Republican millionaires like U.S. speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan have long delighted in the idea of making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Ryan and his cohorts see nothing wrong in this government-aided inequity and use an assortment of dogmas to justify it. The “just world fallacy”, the “prosperity gospel”, and the belief in meritocracy are just a few of these misguided reasons.
Despite having received Social Security and making money off government contracts, Ryan has no problem working to ending “entitlement” programs and shrinking government, so long as that shrinkage comes at the expense of the poor. While such hypocrisy might seem both blatant and heartless, to conservatives it is neither.
This is because, regardless of the credo used to support their views, conservatives believe that the suffering of the poor is the way things ought to be. Such callousness is almost a requirement for conservatives, for without it they might be tempted to feel some empathy for those less well off than themselves.
While this might be at least understandable from a practical sense among the rich who want to justify their “right” to become richer at the expense of the poor, the greatest trick of all might be fooling the poor into believing such nonsense.
By claiming that hard work always equals prosperity, the poor are fooled by conservatives into thinking that only lazy people are poor. Of course reams of employment data show the poor work like dogs and do not suddenly become millionaires. This political prestidigitation is tantamount to tricking Jews into believing that Nazism would be beneficial to them.
However, in the plutocracy that is America, the unheard cries of the poor and disadvantaged are to be expected. Until the cruelty of Trump and the Republican Party are no longer tolerated, America will continue to represent all that is shameful in an “enlightened” society.