood, and fake outrage. It also produces countless stories generally left untold, those in which someone finds just the right words, shows respect to people she might easily have slighted, or simply handles a tough topic with grace and dignity. We don’t seem to have a label for such stories. That label could as easily be ‘political correctness’ as any of those now provoking outrage in countless gossip circles all across the land.

To be sure, there are distinctions to be made between respect and dignity on the one hand and the pointless pettiness generally associated with stories of political correctness, but those distinctions don’t really fall along a left-right axis, and the phrase itself has never helped anyone to draw those distinctions with any care. Indeed sneering ‘political correctness’ at an issue is little other than an effort to avoid drawing those distinctions with anything approaching thoughtfulness and precision.

If there are those who have used the phrase with more care than i suggest, our current President is not among them. Think back to the infamous moment in which Megan Kelly (perhaps accidentally) separated herself from the right wing faithful, and you can see the character of Donald’s own use of ‘political correctness’. Asked about his frequent use of abusive words against any women who crossed him, Trump responded by saying that he didn’t have time to be politically correct. Of course that was after first trying to pass off the notion that he only denigrates Rosie O’Donnell, but when forced off that gambit, Trump settled on the notion that his lifetime of vicious personal attacks against myriad women was simply failure to obey the dictates of political correctness. Trump wasn’t asking us to reject some far left political agenda; he was asking the American public to accept his own personal vice on grounds that failure to do so would be an instance of political correctness. He was asking us to accept that the most flagrant contempt for common decency was somehow little other than a rejection of left-wing excess.

Here I must say, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of sorrow, sorrow for the death of conservatism as I once knew it. Oh, I don’t count myself as a conservative, not since I was about 18 years old, but I’ve known many conservatives I have admired and respected over the years. They generally vote Republican and I rarely agree with them on much of anything, but if there is one thing that separates the old school conservatives I recall from my youth from the right wing politics of today, it is precisely the effectiveness of Trump’s ploy. There is simply nothing in cultural conservatism that is amenable to the kind of crass treatment Trump has dished out to women over the years. Not his personal attacks on female adversaries, and not asinine talk of sexual conquest. Time was, when conservatives would have been the first to object to such things, and perhaps some still do, but the bulk of the voting base for the Republican party seems to have shifted. Thus conventional respect for human beings in general, and conventional respect for women in particular became a sort of lefty, feminist, oppression, one gloriously vanquished with the promise of a President who couldn’t be pressured to treat a woman with dignity, at least not one marked for conquest, or one who had the audacity to get in his way.

I look back at Trump’s response to Kelly and marvel that anyone could find their way to a rationalization sufficient to support that guy. I also think about the time he stalked Hillary around the debate stage after threatening to lock her up and think the same thing. How did this kind of abuse become acceptable? In particular, how did it become acceptable to cultural conservatives? Near as I can tell, the answer lies in the narrative about political correctness. It recasts common crudeness, even cruelty, as a rejection of a obscure and nefarious political agenda, one no decent American would accept. That narrative alone was sufficient to lure millions of seemingly decent Americans to overlook some of the most brazenly abusive behavior to be displayed in public by a national politician.

It was a defining moment, and one that certainly doesn’t speak well of Trump’s character, or that of anyone who could defend it. It is objectionable in more ways that I could count, even with my shoes off, but the one objection that keeps haunting me is this simple thought; shouldn’t the President of the United States have time for political correctness? Isn’t that part of his job? When he enters into diplomatic negotiations, do we not want the President to be capable of choosing his words carefully? If you set aside the obvious angle of outright lefty-bashing, this is a job which requires all manner of careful judgements about what to say and what not to say, about who will be angry and what will they will do about it.

Only the stakes are much higher!

This is the thing that bothers me most about conventional PC-bashing. It makes a very convenient posture for many who, like Trump, seem think with their tongues. All too often, the notion that one is politically incorrect provides a ready-made excuse for all manner of perfectly conventional indiscretions. Sure, It’s the left wing that asks us to reconsider every day vocabulary for things like race, gender, and sexual orientation (among other things), but it’s not as though we are the only ones with any social sensitivities, and somehow the PC-bashing has became a sort of all-purpose excuse for the generally crass among us, the ones who just can’t be bothered to think before they talk.

People who cannot be bothered to consider how others will feel about their words seldom put much more thought into questions about the truth of those words. It’s one of the reasons why such people can be so damned sensitive themselves to any critical feedback they get. These folks can’t answer the criticisms and they know it, so they’d rather tell a story about the over-sensitivity of others, one which makes their first reflex into an unquestioned truth and the careful consideration of other just so much hogwash. PC-bashing ties this conventionally idiotic behavior to a broad range of set issues and it provides a blank check of sorts to anyone willing to play the role of the tough talking straight shooter.

