A Few Things the Conservatives Don’t Get
“Compassionate conservatism” is something of a hoax. It’s not that there aren’t compassionate conservatives—it’s just that conservationism has perpetuated a bunch of myths to make itself a bit more palatable to compassionate people.
For example, conservatives like to pretend that there’s a ladder of opportunity that anybody who felt like it could use.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to deny that there aren’t as many people climbing this ladder as there used to be—and most of the people climbing it look awfully white. So what can we blame?
Some of us progressive-types think we need to take a serious look at the ladder to see if all the rungs are still there. We might also ask some tough questions of some assholes loitering at the top with ladder rungs sticking out of their pockets. But … to conservatives, asking the sort of question that might upset the status quo is class warfare.
If people aren’t climbing it, conservatives believe, it’s their own fault. Maybe they’ve got a bunch of really comfortable chairs down at the bottom. Like foodstamps. If you’re frugal, you could put together a reasonably nutritious meal for your family on foodstamps. Maybe that’s why people aren’t bothering to climb the ladder. If we just made them starve a bit, they’ll scramble over eachother to get up that ladder. (Pay no attention to the bottom of the ladder. You can’t see the bottom rungs because the invisible hand replaced them with invisible rungs.)
Nobody really wants an “escalator of results.” That’s made up. But is it really so radical to expect equal opportunity to be a real thing rather than a myth we perpetuate to make ourselves feel better?
(Source: foundry.org, via theheritagefoundation)
