Why are Republicans so cruel to the poor? Paul Ryans profound hypocrisy stands for a deeper problem

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/23/why-are-republicans-so-cruel-to-the-poor-paul-ryans-profound-hypocrisy-stands-for-a-deeper-problem/

Thursday, Mar 23, 2017 9:00 AM UTC
Why are Republicans so cruel to the poor? Paul Ryan’s profound hypocrisy stands for a deeper problem
Paul Ryan has dreamed of slashing Medicaid since his keg-party days — and that blithe hostility is widespread
Chauncey DeVega

snip//

Republicans like Ryan — along with the millionaires and billionaires who comprise Donald Trump’s Cabinet and inner circle — literally want to take food, shelter and health care away from poor people like Christa Patton. Today’s Republicans view these Americans as useless eaters to be disposed of by means both passive and active.

It is normal to feel aghast at and disgusted by the Republican Party’s war on the poor. The more challenging and perhaps even more disturbing task is to ask why today’s conservatives feel such antipathy, disregard and hostility towards poor and other vulnerable Americans. Certainly greed and a slavish devotion to a revanchist right-wing ideology are part of the answer. But they may not be sufficient

Conservatives are more likely to exhibit social dominance and bullying behavior. This is a function of their authoritarian tendencies. The election of Donald Trump exemplifies this phenomenon.

American political elites often use language that robs poor and other marginalized people of their individuality, humanity and dignity. This language also creates a type of social distance between “middle class” or “normal” Americans and the economically disadvantaged.

Conservatism is a type of motivated social cognition that by its very nature is hostile to those groups located on the lower rungs of the social hierarchy.

Conservatives are more likely than liberals or progressives to believe in what is known as the “just world fallacy,” where people who suffer misfortune are viewed as somehow deserving their fates. Conservatives are also more likely than liberals or progressives not to use systems-level thinking as a means of understanding that individuals do not exist separate and apart from society. Conservatives are also more likely to defend social inequality as “fair and legitimate.”

Social psychologists have shown that, in effect, poor people are invisible to the rich and upper classes.

snip//

But maybe there is hope. Americans must reinvigorate their social and political institutions across divides of race and class. This is the social glue that can be used to transcend the culture of cruelty that the Republican Party and the regime of neoliberal economics has imposed in the United States. Political messaging is critical: America should be a true “we the people” democracy that meets the needs of all people and not just those of the rich and the powerful. The Democratic Party must improve the way it communicates that vision to the American people.

Unfortunately, the Republican war on the poor is but one sign of the deep moral rot at the heart of American society. This crisis extends well beyond the election of Donald Trump and the cruelty both promised and so far enacted by his cadre and the Republican Party. If a society is judged by how it treats the most vulnerable and weak, America is a country in decline, a country whose citizens should be ashamed of their leaders — and, in some cases, ashamed of themselves.

[JHan]

1. It's a mix of ayn randism and Calvinism

[yallerdawg]

2. Money changes everything - the naked human psychological attraction to capitalism.

"I got mine - up yours!"

[world wide wally]

3. And poor people vote for them.

WTF?
My only question is how do they pull this off?

[Doreen]

4. That is true.

It makes me hate poor people and I am one of them just was not stupid enough to vote for Beelzebub.