Do you ever despair at the apparent lack of regard for the "social contract" by so many?
In this case, I'm referring to the notion that we all make minor sacrifices in our daily interactions in service of a "greater good" for everyone.
"Following the rules" would be a simplified version of what I'm talking about, I suppose. But also keeping an awareness/attitude about "How will my choices affect the people around me in this moment? "Common courtesy", "situational awareness", etc...
I don't know that it's a "new" phenomenon by any means, I just seem to have an increasing (subjective) awareness of it's decline of late.
Well, if you have a population packed with people (call it 50%, 70%, whatever) who are basically scraping by, it's unreasonable to accuse them of being selfish for wanting to keep their hard-earned money while they're scraping by. Particularly when there's anything money's being spent on by the government which is lower priority than people's basic shelter, food, medicine, etc.
We should absolutely call them out on being hypocrites. These are people who vote against their own interests and against anyone's interest who isn't a billionaire. They do not care about the waste until it's spent, ironically, helping poor people. But if a Republican wastes trillions on war or even raises their taxes, they're as quiet as a mouse.
I wish it were as simple as you say. Republicans would never make into office again. But you're entirely wrong about that simplicity
This is what I'm talking about. We have this slippery equivalence between taxes on billionaires and taxes on everyone else. The vast majority of the population couldn't care less about how billionaires are taxed besides maybe to increase it. Now you're on some thing about how Republicans are hypocritical about spending, which is true, but it's not even what we're talking about. What I'm talking about is that most people don't want their own money going to taxes for any kind of dumb shit (including the military budget) when so many of them are struggling to get by.