It may seem that I am stretching the bounds of the concept. Political correctness doesn’t really cover that much of the issue, does it? Yet, I think it’s Trump who stretched the boundaries of the concept so broadly in this election, and not just in characterizing his contempt for women to political incorrectness. He also likened the expectation that people shouldn’t beat up protesters to political correctness. Trump himself has likened countless policy considerations regarding immigration, foreign diplomacy, and criminal law as instances of mere political correctness. And of course, it was Trump’s many sweeping attacks on Mexicans and Muslims that earned him the reputation as a ‘straight shooter’ back in the early days of his campaign. I never understood that. There was nothing straight or honest about Trump’s rhetoric, but so many seemed happy to equate rudeness with honesty that it became the standard media spin for awhile at least. Even Megan Kelly granted him that as she asked her infamous question. She too was willing to grant that Trump’s foolishness and cruelty should count as a kind of honesty. It’s the kind of equation best suited to the narratives of the politically incorrect.

…and it is doublespeak at its most deplorable!

It’s not just that Donald Trump expressed prejudice in his campaign rhetoric. He led with it. Prejudice was literally his first sales pitch. No, he didn’t say that all Mexicans were rapists, as his defenders often remind us, but he did say that Mexico was ‘sending’ its rapists. That wild accusation was not a call for immigration reform then, and it isn’t now. It was a clear and unmistakable signal to the racists in America that he would go after those they hated. How and when, and even why? All that would be made up later, …and so now we now get to see the GOP fiddle with token gestures at wall building. The physical wall that still haunts our policy discussions is merely the obligatory excretion of a rhetorical wall Trump built in that very first moment of his campaign. Through talk of a wall, Trump separated his supporters from the rest of us and polarized the nation as no American politician has done in my own life-time.

Why do we think of Trump’s various immigration restrictions as a ban on Muslims? Because he led with a call to ban entry of Muslims. It was only afterwards that Trump began walking the notion back to the various token policies now trotted before the courts. Ironically, folks now defend these policies by telling us Obama did the same thing (which is a stretch). This after Trump spent his entire campaign telling us how Obama wasn’t doing anything to protect us from terrorists. In any event, the point isn’t that Trump expressed a prejudice or three in the course of a campaign, or even in his Presidency. That would make him a run of the mill politician, perhaps even merely human. Prejudice was the centerpiece of his appeal from the beginning. It still is.

The result has been a non-stop clown show, a constant reminder that Trump doesn’t think before he speaks, writes, or even executive orders. We’ve all watched as his staff struggle to form policies around thoughtless statements and his surrogates have fought to rationalize the completely irrational utterances of the Ego-in-Chief. And this week we learn both that Trump sought to jail his critics in the press and that he shared intelligence secrets with Russian figures all in the space of a couple days. Whatever else this is, it is also the behavior of a man who doesn’t think before he does anything.

…and I can’t help but think all of this brings us right back to Trump’s response to Megan Kelly. He said he didn’t have time to be completely politically correct? In that very statement, Trump effectively told the entire nation that wasn’t then prepared to perform the duties of the President.

He isn’t now either.

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Won’t Someone Please Think of the Children? …No Really!

29 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by danielwalldammit in General

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Advertising, Candy, Capitalism., Cluelessnes, Conservatives, Hegemony, Irony, Republican Party, Sex, Skittles

Sometimes you just get a wonderful glimpse into the priorities that guide people’s decisions. Take for example this campaign from One Million Moms. They want people to take action against this ad:

Now frankly, I can’t make up my mind whether or not the ad is post-modern brilliance, or a broccoli fart filtered through used bong water (though I am leaning a bit towards the latter), but the Million Moms are screaming bloody murder. They have posted the following diatribe against this travesty of marketing brilliance, …er, bullshit:

We are not sure of Skittles’ thought process behind their new ad, but if they are attempting to offend customers, they have succeeded. Skittles’ newest “Walrus” commercial includes a teen girl making out with a walrus. The two are on a sofa in an apartment kissing on the mouth when her shocked roommate walks in on them. Parents find this type of advertising inappropriate and unnecessary. Does Skittles’ have our children’s best interest in mind? Skittles candies are for all ages, but their target market is children.

Skittles Marketing Team may have thought this was humorous, but not only is it disgusting, it is taking lightly the act of bestiality. Let Skittles know their new ad is irresponsible.

What interests me most about this whole screed, is the rhetorical question. “Does Skittles’ have our children’s best interest in mind?”

I don’t suppose it has occurred to any of the One Million Moms that the purpose of the ad is to sell CANDY to their children.

And I’ll leave it at that.

***

Special thanks to Jessica Bluemke. It was her guest post on The Friendly Atheist where I first stumbled across this little gem of …something.

71.271549
-156.751450

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Real World Villains, Volume II: Those Damned Poor People! (They are so Envious!)

13 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Envy, Income Gap, Mitt Romney, Politics, Presidential Campaign, Republican Party, Rhetoric

Okay, let’s have a show of hands. All of you that believe that growing interest in the gap between the rich and the poor is just a case of envy raise your hands.

Okay, all of you with your hands raised can go fuck yourself!

Seriously.

