Why are Republicans so cruel to the poor?

[KingOrfeo]

Chauncey DeVega writes:

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

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.

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.

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.

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.”

Social psychologists have shown that, in effect, poor people are invisible to the rich and upper classes.

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.

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.

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.

Race and class are intimately linked together in American (and Western) society. As such, poor people are incorrectly stereotyped as being overwhelmingly black and brown. In the United States, the intersections of race and class also impact the media narratives and cultural scripts that dictate who and what groups have historically been considered “deserving” (widows of war veterans, the disabled, single white mothers, children, the elderly) and “undeserving” (adult men and people of color).

Conservative media — and sometimes mainstream media as well — routinely uses false and misleading information to discuss the social safety net. For example, President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society as well as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives were extremely successful in terms of alleviating poverty and improving the general welfare of the American people. Yet right-wing media consistently tells its public that such programs were failures, a narrative that intentionally ignores the Republican Party’s efforts to undermine the effectiveness of those programs.

Among evangelical Christians, what is called the “prosperity gospel” has become increasingly influential. This grotesque interpretation of Christian doctrine assures its adherents that poor people deserve their circumstances because God has chosen not to bless them with money. Conversely, rich people have more money because God has deemed them worthy. Christian evangelicals — especially those who believe in the prosperity gospel — were a key constituency in Donald Trump’s winning coalition.

The brain structures of conservatives and liberals are quite different. Conservatives are capable of being empathetic. However, conservatives focus those feelings on their in-group such as immediate family and community. Liberals have a different biological inclination: They are able to feel empathy for those people and groups who are not part of their close social circle and community.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Says Salon, a rag that favors legislating people in to the poor house in the first god damn place.

Nobody hates the poor like the left....that's why it starves so many millions of them to death.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Says Salon, a rag that favors legislating people in to the poor house in the first god damn place.

Nobody hates the poor like the left....that's why it starves so many millions of them to death.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Moar taxes!! It's good for you!!!

 

[KingOrfeo]

Moar taxes!! It's good for you!!!

It is if it's progressive taxation.

 

[OldJourno]

Mister Stalinism Works continues to turn a blind eye to history.
How many died at the hands of socialists Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Hitler?
Pol Pot?
You are blind to history and to current events.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Mister Stalinism Works continues to turn a blind eye to history.
How many died at the hands of socialists Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Hitler?
Pol Pot?
You are blind to history and to current events.

Socialism sometimes kills. Social democracy kills nobody.

 

[Rightguide]

Why are Republicans so cruel to the poor?

They're not, they are against subsidizing, breeding, and encouraging, whole new crops of them.

 

[Rightguide]

Socialism sometimes kills. Social democracy kills nobody.

Communism always kills.

 

[BotanyBoy]

It is if it's progressive taxation.

Too bad most of it is not...

And even then....doesn't change the fact that (D)'s have a STRONG record of doing everything they can to put people into the poorhouse and make them dependent upon gubbmint handouts.

Exclusive or simply arbitrarily limiting bignizz licences.

Promoting mega corps using their alphabet agencies to bully small business.

Taxing Main street into oblivion for UberCorp.

SWAT teaming lemonade stands and lawn boys.

(D)'s fucking HATE poor people....but are too chicken shit to own it or even do anything about it other than bus them out to the desert and drop them off in some "hick" town you look down your nose at because also working class.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Socialism sometimes kills.

It's got a solid record of killing more people than any other political system ever.

Social democracy kills nobody.

Venezuela....it's killing people RIGHT NOW, and it will do it again because that's what socialism (social democracy) does. The mob deciding to lynch the bakers and farmers as everyone goes cannibal in the streets isn't any better than a dictator doing it and it certainly doesn't make it nicer in any way.

 

[OldJourno]

Socialism sometimes kills. Social democracy kills nobody.

How many people has capitalism killed?
Twenty years after this country was born, the U.S. had the best fed population in the world. If people have a reason to work, they will. If they have a reason to aspire, they will.
And if you are going to guarantee an "income," some people just won't work.
Welcome to the poverty plantations filled with reliable Democrat voters who send their children to suck ass big government public schools where the majority of students can barely get past the signature line on SAT tests.
Do you ever wonder why Democrats so fiercely oppose parental choice (vouchers) when it comes to education?
You sit there plucking opinion pieces from here and there thinking that you are proving a point. All is see is a wasteland behind all those "fresh" ideas that have never worked and in fact serve to impoverish over the long term.
KO, I'm never going to get past you "Stalinism Works" comment. That's just pathetic.
You are beneath contempt.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

A badly biased opinion piece and nothing more, so let's answer it in the form of anecdote...


My wife is a Christian, Republican Trump voter. Her church runs missions to Haiti. They have a rapid emergency response team for disaster relief here in the region. They run a pantry for the poor. That is how cruel Republicans are. They don't spend other people's money of the problems of the world. They spend theirs. We give 10% of our income, right off the top to the Church as well as paying the Liberal Progressive taxes and whatever the Queen puts into the basket on Sundays when a new charity case is presented to the congregation.

This is a world that Liberals seem to be completely ignorant of.

They have fertile imaginations...

 

[KingOrfeo]

Why are Republicans so cruel to the poor?

They're not, they are against subsidizing, breeding, and encouraging, whole new crops of them.

 

[KingOrfeo]

How many people has capitalism killed?

Everyone who ever died in a profit-driven war or at the hands of a strikebreaker (there was a time when strikebreakers used guns). I would add industrial accidents, but those are bound to happen wherever industry exists regardless of political system.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Everyone who ever died in a profit-driven war or at the hands of a strikebreaker.

Out of the list of American Wars, I have to wonder which ones were profit-driven...

 

[KingOrfeo]

Twenty years after this country was born, the U.S. had the best fed population in the world.

Because there was plenty of good land free for the taking once the Indians were driven off, not because of the political system.

 

[OldJourno]

Because there was plenty of good land free for the taking once the Indians were driven off, not because of the political system.

Actually, almost all the land was heavily forested. Took a lot of hard work to clear it.
Why bother with that when your socialist government will feed you for "free," but will take half of what you produce if you work?
Gee, I wonder what it would look like in 1810 is your hero Uncle Joe Stalin had been in charge. Care to share your vision of what that would look like?

 

[KingOrfeo]

Actually, almost all the land was heavily forested. Took a lot of hard work to clear it.

A lot of it had been cultivated by Indians before they died of diseases they caught from the whites.

 

[OldJourno]

A lot of it had been cultivated by Indians before they died of diseases they caught from the whites.

Right. And the white guys also stole the silos made by the Indians.

 

[OldJourno]

King (I Love Stalin) Orfeo, do you even believe half the shit you're shoveling?

 

[Pairaclities]

Let's reverse the question.

Why do some elements of society think it alright to take from people who work hard to gain wealth and redistribute to those who have not?

"You can't legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government can't give to anybody anything that the government doesn't first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they don't have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

I don't know the author.

 

[pointless]

then you either suck at googling or you're a liar. those are the words of a fascist, so fuck you.

 

[Disgustipated]

do you even believe half the shit you're shoveling?

Says the guy...

of socialists Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Hitler?
Pol Pot?
.

who says this.

 

[OldJourno]

Says the guy...



who says this.

You are contending that Stalin, Mao, Hitler - you know, the usual gang of mass murderers - were not socialists?