Pundits and politicians on the right consistently demonize the poor. For example, Fox News seems to delight in a narrative of the wicked poor destroying America. It is worth considering why the poor are demonized.
One ironic foundation for this is religion. While Jesus regards the poor as blessed and warns of the dangers of idolatry, there is a version of Christianity that sees poverty as a sign of damnation and wealth as an indicator of salvation. As some have pointed out, this view is a perversion of Christianity. Not surprisingly, some people have been criticized by pundits for heeding what Jesus said.
Another reason is that demonizing the poor allows pundits and politicians to redirect anger so that the have-less are angry at the have-nots, rather than those who have almost everything. This is classic scapegoating: the wicked poor are blamed for many of the woes besetting America. The irony is that the poor and powerless are cast as a threat to the rich and powerful.
The approach taken towards the poor follows a classic model used throughout history that involves presenting two distinct narratives about the target of hatred The first is to create a narrative which presents them as subhuman, wicked, inferior and defective. In the case of the poor, the narrative is that they are stupid, lazy, drug-users, criminals, frauds, mockers and so on. This narrative is used to create contempt and hatred to dehumanize them. This makes it much easier to get people to think it is morally permissible (even laudable) to treat the poor poorly.
The second narrative is to cast the poor as incredibly dangerous. While they have been cast as inferior by the first narrative, the second presents them as a dire threat. The narrative is that the wicked poor are destroying America by being “takers” from the “makers.” One obvious challenge is crafting a plausible narrative in which the poor and seemingly powerless can somehow destroy the rich and powerful. One solution has been to claim that another group, such as the Democrats or the Jews as being both very powerful (thus able to destroy America) yet someone in service to the poor.
On the face of it, a little reflection should expose the absurdity of this narrative. The poor are obviously poor and lack power. After all, if they had power, they would not remain poor. As such, the idea that the poor and powerless have the power to destroy America is absurd. True, the poor could rise up in arms and engage in class warfare in the literal sense of the term—but that is not likely to happen. While the idea that the poor are being served by a wicked group, such as the Democrats, is advanced to “solved” this problem, the wicked group, must also be cast as being inferior to the “true” Americans—yet also a powerful threat. This creates another absurdity that its adherents must ignore.
At this point, one might bring up “bread and circuses”—the idea that the poor destroyed the Roman Empire by forcing the rulers to provide them with bread and circuses until the empire fell apart.
There are two obvious replies to this. The first is that even if Rome was wrecked by spending on bread and circuses, it was the leaders who decided to use that approach to appease the masses. If this narrative were true, it entails that the wealthy and powerful decided to bankrupt the state to stay in power by appeasing the many. Second, the poor who wanted bread and circuses were a symptom rather than the disease. It was not so much that the poor were destroying the empire, it was that the destruction of the empire that was increasing the number of poor people.
The same could be said about the United States: while the income gap in the United States is extreme and poverty is high, it is not the poor that that are causing the decline of America. Rather, poverty is the result of the decline of the United States. As such, demonizing the poor and blaming them for the woes is like blaming the fever for the disease.
Ironically, demonizing and blaming the poor serves to distract people away from the real causes of our woes, such as the deranged financial system, systematic inequality, a rigged market and a political system that is beholden to the 1%. It is, however, a testament to the power of rhetoric that so many seem to accept the absurd idea that the poor and powerless are somehow the victimizers rather than the victims of the rich and powerful.
As always, Professor, solid arguments that only a real philosopher can put forward. Actually, pretty devastating ones. Blaming the fever for the disease.
”…Jesus regards the poor as blessed and warns of the dangers of idolatry…”.
Whilst Jesus might have been sincere in his beliefs (I presume he was sincere, and whilst I am not religious, I certainly regard Jesus as a remarkable figure), even that part of Christianity that apparently is compassionate to the poor, has a darker aspect. But of course, to know that some self professed Christians actually blame the poor for the problems in America, is a shameless hypocrisy: they are so false that they can’t even truly be what they say they are without infecting their own beliefs with their own malice.
As Schopenhauer explained in his essay about morals, the trouble with Western religion is that a Christian is compassionate to the poor because his real objective is a reward in the afterlife. This is not compassion, he said, but a travesty of it. True compassion is felt by looking at someone who isn’t us, who suffers for whatever reason, and feeling that we can see something of us in them. We see our reflection by looking at them, so to speak. ‘It could have happened to us!’. Schopenhauer said that if there’s any other objective in mind, it is not compassion. Which is why he totally dismissed Kant, who was otherwise his hero, on his ‘categorical imperative’.
I am not 100 per cent sure that this is all correct, but that is what I understood. My own take, though a much more simplistic one compared to that of real philosophers, is this: it’s wrong to blame anyone for anything that seems to be far greater than them both. Whilst I am ‘poor’ myself, I also am contrary to the poor blaming the rich for their wealth, unless there’s good reasons for that. The simple fact is that is easier for the wealthy to get wealthier, and very difficult for the poor to not be poor anymore, let alone become wealthy.
It is ‘simply’ the ‘luck of the draw’. The ‘luck of the draw’ is a million variables that no one can completely control. But the rich is definitely dumb in blaming the poor for all the bad things they see in the world. They don’t understand that it was simply the luck of the draw that allowed them to amass their wealth. In fact, in most cases they have no merit for that, at all: it’s because of the work of their parents, grandparents, ancestors, etc going back decades or even centuries. But these poor delusional people, with their foolish smug, attribute their wealth to their skill and their intelligence, when the reality is, they are literally starved of both, for most of them are fools of first category. I certainly don’t have to provide hard to obtain proof: one just has to look at all the incredibly stupid things they write on that hysterical environment called ‘social media’.
If anything, it’s the rich that gets lazier, for the rich has less reasons than the poor to not be lazy. After all, all the golf games, cruising, yachting, expensive holidays, ostentatious birthday parties….isn’t that laziness? Or even outrageous laziness, such as wasting half a million dollars on a fast car, which is something absolutely no one needs unless they are pro racers.
I mean rich people are not usually writing books, teaching, enlarging the mind, or even doing plastering work, carrying bricks or making baskets, is it? But the poor don’t have these extravagant luxuries the rich indulge in, which is a form of laziness and lack of self discipline, so it’s ironic how the rich blames the poor for being ‘lazy’.
I once sold an item on Amazon. In my description, I appeared somewhat gruff. The buyer received the item and was impressed with it because it turned out to be in far better condition than I made it appear, in fact it was as good as new. He was very happy with the item. He wrote an official letter to me and called me ‘squire’ and explaining that this was something of an honour. He explained that he was the son of so and so baron or duke or Earl or whatever, and that he owned much land. I believe he was a young person. I wrote back saying that he only owned his status to those who came before him, for he likely had not really done much or anything to, strictly speaking, deserve it, but that I was glad for him, for the simple reason that it was better for someone to tell me ‘I am wealthy’ than ‘I am starving’ or ‘I am poor’. I didn’t do it to be mean.
I had actually got the idea by reading a biography about Beethoven, but later I learned that Plato said a similar thing, when someone told him he was King so-and-so: ‘Every king had slaves for ancestors’.
In the end, my own take is this: most people are fools. The rich are mostly fools with more money, and most of them are dumber than the rest of us. And very, very few of them have done much, or anything, to deserve their wealth. But I don’t really blame them for anything, except their stupidity and ignorance.
”….it is forgivable to be poor and not to be learned, for after all someone who is poor is occupied with survival. But it’s an absolute shame for someone who is wealthy, to be ignorant.”. – Arthur Schopenhauer