This is apparently the position Mitt Romney has recently taken on the issue. It’s a familiar bit of seasoning that certain elements of the Republican party like to add into the mix from time to time. If the difference between the rich and the poor bothers you, then you must be envious of their wealth. Just work a little harder and maybe you too can vacation in the Bahamas! Just add a reference to “Class Warfare” and stir to taste.

What makes this particular flavor of right wing rhetoric so damned vile is that it shows just how much people like Romney and his corporate masters are focused on the lives of the rich. The lives of the poor enter their minds only when cast in terms wealth and privelage.

If your neighbor has a better lawn than you, that is grounds for envy. If he has a faster car, a better boat, a bigger flat screen TV. All of these things are cause for envy. All of these things can lead to jealousy.

Would that the gap between the rich and the poor could be limited to such differences!

But envy does not explain the anguish of those that have lost their homes in the mortgage crisis; it does not explain misery of those working overtime only to find themselves a little further behind at the end of every month. It certainly doesn’t explain the fear of those without health insurance, or those who can hardly put food on the table.

Neither is it envy when someone who cannot afford basic health care,  feed his family, or pay his mortgage recognizes that that his financial limitations are linked in some sense to the spectacular wealth enjoyed by others. When some can afford luxurious vacation homes while others struggle for basic necessities this reflects an essential value judgement. It means that somewhere along the line the community at large (or rather the majority of people in that community) has decided the one is more important than the other, a lot more important. How folks came to that choice, and how they justify it is another question, but it doesn’t take class envy to question its wisdom.

Of course Romney has an explanation for that choice; it is the wisdom of meritocracy, a system that rewards hard working people with great skills and creative energy more than those who don’t. It’s the same talking point that Rick Santorum was flouting a short while ago, and it will of course be standard fair at every Republican fund raiser throughout this election. But seriously, if you actually think the gap between the rich and the poor is a function of merit, then you can go fuck yourself again.

Grow up people!

There is no Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny is road kill, and money does not magically find its way to those that deserve it most, nor does it flee from the grasp of those unworthy of its benefits. The wealthy are not categorically smarter, harder working, or more creative than the rest of the population. That simply does not explain the gap between the rich and the poor and it never will. It is little other than pretense to haul this old yarn out, just another way of suggesting that the poor do not deserve any better than they can earn themselves by working at the same crap jobs that aren’t working for them now and haven’t been for decades. But how dare those ingrates think they are entitled to any better?

The Republican party faithful would have us believe that poverty is a function of poor character, lazy people making bad choices. Now we can just add covetous character to the list of horribles perpetrated by the undeserving poor. That is the theory Romney us pushing.

But it’s a bullshit theory.

The gap between the rich and the poor is not reducible to lazyness, nor is concern over that gap simply a question of wanting nicer things. When Obama or any other politician raises this question (timid as they may be about it), it is not playing to the envy of the poor. It is addressing a real problem, albeit not one that the Republican party seems to recognize anymore (Hell, even Reagan’s trickle down theories would be an improvement over the present sense of entitlement the GOP fosters among the wealthy.)

Landing on the bottom end of the economic spectrum has serious consequences for the lives of those unfortunate enough to do so. To suggest that Romney’s comments trivialize that problem is putting it mildly. To say nothing of the overall consequences for the economy as ever increasing portions of the population find themselves unable to play the role of consumers which our economy requires. Simply put, if the poor get too poor, they won’t buy things from the rich anymore, and that could have serious consequences for those rich folk.

A vacation in the Bahamas ain’t cheap!

If Romney were simply making the case for conservative fiscal policies, then I wouldn’t fault him for that. Hell, I might even agree with him. But pretending that the growing gap between the upper crust of society and those beneath them is not a real matter of concern is well beyond the pale. Even if you only care about the wealthy, the gap between the rich and the poor ought to be a major concern. But there Romney sits, assuring the nation that this issue is nothing but the preoccupation of folks jealous of other people’s toys.

And this supposed to be the reasonable Republican candidate, the sane one. It’s beyond ridiculous.

Of course some might suggest that Romney knows better. Perhaps he would roll up his sleeves when the cameras are off him and get to work on the economy. He seems to suggest as much himself, and one can only hope that when it comes right down to it Mitt Romney will understand the gap between the rich and the poor is a real problem for a lot of Americans. One can also hope that he will realize he is responsible for those other Americans too, the ones he currently dismisses as envious. One can only hope that their welfare will be somewhere in the list of things he cares about (…albeit well below the bottom line for corporate CEOs. Their welfare must of course come first!)

And that is the hope we are left with in reading comments like this; that the presumptive Republican candidate is just playing to the faithful with this talking point, telling them a good reassuring story about their enemies. Why would anyone care about the gap between the rich and the poor? Personal pettiness. That is Romney’s answer. Its useful answer in that it helps to marginalize even the most moderate of liberals.

It’s also a bullshit answer, one that speaks loads about the character of anyone who utters it. …whether they believe it or not.

I really don’t know if Romney would have raised his hand upon reading the first question of my post.

He can fuck himself anyway.

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