How Playing Nice Rewards Abusers

Probably the easiest and most obvious example of entitled brat behavior is in American politics, particularly the GQP. Kevin McCarthy nicely gave it all away just to be Speaker of the House. It took fifteen tries because 20 emotional toddlers held our government hostage until they got what they wanted.

Unfortunately, this showed the entire world that the nation with the biggest army and the best weaponry is currently held hostage by a minority faction that wants to do away with all rights except for gun ownership, having the freedom to be an Evangelical Christian, and saying whatever the fuck they want without any consequences.

This little group of wrong-wing crazies’ philosophy is that if they don’t get what they want, nobody gets anything. They have proven that absolutely nothing is too extreme, and will throw tantrums every time their undies get in a twitch.

Sadly, what many of these idiots want is to do away with things like social safetynets. You know, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. And food stamps, and ObamaCare. They don’t want to hear any “socialist commie BS” from Bernie Sanders.

Ya know. The things that all other non-shithole countries have.

They also want to do away with the freedoms they personally don’t like, even if they’ve used those freedoms before. Like getting an abortion, or paying for a mistress to get one.

For decades, the Democrats have been playing nice, been the bigger party, and shoved everything under that lumpy rug. Cuz. Forgiving and forgetting is better than confrontation, I guess. So while all these shenanigans were happening, what did the Dems do? They gave pretty speeches about being united, and why Jeffries is best choice for Speaker.

How many of those made it to the news? I only found out about them because of TikTok. Seriously. The Clock app out of China that the GQP wants to ban.

Huh. Wonder why that is?

Meanwhile, what this little group learned is that consequences are for other people. Other than Gaetz getting a talkin’ to before the last vote that obviously made him very unhappy and uncomfortable, I have yet to hear of any real consequences for any of these infants over their childish behavior.

As far as I can tell, none have been censured, received shitty committee assignments, taken a pay hit, or even been told they can’t bring their guns onto the floor. Nothing from their constituents about it, either.

Here’s a list of who voted for not McCarthy. They’re white unless otherwise marked. They’re male unless otherwise marked. They’re European mutts unless otherwise marked. Oh, and their ages are in parentheses.

Yes, this mess truly is the Republican’s fault. But let’s be very clear. The Democratic Party enabled the fuck out of this, forgiving the Republicans for raping our citizens (figuratively and literally), our environment, and our financial systems for personal gain.

And that’s the real trouble. Personal gain. Or gain for the friends and donors. But for the country? Nope. They’ll couch it that way, to be sure, because they know The Base only have a soundbite-sized attention span.

That bill titled, “No Trees Cut Down Ever Again,” (yes, this is a fictitious example) actually stipulates who pays (the federal government) to cut down how many tress (all of them) in a reasonable timeframe (right now), and who pays for reforestation (no one, because the land goes to developers).

But the soundbite will be, “The demonrats are liars! They voted no on No Tress Cut Down Ever Again. If climate change was real, they would’ve voted yes. But they didn’t, so it’s just a ploy to traumatize your kids and steal your job!”

Which brings us to another way abusers win.

The real news outlets will bemoan the horrors of wrong-wing media. People will yell and scream, and amplify the message to prove how horrible Faux News or Alex Jones are.

And as any marketing exec will tell you, the more someone hears a message, the more likely they are to believe it. And once they believe it, they’ll take action.

So in a misguided attempt to appear fair, we’ll hear five seconds of how awful the message is, and 30 seconds of the awful message itself. Seriously, what’s your takeaway?

So the abusers win because yet again because the nice people telling other nice people how awful the awful people are are just convincing the nice people to become awful people.

And that’s not very nice.

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If you’d like to check out the other posts in this thread, check out these links:

• Part 1: Getting Duped by Nice
• Part 3: How Playing Nice Punishes the Victim (this link will work after 2023.01.24)
• Part 4: What We Can Do About Nice Being Misused (this link will work after 2023.01.31)