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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
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Author: Umm 🐝  😊 😞
Number: of 84353 
Subject: Re: A Master Class in Messaging
Date: 07/13/24 6:23 AM
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"Actually had a friend who was part of the armed group that took up position in the Lansing Capitol. Lost a lot of respect for him, as he has pretty much lived his entire adult life
on SSI disability. He wanted to be part of an armed show of force on the Government, which was then and is still now paying 100% of his living expenses. He wanted to be part of a group that overthrew the government that was keeping him alive, lol, still have trouble wrapping my head around that."


It all comes down to blame.

Most people don't envision themselves living off of SSI. Most people imagine the best version of themselves being smart, wealthy, and successful. Especially the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" crowd. They should be all of those things. So reality hits and they are not any of those things. They aren't smart, wealthy or successful. They are living off of SSI which means they are barely scraping by. They are driving beater cars and eating at Applebee's once a month for their nice night out. Meanwhile they see on TV people living much better than they are by driving nice cars and eating nicer food.

Why is that?

They were supposed to be smart, wealthy and successful but they are living off of SSI? They can either accept that life dealt them a bad hand, and/or maybe they made some bad choices, but that goes against human nature. So they get people like Trump and the GOP who get them to blame others. If it wasn't for Biden and the evil Democrats encouraging immigrants to come to this country and take their jobs, they would have been smart wealthy and successful. It is Biden's fault. Then once that gets ingrained, it is an easy hop for some corporate interest like to Koch brothers to ingrain in their minds that criminal immigrants and lazy Black people are holding them back by sucking up so much welfare money that everyone is taxed to death and cannot get ahead.

It doesn't matter that they are on Welfare. If some con man can sell them a story that they are being held back by welfare for someone "lower" than them, they will gladly think welfare is a scam.

Human nature.
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This community has written 84,309 posts about US Policy. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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