April 30 2021
How do you piss off a Republican? That’s easy. Ask him to wear a mask, to potentially save the lives of people he may come in contact with. Ask him to get vaccinated against COVID 19, part of a nation-wide effort that could save a hundred-thousand lives or more.
Tell him he can’t go to the beach or a restaurant or a bar, to avoid spreading a deadly virus among the other people he would find there.
Spend tax dollars, which he was forced to contribute to, on helping poor people to not die, helping jobless people not become homeless, helping homeless people not freeze to death, helping refugees from other countries find safety.
Allow gay people the same rights that straight people have always had. Make special accommodations so that minorities are allowed to share the benefits that white straight Republicans are already getting.
See how easy it is? Just ask them to do something, anything, for someone who’s not them, and they turn livid. Republicans become enraged whenever they’re asked to endure even the slightest inconvenience to help someone else.
Republicans have made a political stance out of being selfish. It’s their God-given right as Americans to be selfish, and if you suggest helping anyone else to achieve the same things they were blessed with by virtue of being born to a white mother in America, stand by for a foot-stomping, fist-shaking, vitriol-filled temper tantrum.
When we’re children, we start out completely self-centered, and we have to be taught to consider the feelings and needs of others. We use our reason and our empathy to overcome our instinctive selfishness. We learn to accept that there are other people in the world whose right to exist is just as important as our own.
But some of us never learn that lesson. Some of us grow up resenting every concession we are forced, through peer pressure, common decency or law, to make for others. Some of us grow up to be Republicans.