evoque

A comment by flakesobran on the New York Times article "With No Jobs, Plenty of Time for Tea Party."

I can understand it a little. Most of us who read this paper might say "Why would someone who depends on government assistance join a group advocating against it?"

And yet let's hypothetically say that a typical Tea Party member -- actually not just the Tea Party, but most Americans really -- has a lot of pride, and deep down considers receiving any kind of welfare to be deeply shameful. It is after all part of the American dream to be self-reliant.

Now you have this really normal person, they've just lost their job, they've just lost their home. But looking across the United States, they can see that it is not just individuals who are now jobless/homeless but that this condition stretches across industries, classes and territories.

And so the blame gets shifted. I did not loose my job/my house because of anything I did, there are after all a lot of people who are in exactly the same situation as me. I did not loose my job/my home/my savings because of anything the company I worked for did, because there are a lot of companies/industries going through exactly the same problems. The same goes for local government, because there are having the same problems everywhere.

So who is to blame... obviously the Federal Government. Why? Because they didn't do anything to help? Well... maybe's a part of it. But as they go to get that social security check there is that deep down shame in getting a "hand out." And so instead of thinking that, what if the federal government had helped out a little more, I wouldn't be in such a terrible situation, the paradigm shifts and you get "I'm an American, I don't need any help. If I hadn't been taxed to death I could have held out a little bit longer and pulled through this."

In my opinion, and I admit that I could be wrong about this, but what the Democrats are battling isn't necessarily a dislike of the program itself, but a kind of denial that people do fall, and they occasionally need help getting up.