> But if people were just honest and decent I feel you. A lot of anger in the world comes from this, I think, and I want to push back because it can lead to da

> But if people were just honest and decent I feel you. A lot of anger in the world comes from this, I think, and I want to push back because it can lead to dangerous conclusions. I'm not arguing you would use it as such, but others do. I.e. see xenophobia, religious persecution, violence against LGBTs, etc. How much of what you say is due to a lack of honesty and decency on behalf of the rich and powerful? How many people have "abandoned their decency" because the system is just fucking impossible to overcome? It's not how I reacted, but some friends did - faced with the often impassible barrier between poverty and the lower-middle-class, they threw their hands up in the air and turned to crime, or vagrancy, or just general dickishness towards the rich ("civil disobedience" they'd call it, as they spraypainted a dick onto the rich neighborhood's entrance sign"). If people were just honest and decent, we wouldn't need jails, because nobody would commit crimes. But if people were just honest and decent, people wouldn't be going to jail because a rotten cop planted drugs on them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UANRvFNc0hw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UANRvFNc0hw) or because they smoked a plant in the privacy of their own home. People wouldn't get shot for being black. If people were just honest and decent, other people wouldn't feel the need to squeeze every drop of support out of a system beleaguered by a warring two party system to fund and defund it at the same time. "Hell yes I'm going to abuse food stamps, republicans just got a majority, they might take it away next month!" If people were just honest and decent, we wouldn't have a rapidly escalating war between tolerance and intolerance. Antifa vs fascists. Nazis vs liberals. Friends in Texas wanting to ban transgenders from public restrooms while LGBT friends arguing "it has gotten to the point where punching nazis in the face is acceptable dialogue." The "if people were just honest and decent" argument keeps cropping up over the centuries, and I think we should work around it. Moral superiority, it doesn't work. Catholics trying for 1000 years to get people to stop getting pregnant before marriage - a multigenerational failure to understand that that strategy just doesn't fucking work. It takes a bit more creativity. So, I sympathize with your urge to throw your hands up and say "can we just stop being fucking assholes and taking advantage of eachother?" I agree. I try not to be an asshole. But there are tons of assholes in the world, and some of them, when I sit down to think about it, are kinda justified in their assholeness, because they're in shitty situations that would really stress my ability to not be an asshole. Long story short, it's not a helpful attitude - creativity is needed, alongside sympathy. Acknowledge that helping people will come with shortcomings (free riders), abandon pride, and accept that it's better than the alternative (a war of assholes undercutting eachother at every opportunity).