Well, this was no way to start the day...

[PCIntern]

Obviously, I’m going to leave names out of this, but I am just beyond upset.

When I was in dental school, we had about 160 people in our class from varying backgrounds and cultures as well as ages. One fellow came from a fairly elite New England private school, and was one of those achiever types who was not only in the top of the class, but was a somewhat gifted athlete. In addition to everything else, he was a scratch golfer, which is pretty impressive at any age. He was extremely opinionated, but spent most of his time doing his work. He was not involved in class activities , such as student government, clinical issues, class committees, yearbook, etc.

So you know how on Facebook they say you might know so-and-so? And there he was. I hadn’t thought of him in about 30 years, so I went over to see what he became, and what became of him. Well, I was not really prepared for the most vituperative hatred of all things progressive, Democratic, humanitarian, and the like. I know everyone here knows people like this. He posts photos of President Biden, and just excoriates every aspect of his persona, his politics, his mannerisms with the usual Fox-lies and near-Qanon “logic“. It was positively pornographic in a political sense .

The thing is, that for whatever he was, or wasn’t, I never saw him as a full-blown hater, which he has clearly become. And it occurred to me that if this guy “converted”, then I can understand why there are millions of others who are intellectually less well-equipped to deal with reality , who have gone over to the Darkside. This crowd is in fact beyond hope, and we have to pray in the upcoming elections that there are sufficient number of people with sane perspectives to carry the day.

Unfortunately, I am presently at work so I cannot take a shower, which I now desperately need…

[dlk]

1. Demographics are changing in our country

Those who have been privileged don’t take sharing with others very well. In many ways, it’s a pathology.

[marble falls]

2. I do not get the sense of victimhood a lot RW and priviliged people feel. Nothing ever in their ...

... life has gone wrong but they have rabid rants about less fortunates who have never impacted their lives ruining things for them.

[PCIntern]

5. I think that is an excellent point

You should write an OP with this thesis. You’ve given me a question to ask these people now in perpetuity. I thank you.

[marble falls]

6. You write beautiful essays and accounts, I ramble and grunt.

[PCIntern]

7. All I do is write what I feel

You, however, came up with an excellent point, which is rarely if ever mentioned. That in and of itself is profound and remarkable and you should not be self-denigrating.

[marble falls]

8. From you, I consider this high compliment, thank you from my heart.

[ret5hd]

9. For the slower among us...

would you please articulate the question/point you now will ask/bring up?

[Geechie]

24. Just to jump in here

My version of what I think the OP writer would ask is, bluntly, “Who hurt you?”

[marble falls]

25. "What exactly has happened to you that threatened your lifestyle?" or ...

"What personal interaction have you ever had with those you condemn? How has it really affected your life?"

[ret5hd]

34. TY

[hatrack]

55. "Can you show us on the doll where the immigrants/minorities/LGBTQ/liberals/atheists hurt you?"

[musclecar6]

13. Great thread

It’s been my experience that doctors, dentist and airline pilots are all in a similar position. They are highly regarded by society for their professional expertise, as the health and safety of their patients and passengers are at stake. As a result, these professionals due to the nature of their occupation, are the captain of their own ship. If anything goes wrong in the procedure, flight, etc. all eyes turn to them because they are the one. It’s a high responsibility that they all typically handle very well in a professional manner.

That said, somehow, they transfer their deep knowledge and experience and skill set over to anything else you want to talk about and somehow some of them think they’re an expert on any of those topics. Especially when it comes to politics. The reason politics are so ingrained in their thought process is that they don’t have the normal interaction in society that many others do. Their spouse/partner may do that, but they may disregard them and waltz off thinking they’ve got it all figured out. When they are at the office, airplane, etc. they are the king/queen about everything. Everyone defers to them as a natural course of business.

As a result, they go roaring off, sometimes shooting their mouth off about everything they know nothing about. They may just turn into a bunch of opinionated assholes about other things, especially politics, so it’s not surprising that your fellow classmate from back in the day went flying down that rabbit hole of nonsense that he absolutely believes in.
Nobody tells him he’s full of shit on a regular basis, when it comes to politics.

[mn9driver]

23. Airline pilots do have their share of wingnuts.

When I was flying, the first day or two of working with someone new always involved figuring out what topics were going to be safe to talk about. More often than not, I crossed “politics” off the list.

To their credit, most of them took the hint and we talked about other things. Political arguments on the flight deck are never good.

