"I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People
Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society. Like many Americans, I’m having politics fatigue. Or, to be more specific, arguing-about-politics fatigue.
I haven’t run out of salient points or evidence for my political perspective, but there is a particular stumbling block I keep running into when trying to reach across the proverbial aisle and have those “difficult conversations” so smugly suggested by think piece after think piece: I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.
Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am. I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye.
If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP. Poverty should not be a death sentence in the richest country in the world. If you’re okay with thousands of people dying of treatable diseases just so the wealthiest among us can hoard still more wealth, there is a divide between our worldviews that can never be bridged.
I don’t know how to convince someone how to experience the basic human emotion of empathy. I cannot have one more conversation with someone who is content to see millions of people suffer needlessly in exchange for a tax cut that statistically they’ll never see (do you make anywhere close to the median American salary? Less? Congrats, this tax break is not for you).
I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters.
There are all kinds of practical, self-serving reasons to raise the minimum wage (fairly compensated workers typically do better work), fund public schools (everyone’s safer when the general public can read and use critical thinking), and make sure every American can access health care (outbreaks of preventable diseases being generally undesirable).
But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those things, I have nothing left to say to you.
I can’t debate someone into caring about what happens to their fellow human beings. The fact that such detached cruelty is so normalized in a certain party’s political discourse is at once infuriating and terrifying.
The “I’ve got mine, so screw you,” attitude has been oozing from the American right wing for decades, but this gleeful exuberance in pushing legislation that will immediately hurt the most vulnerable among us is chilling.
Perhaps it was always like this. I’m (relatively) young, so maybe I’m just waking up to this unimaginable callousness. Maybe the emergence of social media has just made this heinous tendency more visible; seeing hundreds of accounts spring to the defense of policies that will almost certainly make their lives more difficult is incredible to behold.
I don’t know what’s changed ― or indeed, if anything has ― and I don’t have any easy answers. But I do know I’m done trying to convince these hordes of selfish, cruel people to look beyond themselves."
Okay, my thoughts.
This is nothing more than an uninformed, hypocritical, intolerant partisan rant wrapped up in a sanctimonious, holier-than-thou false sense of superiority.
Why uninformed? In the first place, while Ms. Chadwick has read a study that claims that "fairly compensated workers typically do better work," she has apparently ignored the myriad studies that have shown that artificially raising wages above what supply and demand would dictate is a job-killer. It leads to automation (order-taking kiosks in fast food restaurants) that replaces workers, employers cutting hours to cut costs, and small businesses hiring fewer people.
Moreover, a job flipping burgers at McDonald's was never supposed to provide for a family. I worked in a fast food job my freshman year in college. I also bagged groceries, made window screens for mobile homes, mowed lawns and worked a soda fountain at a drugstore during my youth. I never expected any of those jobs to provide a living for me so that I could start and raise a family. That's why I went to college.
(And lest anyone decry my "privilege" at being able to do so, note that my family at the time met the definition of lower middle class, and I had to pay my own way through school. I worked my butt off, got two degrees, and realized the American dream: taking advantage of the opportunities afforded me by living in a free, capitalist democratic republic.)
She's also apparently ignorant of Medicaid, of the miserable failure that is the "Affordable" Care Act, or of the fact that health care is not a right, at least according to the Bill of Rights that the rest of us have actually read.
And she's ignorant of the fact that, if you're a homeowner, you do indeed pay taxes to support schools, whether you have kids or not.
Finally, she has totally misrepresented the conservative platform - and ethos. It is well-documented fact that conservatives give more to charity, for example, than liberals.
I would in no way imply that all conservatives are caring, compassionate, selfless and tolerant. Nor would I imply that all liberals are uncaring, lack compassion, are selfish and intolerant. However, I can say with authority that the most caring, compassionate, selfless and tolerant people I know lean conservative. And the most selfish, intolerant, uncaring people I know lean liberal. Again, not all conservatives and liberals I know fit those descriptions, but that is the central tendency.
Maybe I hang out with the wrong liberals. Maybe Ms. Chadwick hangs out with the wrong conservatives. It would help, of course, if she'd actually have a conversation with them to learn how they feel, what they think and believe. That would be ... well, tolerant.
