A Texas county devastated by deadly flooding earlier this month rejected federal funds in 2021 that could have helped install a flood warning system, with local officials and residents arguing they didn’t want to be “bought” by the Biden administration.
I… what? “We don’t want your stinking money. We’ll still take it tho… We just won’t spend it on what we said we would. That’ll show you dumb idgits!”
This is extremely common rightoid behavior, even at a personal level.
Make a big outward show of being independent, self-made, wholly responsible for your own success…
… and the reality almost always is that this person is in fact getting subsidies or assistance or help from a wealthy friend or family member, but, they’re lying about this, and very often mismanaging the money, which is ‘ok’ in their minds, because ‘nobody knows’ that money even exists.
…
Every Republican voter who is on welfare, but hates everyone else on welfare.
Every Republican business owner who gloats about being successful all thanks to themselves publically, but privately, amongst close friends, laughs about how good they are at manipulating their taxes or legal business structure so that they can get as many tax breaks and subsidies as possible.
Or, the ‘dumbass’ variant of that:
I’m a big tough hard blue collar worker who works real hard and real tough, and thats the right way to have a life and make a living… wait, what? That only even kind of works if the corporation I work for gets massive tax breaks and subsidies, or my own company gets tons of Federal grants and subsidies and tax breaks directly? I thought that was the free market?!
Also every ‘entrepreneur wunderkid’ story that ultimately boils down to: daddy gave me a whole lot of money and also knew a whole bunch of key figures in relevant industries.
… every mega church pastor that is very obviously fleecing their impoverished flock, but claims that they are so wealthy because god loves them so much.
… every rightwing raido talkshow host / podcaster who gloats about how successful their business is, but never mentions that they get a massive, stupidly large amount of money from wealthy right wing individuals and/or lobbying groups/think tanks… or by selling scam health products, scam financial products, etc… or, more recently, just literally gets directly funded by Russia’s FSB.
…
It is literally a core tenet of being a Republican that you lie and gaslight about where your money comes from, or at bare minimum be just actually so stupid that you don’t even realize where your money comes from, so I guess those ones arguably not intentionally lying… they’re just actually too stupid to be trusted with any kind of non rote task.
Like it is essentially impossible to be a Republican and not do this. Its a fundamental aspect to their personalities.
Hence why it is just a social faux pas to even have a frank and transparent discussion about finances with them, and why they get so blustered snd indignant when the idea of ‘fiscal responsibility’ is applied onto them, instead of just projected outward as a demeaning attack on everyone else.
Thats my 2 cents anyway, from having grown up in a rightoid, fundamentalist family. Of course this behavior is not unique to Republicans, but it is essentially a mandatory requirement of being a Republican.
Well said. I also grew up in a ‘rightoid’ family and can confirm.
I would also add that they tend correlate wealth as a sign of intelligence and hold wealthy people in the highest esteem.
They also try to emulate wealthy people via conspicuous consumption, creating an outward illusion of wealth and success. I have a family member on section 8 who buys luxury goods to lord their ‘success’ over their friends and neighbors. It’s absolutely mind blowingly insane.
This is the particularly infuriating/hilarious part.
Here’s a graph from a 2016 meta-analysis of what contributes more to your mid/late life overall socioeconomic status, the general wealth of your society (shared environment, C), your particular wealth and social status at birth/childhood (nonshared environment, E) or, your assessed IQ (genes, A).
This is for the US, and measures variance, the variability of how important those factors are.
As you can clearly see, red line go up.
What this means is that the wealthier you are, the more of a total crapshoot it is whether you are a genius or a moron.
Reality is the exact opposite of how idiot rightoids believe it to be, and how the smarter ones project onto everyone else as a means of social control / gaslighting / propagandizing:
The correlation between wealth and intelligence gets markedly worse, the wealthier a person you are looking at.
(I can find the link for the paper again if you wanna read through it, be warned though it is pretty stats heavy)
It would be really swell if those people would then blame the correct persons or instances… but you just know they’re going to blame the dems or the libs or w/e. Post-truth society and all that.
We don’t take kindly to your kind around here
- skeeter from south park
They don’t want federal money…
Where exactly do they think money comes from in the first place?
Blue states, mostly.