[musclecar6]

30. I'm sure

You can relate to this. Back in the day when I was flying there was an election coming up for the president of the country and I said to one of the guys who I knew was a Republican that I was going to vote for the democrat candidate. He asked why? I said we’re all in the union, correct ? He said, of course. So I said, as we know, the Democrats are all pro union and the Republicans are anti-union. So I’m voting for the Democrat because that’s in my own best interest. He really didn’t have anything to say about that so the conversation went on to something else.

I was active in the pilot’s union and at one time an LEC chairman and negotiating committee, grievance rep etc. Most airline pilots vote Republican, even though they’re all in the union and very happy to enjoy all the benefits of being in a union, such as salary, retirement, grievance procedures, and a multitude of other benefits so I could never understand. why would they vote Republican. One day my lightbulb clicked on and I realized oh yeah they’re just a bunch of fucking hypocrites, they’re happy to take all the benefits the union provides yet they go and vote against their own self interest for Republicans because they’re a bunch of cheap fucks and want to save on the taxes. Nice guys but cheap.

[True Blue American]

51. Union members but they vote against their own.

This is what gets me. I have watched the Country deteriorate because of this mentality. Silly complaints about Union dues, etc. never understanding it was those Unions, older members picketing to get benefits.

I am a member of that union that built the economy and watched it fall apart because of selfishness, ignorance.

Retired many years that Union has done all kinds of things for me through the GM debacle and am proud to say I still pay Union dues voluntarily and have my Union sticker up on the window of my car.
Let us start with the Union members who treasonably voted against Unions.

[jaxexpat]

20. My experience with "privileged" people is that they are, at their core, gullible.

That is a state from which inevitably springs disappointment and hurtful surprise. But when life is a merry-go-round, one only has to grab the golden ring and, voila, the POV changes. Easy come, easy go and the easiest choice in victimhood is placing blame on others. So it goes, the first step onto a dark path. The other option is to adopt cynicism, but that takes more intellectual horsepower and leaves less time for self-indulgence.

[BumRushDaShow]

31. Keep in mind the old adage "Keeping up with the Joneses"?

Remember that folks like that are not comparing their lot in life with the lower rungs but with the rungs of society that they believe they belong to (and higher).

So if they are not able to maintain their "status" within that envisioned rung nor are able to "move up" a notch, they "blame" everyone underneath them for dragging them down and rail against them instead of against the people they aim to join. It's the core of "classicism" and "class warfare".

And as an interesting learning of the day by me, that term apparently came into the "modern lexicon" and was popularized by an old comic strip that used the term as its strip name (which makes sense) -



The metaphor had been used even well before that.

[marble falls]

32. Not a problem out here. There's a lot of hole in the britches millionaires out here. My uncle Bill..

... wears an old frayed red and black checked hunting shirt with a diaper pin for a missing button almost every day while sporting a $30K Rolex on his wrist. Ain't nobody keeping him from buying a bigger boat or another Cessna.

The quiet old lady downstairs buys Corvettes for her grand children and wears old house dresses all day.

Do not get any of these people started on Q, TFG, 'messicans', 'coloreds', Democrats or any Biden.

[BumRushDaShow]

33. It's all how they perceive themselves...

And their rants become an easy "solution" to salve their lack of self-worth and cover for their inability to "get what they want" merely through a sense of entitlement, instead of actually working for it.

[Justice]

56. Very much agree, but don't focus on "nothing ever in their lives has gone wrong"

Wealthy, privileged people and victimhood might have challenges and bad experiences. For me, its all about what they take from that experience. What they learn from the challenges. Do they come away saying, I made it, anyone can. Or do they remain deeply grateful to those that helped them and want others to have similar opportunities and paths to be able to be successful in their own way

I think of people like Senator Tim Scott who had many thing go wrong in his early life. Parents divorced, raised by mother and her parents. Very much struggled financially. He was apparently strong football player but car accident destroyed his ability to get good scholarship (although he did get one). Terrible student.

Lots of things went wrong for him. But he had a few things go right - met a few people who helped him, had opportunity and took advantage of it.

Now he thinks because he made it, anyone can and we shouldn't talk about disparity and discrimination anymore. That's just nuts.

To me, if you are wealthy and/or successful, the most important lesson is realizing you didn't do it alone - that people, your family, the community helped you. It's important to make sure other people have access to people and a community that can help them as well.

[marble falls]

57. I am not adressing the Tim Scotts. They are the minority of the upper middle class and upper ...

... class of RWers. I think Barack Obama addressed them very well, "you didn't build that ..."


