You’re blaming the right wing media for ruining the country. Why not blame the people who consume the media. Don’t they bear responsibility? [/quote]
Everyone bears some responsibility for their choices. But I don’t think the choices that Rufus makes are informed in the way that you think they are. Which causes you to think that he’s making such stupid choices that he should be cast off and left to fend for himself.
You and I seem to disagree whether it’s ok or fair or moral to take somebody who makes stupid choices (that don’t intentionally hurt someone else) and leave them for dead/sick/poor . Not sure we’ll ever agree on that.
So let’s focus on why Rufus is making the choices he makes. Do you agree that, if we could get Rufus to make better choices and become a more productive member of society, we’d all be better off? If so, why wouldn’t we try to do that?
Most of us depend on the media in some way. Virtually anybody who wants to stay informed and make informed decisions relies on the media. Finding out for yourself what’s happening in the world is next to impossible. What if it turned out that the NYT and WAPO have been lying to us this whole time? What if they were nothing more than propagandists who want us to vote for unions and big government? Now, Brian, you and I might have a couple of advantages that allow us to see that fox is propaganda and NYT is not. We’re intelligent and, probably due largely to the environment in which we were raised, we’re educated and we pay attention. We didn’t earn our brains or our environment. Those aren’t choices we made. We had them when we were born. Another reason that we believe the NYT and not fox is that we aren’t surrounded by people who believe fox and think NYT is fake news. Which, at this point in our lives, might be a choice. But how we grew up mostly wasn’t.
So, you add up what we were given, and chances were always that we were going to lean towards the NYT and disbelieve fox. Key word being “given.” If you were given less brains, a family that didn’t emphasize education, a culture that told you guns were great, liberals are pansies, NYT is fake news, and fox is the only station to watch, how do you think you’d have turned out? Heck, even if you were smart, there’s less chance of you coming out of that environment educated and somewhat aware of what’s really happening.
To expect people like that to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and escape their poverty without any help or education is to be every bit as mean and selfish as republicans. The only difference is which disadvantaged group you want to remain disenfranchised.
And one of the chief disadvantages that faces Rufus’s demographic is the fact that they’re being disinformed by right-wing media.
We’ve had this argument before. This exact same one. Which is why I kinda rushed through writing this post. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
