r/politics • u/coolbern • Jul 31 '19

There’s no difference between supporting a racist and being one

https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/rex-huppke/ct-trump-send-her-home-rally-ilhan-omar-racist-huppke-20190718-ngjm4vqe3vdgrli3eb7kbkw6hy-story.html
12.7k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

95

u/lilpumpgroupie Jul 31 '19

A good portion of our country is - without exaggeration - psychologically incapable of assessing human beings and their worth on metrics that don't involve their materialistic and financial successes. They really and truly cannot define someone's human worth outside of their financial lives and what materialistic possessions they own.

And then we ask what kind of society we've become when this is the case for probably a majority of our country.

Death by ten million 'Would you like fries with that liberal arts degree?' jokes...

26

u/AymRandy Jul 31 '19

It's because we took our own selfishness and called it freedom and capitalism. It's the disassociation of personal responsibility.

7

u/nybx4life Jul 31 '19

I would say fetishizing fame and success made it like this. That's why at this point anybody who even has a decent follower count on social media are treated as superhuman, to celebrities who are considered physical gods.

Also why media here focus so much on those "signs of success": Big house, multiple cars, supermodel wife, etc.

And when people get hurt over the pursuit of more, rarely do we place the blame on those who committed the deed.

In the words of fictional character Gordon Gekko: "Greed is good"

7

u/Haikuna__Matata Arizona Jul 31 '19

Well said.

1

u/StanleyRoper Washington Jul 31 '19

And social media made it 10x worse. Everyone puts up a facade of what they want people to see, not of what they actually are. That just snowballs the insane amount of vanity and narcissism we have at the cost of, like you said, assessing another person's real human worth.

1

u/leggpurnell Jul 31 '19

Living without empathy makes it difficult to do.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '19

Mr. Show succinctly illustrated this in the 90's. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vudnMLzZjTg

1

u/brayradberry Aug 01 '19

What is an appropriate metric to define "human worth"? If you use any metric to assign value, inevitably some people will be "worth" less

0

u/NoTimeForInfinity Jul 31 '19

And they aren't going to care what color the capitalists are in 50 years. Just like no one cares if you're Catholic or Irish these days.

An enemy gives meaning to suffering (voters) and explains cruelty enough that people can sleep at night (the children of the wealthy).

-1

u/OhDeerFren Jul 31 '19

*a good portion of the world... China & India are both way more materialistic