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Sorry to disagree, but I don't think it is hatred and it is not a war. I think it is indifference mixed with selfishness and a collection of many little or per

Sorry to disagree, but I don't think it is hatred and it is not a war. I think it is indifference mixed with selfishness and a collection of many little or perhaps not so little power grabs. One example might be that poor people can't rent a flat somewhere they can have a good life, because everybody else is already there and this is expressed in a rent poor people can't afford. Another little power grab: Call a taxi when it is raining heavily, and you beckon strongly and the taxi is stopping for you and not for the handicapped woman because the taxi driver saw you first. When you are already sitting you suddenly see the woman outside and you realize that she needs the taxi more than you. It is sort of an effort to get out and tell the taxi driver that she was first. It is easier for you to just drive away. It is war if people expressly try to hurt poor people. But I just don't think that the majority of well-off people are this evil. They are mostly indifferent, selfish and enjoy the benefits of the power grabs they do. This said, I agree with you that many people in the USA are strongly indifferent and selfish and they justify this with saying that they live in a meritocracy and that everybody had the same chance to be successful, and if a poor person is not successful it's their own fault. But that's not hatred nor a war.

cenazoic 3y ago
I understand what you’re saying, but I would suggest this is exactly the ‘banality of evil’ Hannah Arendt wrote about.
- _nalply 3y ago
  True. It's banally evil, but real war is just a lot worse.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
The reason is seems fair to refer to it somewhat metaphorically as a war is this: you don't have to go back far in US (or human) history to find a time when the existence of poverty was view as a failure of the system. That is, poor people begging in the streets reflected on the economic and social systems, and reflected badly. Somehow, as the US became rich enough and successful enough to end all of that, we switched the narrative. Today, poverty is a personal failure, the result of bad decision making, lax moral standards, lack of sufficient entrepeneurial spirit etc. We've switched from "fighting poverty" to "fighting poor people who are fucking things up for the rest of us".
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  As with most things, we can blame Reagan and the political movement that shaped him. The aggression against people who need help has direct roots to Reagan's (in)famous welfare queen talking points, that were mirrored overseas with Thatcher and her ilk. This myth of these (not stated but implied to be) black women who were having all these children and cashing government checks to live a luxurious lifestyle. And like, yes, if you zoom out to the entire country, welfare fraud is a thing that occurs but the rate of it's occurrence is absurdly low, and moreover, the ones that do occur are far from living high on the hog off the public dole. There is NO evidence for any of that shit but it was all the conservatives banged on for for literal decades as they slashed the social safety nets to tatters and added more and more disgusting means testing and restrictions to what little benefits were left.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    Right, this was sort of the point I made in another comment here. I know that a solid safety net will result in some freeloading. But when I trade off the negatives of the limited freeloading that I believe will occur against the massive benefits of a population that is healthy, fed, housed, secure ... there's just no contest. If I have to pay a tiny bit extra because a few people are scamming the system, I frankly don't care, and I certainly don't advocate for the destruction of the entire system because of it.

cenazoic 3y ago

I understand what you’re saying, but I would suggest this is exactly the ‘banality of evil’ Hannah Arendt wrote about.

_nalply 3y ago
True. It's banally evil, but real war is just a lot worse.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

The reason is seems fair to refer to it somewhat metaphorically as a war is this: you don't have to go back far in US (or human) history to find a time when the existence of poverty was view as a failure of the system. That is, poor people begging in the streets reflected on the economic and social systems, and reflected badly. Somehow, as the US became rich enough and successful enough to end all of that, we switched the narrative. Today, poverty is a personal failure, the result of bad decision making, lax moral standards, lack of sufficient entrepeneurial spirit etc. We've switched from "fighting poverty" to "fighting poor people who are fucking things up for the rest of us".

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
As with most things, we can blame Reagan and the political movement that shaped him. The aggression against people who need help has direct roots to Reagan's (in)famous welfare queen talking points, that were mirrored overseas with Thatcher and her ilk. This myth of these (not stated but implied to be) black women who were having all these children and cashing government checks to live a luxurious lifestyle. And like, yes, if you zoom out to the entire country, welfare fraud is a thing that occurs but the rate of it's occurrence is absurdly low, and moreover, the ones that do occur are far from living high on the hog off the public dole. There is NO evidence for any of that shit but it was all the conservatives banged on for for literal decades as they slashed the social safety nets to tatters and added more and more disgusting means testing and restrictions to what little benefits were left.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  Right, this was sort of the point I made in another comment here. I know that a solid safety net will result in some freeloading. But when I trade off the negatives of the limited freeloading that I believe will occur against the massive benefits of a population that is healthy, fed, housed, secure ... there's just no contest. If I have to pay a tiny bit extra because a few people are scamming the system, I frankly don't care, and I certainly don't advocate for the destruction of the entire system because of it.