I used to believe in a myth..

You know... that Republicans and libertarians hated the poor was propagated by those who wanted to be warriors for the powerless, protecting them from the powerful. Those who wanted the world to be black and white, good and evil, right versus wrong in an uncomplicated way. They wanted a dragon to slay whether it was real or not.

They could be, in that state, easily swayed by demagogues turning that sense of justice into a type of power of their own. If other people thought "hey, maybe the best way to help isn't just throwing money at the problem and it's more complicated than that... Let's look at root causes and what incentives work", it couldn't possibly be that they were being nuanced, it was that they hated the poor or were selfish enough to be indifferent.

But after seeing all this hate the rich stuff? It doesn't feel like "the left" thought "I don't hate people based on class, so my opponents must" as much as "I hate the rich, so my opponents must hate the poor". In retrospect, it was all just projection.

Hating an entire class of people for the amount of money they have may seem just kinda ridiculous and silly to most people, but if you hate the rich intensely, you might assume class hatred to be universal rather than something you should work on personally as a character flaw. I know not everyone on the left hates people for being rich (I know some on the left who definitely aren't jerks), and I know some on the right complained of "welfare queens" as those who cheated the system in an attack the other way, and motivations are varied... But it seems kinda sickening just how common such hatred is.

Like... Of all the things we squabble about, how rich or poor someone is seems so trivial and unimportant. Like... Class, race, and religion seem like such superficial things to focus on, in the realm of getting mad at who is on a beer can or container of maple syrup.