I didn't bring it up. The topic of certain current candidates for president came up at the holiday dinner table, and at one point the Mrs. asked me, as the only non-Republican present, to, essentially, justify Bernie Sanders' entire political philosophy. Meanwhile his question was, basically, Why we can't just have good old-fashioned pre-New Deal "capitalism," when anyone could succeed through hard work and innovation and personal responsibility, and didn't have to help support lazy poor people through "socialism," i.e., government handouts that they just use to buy big-screen TVs?

I wish I was exaggerating or being snarky about that last bit, but I'm not. The fact that poor people have television sets proves, at least in my friend's mind, that "there must be a large number" of people on public assistance who don't need it, don't deserve it, would rather live on that than get a job, and are abusing and gaming the system by, inter alia, buying big-screen TVs with his money.

Of course, we all know where he's getting this from. He's conditioned to believe that he's the persecuted victim of "socialism" and of the current President's "socialist" "policies," and to regard the tax code and business regulations and such as bills of attainder against him personally, as if Congress and the state Assembly had him specifically in mind when they passed them.

I did manage to point out, this time, that I didn't think self-congratulation and resentment were a good starting point for understanding, let alone making, sound public policy. I tried to take the high road, pointing out that his variation on Reagan's welfare queen was nothing but a phantom, an avatar, a figment of his imagination, a string of suppositions unmoored to any objective, empirical facts about where and how public benefits are distributed, used and spent. He kept saying "there must be a large number" of such people to which I replied, "Why 'must' there be? And what precisely is that 'large' number? Do you know?"

Overall I tried to take the Thom Hartmann approach, focusing on the basic premise that everyone has an economic interest in the well-being of others, and in living in a country not filled with poverty and disease (an idea he seemed able to accept despite apparently never having thought of it before). Yes, it's possible to game the system, and plenty of people do game the system, but the solution to that problem is not to not have a system. Nor is it to spend twice as much making sure every individual who doesn't "deserve" benefits doesn't get them, than it costs to simply give them the benefits. He accepted this as well, but only grudgingly; "Well, that's how you get a massive national debt." He actually believes the national debt is attributable to food stamps and children's health care.

The conversation wasn't acrimonious, and at no point did any of us take anything the other said personally. (Although I came close, when he said "You'd vote for a Democrat even if Saddam Hussein was the candidate.") But as I so often do, I've been replaying the conversation in my head ever since and there are so many things I would have wanted to say, had I thought of it at the time.

I couldn't, and still can't, get past the normative belief behind everything he was saying, and it was the same as what he'd said six years ago: The poor are not suffering enough to deserve my help. That's not a direct quotation but it might as well be; he had such contempt and resentment in his voice when he talked about how "there must be a large number" of the "47 million people" [another refrain] on government assistance who are using his money to buy TV sets. The poor are clearly not suffering enough to make the redistribution of his wealth to them morally justifiable. His worshipful invocation of a rose-colored fairy-tale view of pre-New Deal "capitalism" was just self-congratulation by proxy. Why can't we just go back to a time when people like me could just make money by exercising our own inherent awesomeness, and not have to think, worry or care about the poor and the needy, let alone kick in our tax dollars to help them eat survive watch TV?

I remember a few years back I read a comment on an NRO article thread, written by a conservative, who actually wrote -- and I quote -- "I vote Republican because I feel like I have been victimized by American society." Separate from the DK diary I wrote at the time, I summarized the conversation in which I tried to ascertain why this person felt so "victimized" and why (s)he thought that voting Republican was the cure for his/her ills:



Because (s)he has to deal with local construction regulations and unions, which are, quote, "in full swing," apparently only because a Democrat is president. (No idea what "in full swing" is supposed to mean...) This person essentially acknowledged that having a Republican president (viz., a "conservative administration") would not have the effect of eliminating any actual burdens of local building codes, environmental regulations and labor laws, but it would make him/her feel better about being "victimized" by them; give him/her a "break" and a "reprieve" from feeling "victimized by American society." Meaning, at least (s)he will feel that (s)he's being "victimized" by good people for good reasons, even though the practical effects and burdens would be precisely the same. And I thought it was "liberals" who vote based on "feelings, not facts."

I keep writing about this because it bothers me, especially when I hear things like this from people whom I love, respect, have great admiration for, and who from everything I know about them and every interaction I've had with them and everything I've observed about them, would bemuch better off casting their lot with the Democrats, but are so fixated on thethat they are the victims of "American society" and that only Republicans can make things right. Or at least make them feel better about having their money taken and redistributed by people they like, trust, support, and voted for, who don't reallyto take and redistribute their money but have to because Democrats. I don't know which bothers me more; the self-congratulation part, or the resentment part. There's just something about people who can't talk about law and public policy without using first-person-singular pronouns in every sentence that just turns my stomach. It sickens me, literally.

Especially when it involves, and is justified by, a blanket character judgment of a whole category of imaginary people standing in for a whole category of real people. When GOP fans talk about the poor, or about immigrants, Muslims, "liberals," "the Left" and whoever else they're programmed to resent, even President Obama himself, they're usually talking about figments of their imagination. Sure, the poor are real, immigrants are real, liberals are real and President Obama is real, but the real ones aren't the ones they're talking about on Fox and elsewhere inside the paracosm. They're talking about the imaginary ones, caricatures standing in for their real-world counterparts. They're avatars, abstractions, and it's easy to be cruel -- and feel good about being cruel -- to avatars and abstractions, imaginary people who are not suffering, standing in for real people who are suffering.

That's why, I think, someone who is so kind, decent, generous and well-meaning can seem to become so callous, selfish and cruel when talking about issues like this. His kindness, decency and generosity manifest themselves in his direct, real, personal interactions and relationships with actual, living, breathing people who he actually meets, knows, sees, talks to, spends time with, and cares about. The TV-buying welfare moochers he resents are not real; not to him, not in the same sense. They're a convenient target for whatever it is that makes him feel so victimized by people he can't see, meet, talk to, or spend time with.

In the end, in my mind, I keep saying to my friend, Do you really, truly, honestly believe that YOU are the victim in this society? That you've got it so much worse, and so much tougher, than anyone else? That the President re-wrote the tax code just for you? How much more should the poor be suffering? How do you want to make sure they're suffering? How much suffering is enough?