The Lesson of the Election

On salon.com a commenter, howardmk, writes:

And The Winner Is:

Me! Me! Me! (And I don't mean "Maine.") As someone who lives in the world of ordinary people, I can tell you that whoever over-intellectualizes the election result will miss it by a mile every time - because ordinary people have no truck whatsoever with anything even approaching "higher thought" (and you can take that as gospel). They reason thusly: Tax Me Less, and everything else be damned. They can't be bothered with whatever "2 plus 2" actually equals. So what if virtually all tax breaks go to the rich? At least someone's getting taxed less - and that's the only game in town as far as they're concerned. Their hatred of the "poor" - who, presumably, pay no tax - is so great that it absorbs every other consideration. Which explains why the mindless slogan "tax and spend" reduces them to raging looney toons: they know that some of the "spend" portion will go to the "undeserving poor." End of discussion. They may feign outrage over trillions of their tax dollars going to the rich - but they will fight tooth and nail to see that not one red cent ever goes to the poor. Their all-encompassing ideology consists of one maxim: "I work hard for my money and I'll be damned if I'll give any of it to those who won't work!" At which point someone needs to slap them upside the head and say "So I take it you're a peasant in Bangladesh? Because, if not, then you don't even know what work is. All you do is twiddle your thumbs, then stick you hand out for your reward come payday."