You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it, we’ve all seen it. It’s minimising to call it schadenfreude when it’s really more like mörderfreude or something.
I just saw a video of a progressive reacting with glee at someone telling them a story about an (alleged) Trump supporter who is reliant on the Affordable Care Act in the US to be able to access healthcare. The story goes that he voted for Trump in part because he promised to get rid of “Obamacare”, oblivious to the fact that this is the buzzword used to refer to the ACA upon which he relies, because (and this is where it strays into being exaggeration or apocryphal) Democrats bad, Obamacare bad, I hate Obamacare and I hate Obama.
The story continues and the narrator does the big reveal - you just voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and now you won’t be able to access the healthcare that you rely upon. The person reacting to this story shows increasing amounts of joy as it unfolds and, at the reveal, is gleeful and toasts the camera, taking a big gulp of their drink.
Many such cases, I get it, but it just blows my mind that:
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They didn’t recognise it as a failure of the US political system that a person could vote so hard against their own interests
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They assume that they democrats are on the right side of history and that they serve the best interests of the average person
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They didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that maybe Kamala could have run on a platform of “He’s taking your healthcare away - vote for me if you want to live” and won but her team failed so egregiously by not communicating this idea effectively
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They also have 4 years of Trump to deal with - they and their loved ones are also in the same situafion but they’re acting like it isn’t a big deal; they and everyone they care about is in the same queue for the slaughterhouse and yet they haven’t figured out which way the line is moving because they’re too distracted by the grisly excuse for “entertainment” which is happening ahead of them
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They would rather convince themselves that they have the correct opinion than to win or for there to be access to healthcare
These people are so smug and impotent and filled with ressentiment yet they have zero shame or self-awareness. Assuming this story is true and not just erotic fanfiction for the sadistic progressive, which is a very good possibility, where is their outrage about all this? A person who is politically naive, who is presented as being below average intelligence, who is duped by the vile bourgeois media and a despicable political system which is a grim mockery of democracy is, at the least, going to end up very unwell—if not homeless or even dead—and this scumbag is happily putting on their dancing shoes in anticipation of being able to celebrate when this person gets put in the ground??
You failed. Your team failed. Your system failed. Your democracy failed. And because of this consistent and ongoing series of failures, you hear that a person is going to suffer tremendously and probably even die but your response is to celebrate? This is some utterly depraved shit.
The next time a progressive claims to be left wing I’m not going to dispute it, I’m going to agree and tell them “Yes - the left wing of fascism.” The only consolation is that it’s shit like this which only serves to accelerate the collapse of the US, but it’s very meagre consolation indeed.
I don’t think it’s a libbed up take but I can give you the boilerplate lib-brained “rational self-interest” ethics response, which is just a variation on their answer to “Why would you support free education if you don’t have any kids yourself?” with that answer being that we all benefit from a society where people have access to this, even if it doesn’t benefit us or our loved ones directly; those people getting an education are your colleagues and neighbours and friends and everyone else in society so an educated population (or a healthy one) benefits us as individuals, if only indirectly. I don’t need to point to the ongoing pandemic or previous ones to help you extend this analogy just slightly further for a real-world example of why this also applies to health. I don’t think this is the ideal basis for justifying universal healthcare but if that’s what it takes to shake people out of their edgy Ayn Rand phase then so be it - it’s hard to argue against this point.
If you want to take a restorative justice approach then even the worst people to exist need good healthcare so they can repair some measure of the harm they have inflicted upon the world for as long as is possible.
If you want to take the most punitive approach to justice then even the worst people to exist need good healthcare so that their lives can be as long as possible in order to exact the most retribution from them because a swift death would be far too merciful for these people.
And if you’re going to provide good healthcare to the very worst people in the world then you’re kinda obligated to provide good healthcare to everyone else, at least if you’re going to be morally consistent about it.
Yeah I don’t know how to explain to people why they should care about other people in general and children in particular. I don’t have children and won’t be having them but I want my taxes to go to education because an educated populace benefits us all and because I care about children