A friend sent me the following post. One can only believe what she is saying if we discount the conditions of a large swath of Americans. Sadly, few will see her severe lack of empathy.
Please read the entire piece in the Facebook post and my response.
This is the manifestation of the lack of empathy
If you are fearful that the new generation of voters don’t get it, read this article written by Alyssa Ahlgren. I think her analysis of why they think the way they do is exactly correct.
“I’m sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of Democratic candidates calling for policies to “fix” the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook’s, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we’ve become completely blind to it. Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose. These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don’t give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty. One. Times. Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful.
Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, “An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity.”
Never saw American prosperity. Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I’ve ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Now, I’m not attributing Miss Ocasio-Cortez’s words to outright dishonesty. I do think she whole-heartedly believes the words she said to be true. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let’s just say I didn’t have the popular opinion, but I digress.
Let me lay down some universal truths really quick. The United States of America has lifted more people out of abject poverty, spread more freedom and democracy, and has created more innovation in technology and medicine than any other nation in human history. Not only that but our citizenry continually breaks world records with charitable donations, the rags to riches story is not only possible in America but not uncommon, we have the strongest purchasing power on earth, and we encompass 25% of the world’s GDP. The list goes on. However, these universal truths don’t matter. We are told that income inequality is an existential crisis (even though this is not an indicator of prosperity, some of the poorest countries in the world have low-income inequality), we are told that we are oppressed by capitalism (even though it’s brought about more freedom and wealth to the most people than any other system in world history), we are told that the only way we will acquire the benefits of true prosperity is through socialism and centralization of federal power (even though history has proven time and again this only brings tyranny and suffering).
Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they’ve never seen prosperity, and as a result, elect politicians dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism. Why? The answer is this, my generation has ONLY seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn’t live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, or see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don’t know what it’s like not to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don’t have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it’s spreading like a plague.
With the current political climate giving rise to the misguided idea of a socialist utopia, will we see the light? Or will we have to lose it all to realize that what we have now is true prosperity? Destroying the free market will undo what millions of people have died to achieve.
My generation is becoming the largest voting bloc in the country. We have an opportunity to continue to propel us forward with the gifts capitalism and democracy has given us. The other option is that we can fall into the trap of entitlement and relapse into restrictive socialist destitution. The choice doesn’t seem too hard, does it?”
Amen and Amen
Alyssa Ahlgren
Just the setup of this woman’s first few sentences shows how naive she is. She is sitting at a coffee shop watching others with their MacBook and ordering from Amazon. That is her reality. She has seen prosperity. Good for her.
When 40% of Americans cannot endure a $400 unexpected expense, that is a different reality.
Yes, Capitalism has worked for a good percentage, not most. Hell, I have done great by Capitalism and made a lot of money using its tenets in the past, though this new profession has zapped most of it as a full-time activist.
When one becomes introspective and the morals many of us Progressives grew up with kicked in, it was not difficult to see the dire straits that many Americans are living in, not as we lived it but how our brothers and sisters in Appalachia, the Ghettos, the Barrios, and rural areas are living. Worse is how the Right lies to them and indoctrinate too many of them to vote against their own interests by using smoke and mirrors.
And then a privileged woman like this comes along and tells those who are suffering, ‘things at my Coffee Shop are simply fine.’
The lack of empathy and inability to see outside one’s own conditions is sad in this country. That is why Progressives do what we do.
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Telling was that when she looked around, she saw the customers, while ignoring the employees who served the products that they cannot afford to buy at their wage level.
She likely sees all of the well to do, while looking through the homeless on the streets.
Interestingly, I see what is there, not ignoring what fails my worldview, because she sees what she wants to see and I see what’s actually there.
Ignoring what’s actually there is an excellent way of waking up in a hospital bed or worse, as getting run over by a truck or refusing to see that gun in someone’s hand tends to have deleterious effects on one’s body.
But then, I’m also more than twice her age and learned long ago to see what’s actually present, not only what I want to see. She can lecture me after she’s seen people ran down and after witnessing her third shooting and not until then.
We Dems have done a lousy job of educating and explaining. I don’t blame this person for her narrow views. 50-60% of America is doing OK to well. If you are in this group you’ll not see anything different than this person. I was young once and was a follower of Thatcher. I had no idea of the hardships of all those folk who were without jobs because of her policies. And my country has a decent welfare system so I am brought up understanding we should have a good safety net and it wasn’t a negative as it is here. We Dems have been abandoning our roots for the middle class electorate. We have failed to explain our version of capitalism. The one that works for all of us. The bogeyman of socialism is still following us and we have failed to explain how badly off we would be without centralization for many aspects of our daily lives. In short we are to blame for this woman’s narrow view of the world.
Ms. Ahlgren seems like someone who might be quite clever twenty or thirty years from now. Just not yet.
Wow… all the put downs of this young woman’s experience. She was being grateful and you are denigrating her for it. Mocking her “cleverness” or “narrow views.” She wasn’t talking about “everyone” being rich. Do you know what Jesus said about poverty? Look it up! It’s not limited to capitalist countries!
What capitalism does is provide freedom and liberty to all. It encourages and supplies innovation for things people want. The only ones who are actively trying to remove the freedom and liberty you obviously abhor…. are progressives! Who is trying to force you to not use salt, not use energy, remove any choice (like schools and cars) except abortion?
A highly-touted example of socialism is the Swedish “welfare state,” which is widely known to reduce personal responsibility and work ethics. Systems that pay people not to work creates a mentality where many choose not to work. We’ve seen that in the U.S. recently. In addition to problems of big government (like creeping totalitarianism, misdirection of resources, and erosion of civil society), socialist policy halts poor nations from becoming prosperous. The lowest tax rate in Sweden is 29.2%– compared to U.S. 10%. Guess where the wealth comes from to power socialism ? By seizing it from everyone, a wealthy country slowly crumbles. America protects Sweden, so they spend almost nothing on defense. They also don’t give the billions and billions every year away, as America does.
By the way, as far as job loss: from continued desire to shut down as much of the country as possible (communist/fascist) to threatening EVERYONE with losing their job unless they take an experimental vaccine. Explain why that’s not fascist
Capitalism is a form of antiseptic slavery. If you want to have a civil discussion on it, please chime in at my show Politics Done Right at http://politicsdoneright.com/tv.
Have a wonderful day,
Egberto