"You didn't build that" is a phrase from a 2012 election campaign speech delivered by United States President Barack Obama on July 13, 2012, in Roanoke, Virginia. In the speech, Obama stated, "Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that." The sentence "If you've got a business, you didn't build that" was publicized by his political opponents during the 2012 presidential campaign, as an attack by Obama on business and entrepreneurs.[1][2][3] The Obama campaign responded that the criticisms were taking the phrase out of context, and the word "that" in the phrase was referring to the construction of "roads and bridges" in the previous sentence.[4]

[no_hypocrisy]

3. I get it.

I watched my father morph from a supporter of Adlai Stevenson to a MAGA before it was MAGA.

It was intolerable to listen to him spew the garbage he had heard on FOX "News", constantly. He'd be positively giddy with the ability to bash progressive democratic policies by Obama. Mind you, he achieved his upper middle class status through democratic policies made possible by the New Deal: the GI Bill that got him his medical school tuition, his mortgage; the ability to remove the restrictive covenant on the property he bought (No Jews, no "Coloreds" unless they were domestic help and left the town by 5:00).

I almost hated him at the end.

[Joinfortmill]

16. I hear you

[marble falls]

28. When I was 14 my father came home all fired up about the black revolution and made me ...

... stand guard with my .410 shotgun (small kid, small bore) to fight off the n...... marauders that were on their way to loot our neighborhood, expected that night at any moment. He had a .45 APC and an M-1 Garand carbine. He told me to save my last two shells for my sister and mother.

This crazy change came about in just five years and then amazingly when we moved to Houston, he threatened his local bank when they wouldn't cash his black and Hispanic workers pay checks or give them car loans.

He remained racist, but he seemed to love and respect all the individuals. And he stopped drinking literally overnight at 50.

[EYESORE 9001]

4. Perhaps he had one foot in the dark side even then

Affluence can instill that attitude of, ‘I got mine. Eff you.’ That attitude makes one susceptible to RW propaganda and CT.

[SouthernDem4ever]

10. I know a lot of these types

I used to be able to relate to them by just avoiding topics but they have become too weird and radicalized for me to even consider dealing with them any longer. I have cut a lot of ties.

[hauckeye]

11. I'm always disappointed when people I know turn out to be haters

[jaxexpat]

22. There should be a support group for them/us.

Maybe Buddhism or hedonism. One could mix-n-match. It's important, I think, not to embrace disappointment.

[Blues Heron]

12. He is getting it from somewhere - the professional propaganda these days is effective

Professional propaganda is designed to suck people in and manipulate them. If they are even slightly predisposed to that side, its like standing in front of a jet engine - there is almost nothing you can do to resist- you wil be sucked in and the end result can be as bad as Rwanda was - that was almost entirely orchestrated by professional propaganda over the radio.

[Joinfortmill]

14. I suspect this dude is an elitist, a snob, a dictator type.

I had a primary care doc who was similar. Left the Hippocratic Oath in tatters.I think they forced him to retire.

[70sEraVet]

15. I go thru that shock every time i try to reconnect with an old shipmate that i had thought well of.

Veterans seem to be especially vulnerable to turning embittered.
Right-wing talk radio seems to be a common factor. I don't know if it is a symptom, or one of the leading causes of that illness.

[ecstatic]

17. I was thinking yesterday, their side doesn't outnumber us

If they did, President Obama would have never been elected the first time, much less a second time. The voters that get out of line at times are voters within our own umbrella. We have to make sure they have all the facts before the next election.

[Sky Jewels]

39. And every year four million Gen Zers become eligible to vote.

Three million older people -- Gen Xers, Boomers, Silents, and a few Greatests -- die. The people born in the 1920s-70s seem much more susceptible to rightwing propaganda delivered through old school technologies like radio and television. I'm not saying every Millennial and Gen Zer is progressive, but (yes, as a huge generalization) they are much more liberal and savvy about propaganda than those of us born in the early/mid 20th century.

[617Blue]

18. My brother is now blaming "woke" for his problems

every time I'm on the phone with him he starts in on "woke." I just go silent. He's toast. Another one lost to Fox etc...

[progressoid]

37. Yep. This will probably be a common theme for the next election.

If the economy continues to improve, they will have a hard time using that against us. So it will be "wokeness."

And let's not forget their favorites, "law and order" and "illegal immigrants."

[True Blue American]

52. Blame everyone but me.

[orthoclad]

19. People say that the hate is

just being exposed, like turning over a rock, but that's not what's happening.

We're in a positive feedback loop, where the rage, fear, and hate and feeding on each other and amplifying the noise. It's become a self-replicating machine, fed by the rich and powerful.

