Akkam’s Razor

Having spent Sunday with ‘typical white people’, I had to listen to more McCain-man-love, minority-hatin’, and general whiny cry-baby white-people victimhood.   Note that I’m not from Pennsultucky, I’m from the city proper, the so-called liberal oasis.

I’m getting increasingly aggravated by fools who only pay attention to identity and dog whistle politics, who then vote against their own economic self-interests. I initially was concerned with saving them, but I’ve given up. They don’t want to be saved - they want to wallow in their own ignorance, vote on the basis of who has the best bowling score or has gone hunting, and then cry and bitch when they suffer the bad consequences of the voting decisions. Cry when the unions are weakened, when social security evaporates, or when Medicaid and Medicare benefits are cut. I’m sure you can blame the gays, liberals, or immigrants, but for god’s sake, don’t take any personal responsibility.

I try to think of it in terms that the best policy outcomes result in better conditions for everyone, and as such should cost less tax money. But these divisive know-nothings would rather stick to their own pitiful knowledge and stubbornly insist that they are the only ones who know the truth, and if you try to present them alternate explanations, well, you’re just being a snobby elitist who looks down on them. Whatever. I’m done trying to save you from your ignorance. You deserve Hillary and/or John McCain.

No matter the future, odds are things will be fine for me, and for others like me - realists who want to understand our problems and tackle them, not ideologues or reactionaries who want to believe that faith-based intervention will solve all ills.

I’m done trying to save the ignorant from their ignorance.  I’m done warning about the stove, the fire, the hot pot, and the boiling water. Go ahead frogs, keep going, jump in the hot tub, all is well.  You guys know everything.   We’ll see how it ‘pans’ out for you - there will be less and less sympathy for you as time goes by, as you will be more and more responsible for your own bad outcomes.

Update:  Along the lines of the up-is-down nature of these campaigns, where things that might be negative-actually-turn -out-positive,  these people who are offended at being called bitter were never going to vote for Obama (or Hillary) for that matter anyway.  But, as Conservative columnist Michael Smerconish wrote on Sunday in the Inquirer, the suburbs are turning blue not because conservatives are not conservative enough, but because they are too conservative, at the cost of pragmatic action to what truly ills this country.   With the majority of America tired of the far-right, hearing their shrill cries of victimhood will actually reinforce the feeling that they have chosen the wrong way, and that it’s time to start talking about dollars and cents.