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Bill O’Reilly’s Attack On Beto O’Rourke Backfires Spectacularly

It is telling that folks on the Right seem to be so oblivious to hard times many Americans truly have to endure. I remember Bill was one of those guys who pushed on FOX News this notion that poverty doesn't really exist in America because almost everyone has a microwave oven and a VCR. Yes, we need a man who spends tens of millions on sexual assault settlements to explain for us what true poverty is.

And now here he is doubt that such a woman as this even truly exists.

Republicans aren't happy unless the poor are actually suffering visibly. It's the only way they know how to feel good about themselves: contrast. That's why locking people in cages it's such a good GOP policy. It keeps the base happily distracted.

If poor people have microwaves, they aren't suffering enough (or at least, it's harder to tell).

Perfume on my Mind wrote:If poor people have microwaves, they aren't suffering enough (or at least, it's harder to tell).

Some few decades ago, I had a conversation with a family member, a woman married to a very rich lawyer. She was clearly somewhat concerned about the high unemployment in certain areas where older industries were collapsing and leaving whole communities desolate. In what was apparently an effort to reassure herself, she said to me:

"But <Chap>, they've all got colour televisions haven't they?".

Microwaves were not yet widespread.

And that's the way it usually is.

Very rich people do sometimes let themselves worry about poor people in their own society. But in order not to keep feeling bad, they often get into the habit of satisfying themselves with very weak reasons for saying that poor people don't have really serious problems to cope with, since in societies such as ours they are unlikely to be starving.

(I'm not talking about the kind of people who simply blame the poor for being poor. Being rich does not make most people into callous monsters, even if they do begin to want to forget about those not so lucky as themselves.)