The limbic emotions like hate, fear, and rage have always been with us, but the astroturfing campaign during Obama kicked it into high gear and started the positive feedback. Disgusting people are making large fortunes from amplifying it, an investment return from the seed money.

[Stargazer99]

38. You would be amazed how many people cannot see what you have

it takes intellegence not emotion to analyze what you are being fed

[orthoclad]

49. The majority of human behavior is emotional

Love of family and tribe
Fear of the outsider
Rage, for whatever
etc.

I'm personally not amazed by this, but often disgusted, and sometimes frightened.
(these are all emotions)

Denying our animal nature gets us in trouble. We're not Vulcans. We're predators.

[vlyons]

21. Anger and hatred are bad habits, like smoking or gambling

They become so entrenched that people just automatically respond with anger and hatred over and over, whenever something unpleasant comes their way. This guy has obviously never examined his very own mind to discover what's under all that anger and hatred.

Anger and hatred don't bring any happiness, peace of mind, or loving kindness into the world. They just create more suffering. That guy is not a happy man. I'm a Buddhist and am taught to have compassion for all sentient beings equally. Yes even the most disagreeable and unpleasant assholes. They especially need our compassion, because they don't realize that they are the creators of their own unhappiness. All that habitual anger and hatred just keeps them stuck in suffering and unhappiness.

Everyday I contemplate the following 4 Immeasurable Thoughts. They really help me to stay sane and grounded in the presence of ugly and stupid people.

May all beings be free of suffering and free of the causes and conditions of suffering.
May all beings be happy and have all the causes and conditions for happiness.
May all beings know the joy of appreciating the success, happiness, and well beings of others.
May all beings rest in the equanimity and peace of mind of no attachments and no aversions.

[CarlYasutomo]

50. Beautiful and very well said! nt

[Siwsan]

26. I had a similar thing happen with a high school crush

We got back in touch when I was helping to plan a class reunion. He lived in Pacific Beach, CA. I used to visit family in LA 3 to 4 times a year so we'd made plans to meet up.

Things were great, at first. He, my brother and my sister in law would meet up and go surfing. Everything seemed great. And then he started voicing some pretty uncomfortable opinions, and chiding us for ours. So the request was made to keep politics out of the relationships but he just got worse. He got to be pretty insulting and thought it humorous that we found what he was saying to be offensive.

We all ended up deleting him from our lives. My SIL had to block him because he kept jumping on her FB page, trying to start arguments.

[hunter]

27. Trump convinced the deplorables that they could be themselves in public.

Unfortunately about a third of the population is deplorable.

About half the population suffers anti-intellectual religious beliefs and ideologies that celebrate ignorance, scientific illiteracy, and innumeracy. They may be able to read and write, but most of what they read and write is crap.

There's quite a bit of overlap between the two groups.

I've run into too many old classmates who wear their avarice, ignorance, racism, and misogyny with pride. I'm never polite, I never let them go away unchallenged.

Yep, I still think Ronald Reagan was an empty-headed meat puppet who would do or say anything for a blow job. And I refuse your invitation to tour his filthy tomb. (Paraphrasing a true story. My actual language may not have been so polite, something about a good location for a squat toilet. I might pay thirty dollars for that. Alas, pay toilets are illegal in California.)

After such encounters these former classmates will back away nervously, maybe muttering, "Heh, that Hunter guy, still just as crazy as ever."

I know a surprising number of people who once pretended to be hippies and other sorts of leftists. But when I look back they were just tie-dye wearing pot smoking conservatives. They may have been eating granola instead of bacon for breakfast but they still thought their women should be at home barefoot and pregnant and they were completely oblivious to the fact that they enjoyed social privileges that their queer, black, and brown "friends" did not.

[yonder]

42. +1. Really a good post.

I admire your direct reproach to the clueless foghorn folks who too often intersect our paths. I'm a bit more timid myself.

Thanks also for the new word (to me): innumeracy. I came close on the meaning thinking it was more of a specific inability to do maths where it is closer to an inability to apply those specifics to reasoning. Something like that.

[hunter]

48. I grew up in a community that was 99% straight white Christian by the advertising.

There's now a multi million dollar prosperity gospel megachurch in that town to support these fools.

You couldn't go wrong buying a house there.

My parents did buy a house there, and they sold it at a profit moving on to greater things. My parents are Hollywood liberal artists. They met in Hollywood as artists with day jobs. We always lived wherever their day jobs took them. Much as there are Army brats (my dad's childhood) there are Hollywood brats.

