Thomas Sowell is an idiot. He wants to know why the left-wing is so angry all the time. Why do we do vituperative stuff like take to the streets and protest? Why do get upset about tax cuts for the rich that cause massive deficits and pinch social programs? Good questions, no? How about this gem?
Often it is an exercise in futility even to seek to find a principle behind the anger. For example, the left’s obsession with the high incomes of corporate executives never seems to extend to equally high — or higher — incomes of professional athletes, entertainers, or best-selling authors like Danielle Steel.
Here’s a fucking clue for you, Sowell.
Derek Jeter gets paid to hit, run, and field. He doesn’t set the hourly wage for the groundskeepers and the guy with the cotton candy. He doesn’t lay off the ticket taker so he can deliver a quarter point rise in his company’s stock. He isn’t going to move the Yankees to California if he doesn’t like the way he is treated by city hall. And, if Jeter doesn’t hit, run, and field, and the Yankees come in last place, Jeter won’t get a huge severance package followed by another huge contract with another team.
But, you know what? Jeter and his teammates make too much damn money. In order to pay them, Steinbrenner charges me $8.50 a beer and an ungodly amount for parking…not to mention the soaring ticket prices. I used to go to five games a year. Now I can only afford to go to one. And that makes me angry.
Here’s what Sowell thinks makes us angry:
Their greatest anger seems to be directed at people and things that thwart or undermine the social vision of the left, the political melodrama starring the left as saviors of the poor, the environment, and other busybody tasks that they have taken on.
It seems to be the threat to their egos that they hate. And nothing is more of a threat to their desire to run other people’s lives than the free market and its defenders.
Effing brilliant. Not one mention of the war, the torture, the warrantless wiretapping, the vote fixing, the Terri Schiavo case, the abortion restrictions, the gutting of the DOJ’s civil rights division, the FBI’s national security letters, the politicization of intelligence, Katrina, our standing in the world. Nope, I’m just angry because my ego is too big.
