They hate us. All of us.

Posted Thursday afternoon, May 25, 2017.

“Please, President Trump, sir. I want some more.”

They hate us. All of us. The budget makes that plain. Before it’s a financial or policy document, it’s a manifesto. A declaration in numbers of how much they hate us.

They hate the poor, that's obvious. They hate and despise and fear the poor, especially if they're brown. But they hate the sick too. And the old, at least everyone irresponsible enough to get old without having put together a $500,000 portfolio. They hate children. Other people's children, of course. They dote on and spoil their own. But other people's children are coddled and raised to think life owes them so those kids need to be taught a lesson. They hate mothers. They hate women! They hate veterans. They hate anybody---anybody who isn't rich---who has ever looked to the government for help. They hate everybody who isn't rich because we should be rich. That's what life is for. To make money. Lots of it. And if you didn't do that you've wasted your life. If you didn't do it it's a sign you didn't try, you didn't work or work hard enough. It's a sign of your bad character and moral failure. And that's what we all are in their eyes, moral failures who expect them to bail us out when our bad character gets us in trouble. Even if we aren't constantly coming to them with our hand out in one way, we're doing it in another, demanding we be paid more than we're worth, demanding benefits we haven't earned or deserved.

We're all thieves and parasites, moral failures, degenerates and defectives. Sinners! Sinners against God and Nature and we must be punished.

Don't bother with the Ayn Rand reference. She didn't invent selfishness. She was just a clever apologist for it. The first human who decided he had a right to take what another human had earned, made, hunted, fished, or grown and had the boldness  and strength to follow through invented it. It's been the religion of every war lord and robber baron since:

What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine. I am your superior. Favored by the gods! You are nothing. You're lucky I let you stay alive.

You're lucky you have a job. You're lucky you live in America. Count your blessings instead of your money.

The ACHA is a tax cut for the rich, plain and simple. One we're expected to pay for with our lives. And the first item cut from the budget is the notion that government exists to make people's lives better. Government exists for the rich to use to protect their property and make more money, as much of it as they want, any way they can.

Yes, people will die if you take away their health insurance. What of it?

Yes, children will go hungry if we take away their school lunches and their families' food stamps. What's that to me?

And yes, if we cut Social Security people will have to work until they drop and old people will eat cat food and freeze in the dark, and if we cut disability people who are broken and in pain will have to work broken and in pain---if they can get work, which, too bad for them if they can't---and if we cut scholarship money and work study money and grant money and make student loans even more expensive, onerous, and burdensome, bright and ambitious young Americans won’t be able to go to college. I'm supposed to care?

That's really it, what they hate most. Our expecting them to care. The idea that we're all in this together, that we're meant to look out for each other, that we're here as Dr Vonnegut has said to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.

Buzz off! I got mine, you get yours. But just so you know. Yours isn't really yours. It's mine. And I'll find away to take it from you one way or another, if I haven't found a way to prevent you from getting it in the first place.

Just thinking we should have some of it, even a little piece of it, even a crumb, is proof we're all parasites and thieves. You get what you deserve in life and they get to decide what that is and how much. It's theirs and we should thank them for deigning to give us any of it.

That's our other crime and our other sin, being insufficiently grateful.

More? A nation of Oliver Twists wants more?

No wonder they hate us.

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At the Washington Post, Catherine Rampell defines Trumponomics as "the philosophy that it doesn't suck enough to be poor."

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Orrin Hatch once called Ted Kennedy his friend.

Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks really does think that illness, injury, and old age are just punishments for not living a good life.

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney comes awfully close to flat out calling everyone who needs government assistance "thieves". I’m sure he makes an exception for the children whose are school lunches being taken away, for their own good, of course---sitting through the school day with empty stomachs teaches kids the virtue of hard work and self-reliance. He probably thinks of them as merely apprentice thieves.

And out in Montana, Greg Gianforte, the Republican candidate for Congress, who last night auditioned for the WWE using a reporter for his sparring partner, wants to end Social Security because he’s against the whole idea that people should ever retire. Noah was still working when he was 600, you know. Noah lived to be 950, going 300 years without, as far as I know, building another ark, but never mind. The bible doesn’t specifically mention retirement, so Gianforte thinks God’s against it. The bible doesn’t mention the United States, the state of Montana, or millionaire ignoramuses with anger management issues getting elected to Congress either, so I hope that means God is against at least the last one, but it’s not looking that way, according to the polls. Gianforte might be laughed off as a joke he was certain to lose today and if there weren’t so many Republican members of the House of Representatives waiting to welcome him into their ranks who believe the same thing about Social Security and retirement, some without needing the Biblical literalism to justify their belief. They just hate the idea of any of us who isn't rich finding any comfort and joy in life.

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Correction: In the original version of this post, I had Mo Brooks hailing from the wrong state, Arkansas. He's from Alabama. Thanks to commenter CVB for the catch.

Comments

[CVB]

Mo Brooks is a congressman from Alabama, not Arkansas. Easy mistake to make, I know.

[jb]

As one of your readers for many years, and as I have done many times before, sir, I stand and applaud.

[Lance Mannion]

CVB, thanks for catching that. I fixed it.

[Steven Schultz]

Your post is a perfect summation of Republican governance over the past 35 years. Thanks for including the link to Mick Mulvaney's propaganda piece. I thought your claim that he came close to calling us all "thieves" might be hyperbole, but you were right. He certainly does imply it, while plainly criticizing the Obama administration for running up the debt to rescue us shiftless Americans from the Great Recession. (Enduring more pain would remind us whose fault it really was, I guess.) It's funny how the white-heat of the Republicans' burning desire to protect taxpayers from "theft" is never aimed at investment banks, hedge funds, defense contractors or a self-dealing President.

[Ivory Bill Woodpecker]

The rich haters never could have regained the position of dominion which they enjoyed in the First Gilded Age without the votes of the stupid non-rich haters--and the non-votes of the half-witted perfectionists who consider the Democrats equally corrupt and evil as the Elephascists.

[Fiddlin Bill]

Instead of asking for gruel, Ben Jacobs asked a sensible question. Cheeky.

[Raven]

> “Budget Director Mick Mulvaney comes awfully close to flat out calling everyone who needs government assistance ‘thieves’. I’m sure he makes an exception for...” — corporations who get tax breaks (even paying zero taxes) or who get bailed out, as after the 2008 financial crash. Has he demanded that Wall Street bigwigs involved in that crash go to jail rather than be so benevolently forgiven? Well, then.

Corporations are people [deserving of empathy and sympathy], after all... to fill out Mitt Romney’s famous comment a bit further.

Actual, real, living breathing human persons, on the other hand... are not.

[Kristen from MA]

A congressman from Nebraska could not - or would not - answer when asked (on NPR) if every American is entitled to eat.