Other than the year my parents ran off to Europe with woefully inadequate funding. We lived as indigent Americans for a while in a French public park. There I experienced one of the worst public toilets on the planet earth.

I suspect my parents would have stayed in Europe had the Vietnam war not ended, no longer a threat to me and my brothers. My parents are pacifists. My dad was a pacifist in the Korean war. They made him a Walter "Radar" O'Reilly medical clerk. By the luck of the draw he never landed in Korea. My wife's pacifist dad had a similar experience, but was used as a guinea pig in open air atomic bomb testing. He got to witness an atomic bomb blast up close and got marched towards ground zero as everything still burning all around and the mushroom cloud was still rising in the sky.

My high school experience was "Lord of the Flies" which is why I quit high school at the tender age of sixteen because I was a bit queer in a Wednesday Addams autistic spectrum kind of way. I was tired of the ritual beatings.

My first serious girlfriend was very seriously goth, before goth was a thing. She thought Eraserhead would be a great date movie. She was also a bad ass dykes-on-bikes lesbian and still is from what I hear, but neither she nor I knew that at the time. Our relationship was rather like the David Lynch version of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" but I broke it off by jumping out of her moving car, leaving a lot of my skin and blood on a street in Berkeley.

I like math.

I've got a university degree that demonstrates I was, at the very least, somewhat competent in the art.

[yonder]

58. For me, I was born and raised in a working class Denver neighborhood...

...when we weren't following our Air Force dad around the world. I hated the constant moving back and forth at the time, but as I got older, realized just how valuable that exposure to other people, places and cultures really was. I wouldn't trade it for a thing and it allowed me to escape and temper the conservative/religious mindset of people who "have it all figured out" but in reality are just STUCK.

[3catwoman3]

29. Someone I refer to as a former friend is a woman I have known...

…since we were 8. I am now 72. We were good friends thru high school, and lost touch after I finished nursing school and began the first of several moves. She stayed in our hometown.

On Facebook, she regularly posts statements from assorted sources about the importance of tolerance, which sound very enlightened. Then, sometimes on the same day, she will post the most hostile comments about progressives, filled with hate and judgement. Some years ago, she used the term “libtards” in one of her posts. I remember thinking, “Gee, I wonder if Peg knows she’s talking about me.”

She’s heavy duty into the Bible and fundie Christianity, and has no tolerance for other belief frameworks, despite posting things about tolerance. Hr religious beliefs are the only true ones.

I don’t know how she reconciles these very disparate outlooks.

We no longer have anything in common, and are not in touch.

[Grins]

35. I can match you even to the degree of profession!

My college roommate who became a dentist. Same thing. A MAGA and true believer.

[LittleGirl]

40. Same thing happened to my classmates

They never left my hometown and became total trumpers. It’s sad.

[Joe Nation]

41. For these people there is but one motivation

$$$$$$$$

Simple as that.

[kimbutgar]

43. I had a friend who got in the cult and we are no longer friends

She became hateful and attacked minorities while she was married to a Hawaiian man and has three sons who are brown. She divorced the father of her sons and got involved with an extreme magaloon. It’s sad how the orange maggot has divided family and friends. I didn’t like Bush but at least we could talk to each other. I saw this video on the good liars of this guys who has totally gone off the deep end. I don’t know if we’ll ever get these people back or turned off of the romance maggot.


https://www.tiktok.com/@thegoodliars/video/7246864450731511082?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7248326080880723498

[Skittles]

44. yes

this is why I say we need to concentrate on people who don't vote, and write off anyone who still supports repukes

[RANDYWILDMAN]

45. Facebook allowed the haters to really show their HATE !

I found a lot of people , I thought I knew in high school, through Facebook showed me who they really are.

[yardwork]

46. I'm so sorry. This has happened to some of my old friends, too.

[electric_blue68]

47. Oh, that's a Nasty Turn of events so to speak...

However I have read articles that point out you can have a higher, high intellect and still love authoritarianism etc
.

so sorry though what a shock!

[shrike3]

53. Sounds like some of my classmates.

One in particular led a smooth and easy life, beginning when he was young. Most popular guy in school, into everything, homecoming king, etc., etc. He was a nice guy back then. Never let it go to his head. Nice pretty much to everyone, even peons like me. Now, though. Like you, I discovered his views on Facebook. Blew my mind.

[Mysterian]

54. Some people, even intelligent people, have a blown fuse somewhere

which makes them especially susceptible to propaganda that supports their twisted world view.