How do we reach people like this.

[Sirveri]

It was on current, the Vanguard episode Two America's. Really great episode if you can catch it.

Is it possible to change 'magical thinking'? I'm not sure it is. But I figured I'd post for others to comment.

[dmr]

1. I suppose it's easy to be a liberal bigot when you're confident that

you'll continue to collect the social benefits those damn liberals fought for you & your family to receive.

If that's his wife sitting next to him, she doesn't appear to be happy.

[JaneQPublic]

2. It's amazing his head doesn't explode...

...from all the cognitive dissonance it contains.

But, then, that could be said of most Republicans.

How to reach him? I tend to think it is also "magical thinking" to believe you can change someone like this. Clearly, it's essential to his self-identity to see himself as different from all those other "typical" welfare recipients by clinging to his Republican hypocrisy.

Plus, being unemployed, he has all day to listen to Rush and Fox News.

I would simply ask him why he didn't go to his church, family, or party to get food for his family, if he believes government food stamps need not -- and should not-- exist.

[Sirveri]

4. This was a snippet from the episode that stood out, but he did.

He went to a church support group because he couldn't pay the electric bill, and had to ask his mother (who was on Social Security) for assistance as well, and just barely managed to scrape by. He even brought up pawning his wife's wedding ring. So when he says stuff like this, it's kind of like, dude, you'd be on the streets right now without that. Forget having your phone turned off and electricity turned off, you'd be fucking homeless.

Nevermind that UI is an insurance program, not welfare (though food stamps are). It was just a frustrating scene in the program. Almost as bad as the rich person they were tracking who owned a home in Aspen, CO and downtown New York who didn't think she had 'made it' yet. I'm really not sure which was worse.

[AntiFascist]

5. I think I caught part of this episode....

was this where the wealthy homowner was mounting taxidermied sheep heads on her wall that would cry simulated tears?

I say, let her pursue whatever floats her boat, but she definitely needs to be taxed!

[Sirveri]

6. Yes, that was it. She decided to let them cry onto the stone.

Instead of putting a bowl under them.

Vapid moron. I have everything I could ever want but I don't think I've 'made it' yet.

[TheWraith]

3. You can't change those minds until you change the culture around them.

And no, I don't mean American culture as a whole. I mean the specific subculture which teaches people to prize ignorance, and to believe in some unseen class of "others" which are a burden on the "good hardworkin folk."