Reply #49: My Republican coworkers are like this.

[Berry Cool]

The night after Obama addressed Congress and Bobby Jindal looked like such an idiot, all they could talk about was how terrible and unfair it was that THEY would have to pay the price for bailing out all these greedy people who bought houses they couldn't afford.

I heard another of my coworkers saying she didn't understand why the Obamas had get the financial aid to attend an Ivy League college; wasn't a state university good enough for them? We are not all entitled to an Ivy League education, you know. I just said something to the effect that I believe everyone should be able to attend whatever college will admit them, because I would not have been able to attend the private university I did at certain points in my college life without financial aid. And that, in fact, without government financial aid, I would not have ANY kind of a college degree AT ALL, and I would not be sitting in my cubicle next to her today.

It just amazes me that the Repigs can so easily milk middle-class resentment by convincing ordinary average not-rich people that poor people, or people who cannot pay for everything out of pocket in order to achieve a good and decent life, are somehow their enemies and are unfairly getting something they are not getting. Fuck it. I got what I got because of my academic achievement and the fact that my mom was, at the time I attended college, earning what was considered a below-poverty-level salary and my father wasn't contributing a dime. I'm not going to apologize for the fact that the assistance I received help boot me up from poverty or near-poverty to the middle class.

Oh, and my mother was one of those greedy people who fell for the mortgage lenders' spiel and, after years of renting, bought "too much house" when she retired...a $40,000 condo. Then she died, and left one of my sisters who makes just above minimum wage to try to pay it off. I think you can guess what is happening now.