The Absolute Most Damning, Ugliest Trait a Conservative Can Have
Why do people DO this?
On the face above, you see one of the seven microexpressions that are universally recognized among all human beings.
That pulling to one side of the mouth? That signifies contempt.
You should consider the woman in this photo to be a political conservative, looking at you through her magnifying glass.
With contempt.
Since the SNAP crisis, every article I see online about it that allows comments is full of exactly this attitude.
Conservatives everywhere believe it within their God-given rights to put everyone else under their magnifying glass and judge everything that’s ever happened to them, every choice they’ve ever made in their entire lives. Especially should there be any whisper of financial trouble, if someone is or ever has accepted any form of government assistance, or is getting financial help from family.
If you are experiencing hardship, there is nothing you can say that will erase the contempt with which the conservative looks at you. No matter what they are, your problems are always you, all you, and only you. You are stupid. You are lazy. You don’t want to work.
You should have gone into the military. Wait … you are in the military? And military families are on SNAP? Why, that spouse needs to go right out and get to work! (Many of them already are.)
Wait … you are working? Why, then, you are lazy for not getting a better job! Get some education, you lazy ass, and get off my tax dollars!
Wait … college students are on SNAP? Well, then those lazy motherfuckers better get themselves a damn job!
Actually, there’s a work requirement for college students to qualify for SNAP. When one helpful conservative read this, he promptly posted that the college student, a single mother, needed to just quit school and work full time.
Now, what was that argument about being stuck in a minimum wage job? Oh, yes, that was it … Go to school and get yourself educated, or else you are lazy!
It’s maddening enough to read the comments section of a news article about SNAP meant to educate the public. It’s worse when you encounter one of these trolls online and that person pounces on you.
I commented on a Substack piece by a writer bemoaning the fact that, even though they had started out at the same station in life, her old high school friend, now a Hollywood TV producer worth about twelve million, mercilessly judges everyone around him (including the author of the piece, even though she’s an entertainment lawyer) for not rising to his lofty station. Her piece is about how success completely deafens people to the problems and economic situations of other people.
One of these holier-than-thous saw my comment and responded to me with a ten-point list interrogating me about every single educational and financial decision I have ever made in my entire life.
I dutifully explained that, yes, I had a college fund, but that the adults in the family spent it all by the time I turned eighteen. No, I did not take my degree in basket weaving, I hold a professional degree. One that didn’t pay much when I started out, but which now pays well and offers a degree of job security today that most jobs do not. Yes, I had to have a car in college. For my degree I was required to do clerkships all over the state. I had a used Yugo and it had constant mechanical problems.
No, I did not overspend on a house, clothes, food, or any other frippery. I’ve only had a phone that wasn’t a flip phone for about three years now. I had two car accidents and two major surgeries before I earned enough to afford health insurance, and that plus my student loans pretty much fried my future. I also grew up with a mentally ill parent and had to cut that relationship off and never look back. My husband died of brain cancer and I’ve pretty much lived my life with essentially no help.
There are conservatives even this history wouldn’t satisfy. I once had a troll on YouTube assure me with all the cocky condescension that can possibly come across a keyboard that, despite all this, I am still lazy and an idiot and I just should have done better.
Whatever can one do?
I am trying to explain gently to these trolls that this kind of attitude, although Troll Number One assures me it’s well intentioned, is counterproductive at best and snide and demeaning at worst.
What right does anyone have to interrogate a stranger about every single life decision they’ve ever made as if that person were a three-year-old?
I don’t think anyone reading pieces about SNAP online actually is sixteen. And even if someone were: How did this person expect to help sixteen-year-olds by interrogating me as if I were three?
“Did you do this? Did you do that?” all smacks of being sure I didn’t, sure I made bad choices, sure I am lazy and stupid, sure there couldn’t possibly be any way such a person could have been doing the best they could see to do for themselves at the time … which, in fact, most people are.
It reads as if the conservative were getting ready to pounce the living instant I said something he could point to, hop up and down, and crow. “See? See? This person’s lazy, just like I thought! This person’s stupid, just like I thought!”
Conservatives are so sure incompetence and laziness are the norm that half the comments I read on a recent SNAP article on msn read, “Get a job!” even though the piece pointed out that the people profiled were, in fact, working.
Can you imagine how someone spoken to or written to with this attitude might feel? Do you want to be spoken to this way yourself? Then why treat others this way?
I hear this attitude from every single fucking Republican I know and it is fucking nauseating.
Why? The same conservative who complains endlessly about their own financial hardship and expects sympathy from me turns right around and savages people worse off than they are whom they don’t even know. Assumes the absolute fucking worst about every American worse off than they are that they can possibly find to assume!
All to make themselves feel better and someone else feel worse. All to make themselves feel smarter by punching someone else down.
How would that person feel if I turned on them? So, what made you marry that person? What made you go ahead and have that fourth baby? Why didn’t you leave this field and train for something else that made more money?
Every Trumper I know would be highly offended if I said things like this to them … but they have no problem applying this logic to all forty-two million people on SNAP. They have no problem inspecting them for the tattoos they shouldn’t have since now they’re on food stamps. They have no problem writing that nobody on SNAP should have pets. (Are you supposed to kick your faithful dog out the door the minute you lose your job?)
They have no problem inspecting the clothes they wear, the bag they carry, scoping out the shopping cart of the person next to them to make absolutely sure that lazy person with the EBT card didn’t slip any steak into that basket.
There’s a word for this.
It’s believing every single person but you is the mental age of three, and you have the right to judge them for every single fucking little thing they’ve ever done in their whole life.
It’s believing everyone else in the world must meet your standards, and you alone are so good you get to be the sole arbiter and judge of everyone else’s worth as a human being.
The word?
It’s contempt.
Contempt for other people is the least attractive trait you can have.
And it’s why so many people are deeply, deeply angry with Republicans right now.