- 25 Apr 2019 20:32
#15001103
I have spent years in partisan political trenches on both the left and the right, and can confirm that politically active socialists, at least, are generally people I would not choose to associate with. It's very interesting to me that the leaders tend to be very smart, but unscrupulous and dishonest in their pursuit of power over their betters, while the rank and file are distinctly unintelligent -- certainly less intelligent than the politically active rank and file on the right -- and unsuccessful in work and life.
I have concluded that socialism is actually driven by resentment of others' merit, and a desire to take away the success they have earned. Socialists harbor a special enmity for the self-made man, and are usually much better disposed to a rich but idle heir to wealth than to an industrialist who has earned exactly the same amount of money by his own efforts, starting from scratch. They also have a special love of taxing income rather than wealth, and have little interest in taxing unearned income more than earned income, or even in distinguishing between the two.
That said, I have also encountered many horrible people on the right -- often those very same successful business people -- who have no regard for others, especially those in difficulty, and can best be understood as high-functioning sociopaths, like Trump. These are often people who believe that anything that is legal must be right -- as well as a lot of things that aren't strictly legal, but they have found they can get away with. They are also utterly impervious to any suggestion that they may not have earned everything they have, and have instead largely been the beneficiaries of injustice. To their mentality, placing oneself in a position to profit from injustice is the same as earning profits by making a commensurate contribution to production.
SolarCross wrote:5. Socialists are horrible, horrible, people. I don't meant they are horrible because they are socialists I mean they are horrible people in their characters quite separately from the odiousness of their beliefs. Given that under the jackboots of socialism the socialists will be the overclass controlling everything then they really need to be saintly people for that situation to be even remotely tolerable. As it is none of them are, just the opposite.
I have spent years in partisan political trenches on both the left and the right, and can confirm that politically active socialists, at least, are generally people I would not choose to associate with. It's very interesting to me that the leaders tend to be very smart, but unscrupulous and dishonest in their pursuit of power over their betters, while the rank and file are distinctly unintelligent -- certainly less intelligent than the politically active rank and file on the right -- and unsuccessful in work and life.
I have concluded that socialism is actually driven by resentment of others' merit, and a desire to take away the success they have earned. Socialists harbor a special enmity for the self-made man, and are usually much better disposed to a rich but idle heir to wealth than to an industrialist who has earned exactly the same amount of money by his own efforts, starting from scratch. They also have a special love of taxing income rather than wealth, and have little interest in taxing unearned income more than earned income, or even in distinguishing between the two.
That said, I have also encountered many horrible people on the right -- often those very same successful business people -- who have no regard for others, especially those in difficulty, and can best be understood as high-functioning sociopaths, like Trump. These are often people who believe that anything that is legal must be right -- as well as a lot of things that aren't strictly legal, but they have found they can get away with. They are also utterly impervious to any suggestion that they may not have earned everything they have, and have instead largely been the beneficiaries of injustice. To their mentality, placing oneself in a position to profit from injustice is the same as earning profits by making a commensurate contribution to production.