True, I may be undermining weeks of arguing for engaging the people we disagree with in a spirit of openness and respect. And name-calling isn’t going to help us show them how they’re actually voting against their own interests, or reveal the corporatist / continentalist / ruling-class Divide-and-Conquer strategy. Class warfare’s tricky that way.
Every now and then, though, you’re confronted with evidence of such rancid stupidity that you’ve just got to name it for what it is. I don’t know why, but this weekend it’s the Pissed-Off Taxpayers meme and the whole bullshit “Respect for Taxpayers” narrative for which it serves as the foundation. It needs to be confronted head on.
Once again: Taxes are what buy us civilization. They’re the reason we’re not living in some Hobbesian nightmare. Taxes are how we pool our resources in order to act for the common good, working collectively to do what we can’t accomplish on our own.
The Pissed-Off Taxpayers meme isn’t some revealed wisdom or nugget of common sense. It’s nothing but an embodiment of stupidity, self-delusion and immaturity. Pointing that out isn’t an indicator of contempt or elitism. It’s an attempt to talk to my fellow citizens like adults. You don’t get something for nothing, and you don’t get more for less.
(Don’t listen to him! He’s a sneering condescending effete urbanite! He drinks lattes and eats tofu and wears Birkenstocks because he’s a DFH! He wants Canada to be a second-rate northern European socialist welfare state! And he hates the troops too!)
Sorry, for a moment there we were interrupted by a signal from Planet Sun. Back to regular programming …
Related posts:
- Can we stop talking about taxpayers?
- @thekeenanwire, #TOpoli and that whole ‘deserve’ thing, redux
- Conservatism, stewardship, and Edmund Burke
- More Sun readers speak …
- Ford’s ascendancy, explained
- Another malignant election
