Every so often I read an exchange that leaves me wondering what kind of parents raised some of these conservatives. Case in point is a conversation between my friend, SteveP, and an ignorant conservative who's view of the world is so misdirected and self-serving it makes my blood boil:
Here's Steve's first post and the thread:
What exactly have the republicans done for you? They've done nothing for anyone in the past eight years unless that person is a corporation. I own a corporation - and I'll tell you this - if I had to pay a little bit more knowing that my employees aren't going to get fucked by the health insurance companies, so be it. That's what's called being someone of higher moral fiber who actually CARES about his fellow human beings and not folks like you who's only utterance is "Mine! Mine! Mine!"
In response, Steve received this post from a very self-congratulatory asshole named JK:
SteveP,
I'm sure I'm wasting my breath, but....
"What exactly have the republicans done for you?"
Your premise is everything that is wrong with this country. I don't ask the government to feed me, provide me shelter and clothing, to take care of my family, or even provide me health care. I don't ask for it. I don't want it. Those things are MY responsibility as a son, a husband, and productive member of society.
"That's what's called being someone of higher moral fiber who actually CARES about his fellow human beings and not folks like you who's only utterance is "Mine! Mine! Mine!"
I provide for my family. I work to make myself and my family better. Anyone who sits around and asks for others to provide these things for them could be using that time to go out there and earn those things for themselves. This is the morally right thing to do. Asking that the government work to pass laws to take my money, my property, and my liberty so that it can be given to a preferred class of people is nothing but theft. That's not moral. Why should I work harder so that others do not have to do the same? That isn't morality; that is tyranny.
The fault in your logic, which is a faulty statement in itself as there is an utter lack of logic in all of your posts, is that somehow, someway, the wealth that my family has created, was created by denying the same to others. This is a lie. I work hard for everything I have and nothing has been given to me. There isn't an able bodied person born into this great country today that could not achieve what my wife and I have, regardless of skin color, sexual preference, or religious belief. To take my hard earned money and give it to others so that they can buy health insurance to go along with their flat screen LCD HDTVs is rewarding others for making poor financial choices at the expense of my property and my liberty.
I care about my family, my community, and my fellow citizens. The desire to own a car and a house is shared by all people. The fact that I can afford it does not singularly make me immoral or greedy. I choose not to buy an expensive sports car, though I sure would like one. Does my desire make me immoral, or are only exotic car owners immoral?
There are many examples in people's lives when others have had something that we desire. One response is to work hard and achieve it yourself. Another response is to hate, to wish to bring down, or to steal from the owner of that which we desire. The former is a being of high moral fiber, a creator of wealth, and a productive member of society. The later is a worthless shell, a divider, a destroyer of wealth, and an immoral being.
You are clearly the later.
- Posted by JK | March 23, 2010 11:03 AM | Vote up Vote down Report this comment Score: 4 (6 votes cast)
Anyway, here is Steve's response, which I feel is about 50 expletives shy of what I would write, but that's my bag:
JK,
Your post is, in a word, abhorrent.
I work (own a business), employ people, own a home in good neighborhood (my kids go to public school, a good one), three cars and a summer home in Florida I never get to.
Unlike you, I don't look at systems such as medicare, social security and the like as "rewarding others for making poor financial choices at the expense of my property and my liberty"
You have this stereotypical view of those "beneath" you as sloppy, lazy bums - all of them, obviously since you referenced their plight twice in your post.
I, on the other hand, recognize that these "socialist" programs as you might call it are the systems that help my parents, on a fixed income with drug costs so absurd my mother has to buy her drugs from Canada - survive with medicare. They are what another friend, who is in his late 40's, vibrant and well-off before, has to use as his money has dwindled away due to his contraction of leukemia. He's now on social security. Without it he would have died. Luck of the draw. This guy used to make $450,000 a year many moons ago.
I believe that most people are not lazy bums, but sure, there are those who want to game a system. You, on the other hand, use that minority as your excuse for claiming the entire system is corrupt. Convenient, isn't it. It allows you to view others as useless because they didn't have the same advantages you had.
I grew up in an upper-middle class neighborhood. Watched most of my friends there follow in their parents footsteps into banking. Heard when many of them turned 30 and got their trust funds. many of them are died in the wool republicans, feel the same way you do. Convenient for them. They can afford to.
I never had that luxury. My folks were never that well off. When they pass, there will be nothing coming from them since what is left will be sucked away by their current illnesses - long term ones that I won't go into but without medicare they would be goners - or my sister and I would go broke paying their medical bills. I don't whine. Nothing to complain about. I've done fine in my life. I help everyone where I can, and I recognize how tied together everyone is on this planet, relative or not.
You talk about your freedom. You must feel you're some sort of patriotic American. If you were, you'd understand that this isn't about you and your things and that the world isn't as black and white as you'd like to make it.
But this is a useless post, pretty much because a person like you can't recognize anything beyond your own navel. So you will continue to be an ignorant, self-centered ass who somehow sees himself as the opposite and will never learn any better, always assume that bad luck is earned and not sometimes accidental, and those who can't afford healthcare don't deserve it (and, by extension, might as well die and decrease the surplus population). Good luck with that.
- Posted by SteveP |
Now, while I've never been one to sanction giving any right-wing blog traffic, I'd love to see some biting responses to this guy from some of the intelligent folks on here. As far as making their site more attractive to advertisers, I wouldn't worry. We would more than likely poison the pool, so to speak.
Anyway, you don't have to sign up to post, so have at it if you feel as irritated by this asshole's callous, self-centered response as I do.