Why hypocritical? While Ms. Chadwick claims to care so much about the less fortunate, she callously assumes that someone living at the margin can afford to pay an extra 4.3% for their Big Mac. Wage growth under President Obama averaged less than one-fourth that amount.
So if we assume that a family at the margin would see their food budget - a necessary, not discretionary, expenditure - increase by 4.3% when their wages under a liberal administration are increasing at about 1%, they're going to run into difficulty pretty soon. Apparently Ms. Chadwick can afford such an increase in her spending; good for her. However, a lot of folks can't, including the burger-flipper at McDonald's who's trying to feed his family - you know, the guy she cares so much about, but you and I don't.
Of course, you could buy your own hamburger at the grocery store and make your own burgers for a lot less than the cost of a Big Mac. But then you'd put the poor burger-flipper out of work altogether. Then again, what about the people who work at the grocery store? Apparently Ms. Chadwick doesn't care whether they have jobs or not, since she seems to be too lazy to cook for herself.
Likewise with taxes to support public schools, for those without children. I'm assuming she's proposing additional taxes on top of the taxes that already go toward public education; either that or she's just plain ignorant. (I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume the former.) Some people might not be able to afford a tax increase for that, in addition to a 4.3% increase in their food budget.
Or for government-subsidized health care. How many marginal families' finances have been damaged by having to pay the increased premiums that resulted from ACA, or having to pay a tax because, while they don't feel they need health insurance at this point in their lives, they have to pay for it or else pay a surtax. That surtax itself was cruel: it was imposed so that President Obama could say, "See? Everyone is insured!" That's like holding a gun to someone's head and threatening to kill them if they don't buy a house, then crowing about the record homeownership rate.
And why intolerant? Because, like so many on the "tolerant" left these days, she refuses to have a conversation with anyone who doesn't participate in her groupthink.
Probably because she knows her assertions would be handily refuted. So she resorts to this sanctimonious hogwash, and people who should know better buy it. Sad.
I simply don't believe I should have to pay more for goods and services than what they're worth from a true economic (i.e. supply and demand) perspective, hence I don't want to pay an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac so the person frying it up can feed a family on starter-job wages. (For that matter, I don't even eat at McDonald's. From her post, presumably Ms. Chadwick does. Maybe if she laid off the Big Macs, the rest of us wouldn't have to subsidize her health care.)
I do believe my property taxes should help pay for public schools, even though my daughter is grown. In fact, they do. The issue isn't paying for public schools, it's the dismal state of education in most of this country. Let's fix that, even if it means a choice between public education in poorly-run districts and vouchers for private schools as an alternative. I created a foundation to support private school education for kids in the poorest country in the world, because the government schools in that country are horrible. Is that uncaring? If not, why can't we do the same thing here at home?
And again, I don't believe health care is a right, though I support Medicaid to provide it to the indigent (and Medicare, because it's my money). ACA is an abysmal failure. The proposals to fix it thus far aren't much better. So let's just go back to the days before Obamacare, or else let's truly fix the system, starting with FDA and tort reforms.
No, Ms. Chadwick, you and I are nothing alike. But not because I don't care about people. My attitude is far from, "I've got mine, so screw you." You want to make that assertion? Let's compare our charitable giving. The taxes we pay. Our record of volunteer work to help those less fortunate than themselves. Honey, I'll bet you've never even seen real poverty. I have. So save your inexperienced sanctimoniousness for someone who's naive enough to accept it. Others apparently are, but I'm not.
See, it's one thing to demonstrate your compassion with your words. It's quite another to demonstrate it with your works. So put your money - and your sweat - where your mouth is. Or keep it closed.
In fact, Ms. Chadwick, I really can't think of anything that I need you to explain to me. Do a little research, be willing to let some facts interfere with your biases, and gain a little life experience. Then maybe we can come up with something you can explain to me that I don't already understand. I won't hold my breath.
That's not intolerance on my part. It's simply a reflection of the fact that, while I could explain some things to them, I can't understand those things for them.
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