by Tom Pantera
Columnist

Since my side won the election, I’ve tried to be gracious. I’ve tried not to gloat too much. I’ve thought, okay, I’ll be magnanimous; I’ll be a good winner. I won’t kick the right-wingers while they’re down.

But I’ve had enough. I’ve simply had enough.

The reaction of the greedheads, who were among the biggest losers, has been just too damned ridiculous. People who love going through life on pretty much nothing but anger and envy now figure they have carte blanche to be really angry and envious and by God, they’re going to let everybody know how the victory of the liberals – many of whom are only liberals in highly relative terms, by the way – is going to send this country spinning down a porcelain bowl within days. The sky isn’t just falling, it’s only a foot above our heads, they say.

I’m through trying to talk sense to these people. I’m through expecting them to have any perspective or, for that matter, anything to say that’s worth hearing.

Yeah, I’m cranky. I was fine until I got on Facebook tonight and saw that an old friend of mine – a man I knew was a little bit of a crank, but likeable nonetheless – had posted a quote from St. Ronald Reagan: “We should measure welfare’s success by how many leave welfare, not by how many are added.” It was, like much of what Reagan had written for him, very pithy, very well-constructed and so simplistic and vague as to be essentially meaningless. Makes a great bumper sticker, though.

Anyway, I got sucked into a conversation with my friend and a couple of his friends and heard the same old crapola they’ve spouted a hundred times. It breaks down to this: “I have no objection to helping people, but I stood behind a guy at the liquor store tonight and he really didn’t look like he needed welfare. So we should help people, but only people I deem worthy, because I’m a self-made entrepreneur who’s never taken a dime from the government and did it all myself and look how swimmingly things have turned out for me.”

To which I say: Well, I can’t say it in a family newspaper. In fact, I can’t say either of the things I’d really like to.

The dead giveaway, of course, is “I have no objection to helping people, but …” It’s usually followed by an anecdote about seeing a poor person who just wasn’t miserable enough to deserve help. My God, the guy has a TV! It’s just like the guy who says, “I’m no racist, but boy, those black people sure are lazy. They can dance up a storm, though.”

Well, guess what? Just like that guy is a racist, you do have an objection to helping people. You apparently are willing to help anybody who can prove to you that they don’t really need it. A tad logically inconsistent, isn’t it?

Here’s the deal: There are always going to be people who game the system, but the vast majority of poor people don’t like being poor. It’s not a pleasant way to live. On a daily basis, it’s inconvenient as hell; you would not believe the amount of time poor people spend just standing in line. And worse yet, it’s really, really unpleasant to have to choose between feeding yourself and feeding your children. The choice isn’t necessarily hard to make, but it ain’t fun. And it’s a choice people in this country make every day.

I’ve never been that poor. When my older son was a baby, we qualified for WIC; aside from that, I’d never been on any kind of public assistance until I took out the loans for graduate school, which will be paid back. But there are times in my life when I’ve had less money and times when I’ve had more. As somebody once said, “I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich. Rich is better.”

And you know why? Because I’ve been LUCKY. I was lucky enough to be born into a stable family, where Dad didn’t drink himself into a coma while Mom swallowed tranquilizers like they were jelly beans. I was born into a family that valued education and I had parents who taught me right from wrong. And since I left home, I’ve been lucky that I’ve never been financially wiped out by a tornado or an unforeseen medical illness or seen my company go out of business because the suits decided to play roulette with company funds. Had any of those things happened, it would have been totally beyond my control. Yet, I would’ve been wiped out all the same.

There are very real, systemic problems in this country. The financial system is a rigged game and those who rigged it have gotten away with it. A man can make billions of dollars manufacturing widgets nobody needs, but which are backed by a good sales force, while teachers have to dip into their own pockets to buy school supplies for their students. We know more about who’s leading the NFL in passing yardage than we do about how to make this country work.

But for a sizeable portion of the population, it’s much more satisfying to bitch about that guy in front of us at the liquor store than it is to think about a real solution to his problem – or, God forbid, maybe think about kicking in some of what we have so some single mother can feed both herself and her kids.

So yeah, you disciples of Reagan, we’d all like to see it be easier for people to move off welfare. In fact, I’d probably be happier to see that than you would. After all, if that happens, what other target will you find for your righteous anger? You’d better give that some thought, because your anger is awfully important to you.