re: #384 The Ghost of Senator Incitatus

The thing I keep seeing people not get:

The just-so story that buoys the GOP is that race and economics intersect whenever you have to explain a failure of capitalism and/or government to meet their constituents. Whenever white people struggle, the “answer” their culture provides is not that the system is flawed or being exploited by the wealthy, but that “others”—African Americans and foreign brown people are cheating and taking away what is rightfully

Whether its job retention, insurance, the stock market, or business failure, the immediately-available explanation is: there was a stab in the back.

The other side of the same coin is that the “right” kinds of people can do no wrong, and cannot err, so when a market collapses or there’s fraud or other shady dealings, it’s not their fault because they either deserve to do it (because it’s pushback versus the stab-in-the-back) or because the people affected deserve it (because they’re a priori undeserving).

A rich guy, a WWC guy, and The Other are in a room. Somebody brings in 100 cookies. The rich guy takes 98 of them, then whispers to the WWC, “That Other guy wants your cookie”.