Asklemmy

Okay, yeah. These people definitely find comfort in hiding behind "personal responsibility" as a means of abdicating social responsibility.

But have you seen the Alt-Right Playbook video, "Always a Bigger Fish" ?

In that video, Innuendo Studios lays out the idea that there is a base, core, philosophical difference between conservatives and progressives in how we think the world ought to be, and what kind of world we think is possible.

To the conservative, nature is full of hierarchy. The strongest chimp gets the most bananas, you know? (Yes, I know that's not actually true. But it's the way they see the world.) The smartest, strongest human survives and hunts well and eats well. (Yes, I know early hunter-gatherer societies hunted in worker cooperatives and raised children cooperatively. So I know this isn't really a well-researched scientific hypothesis. But it is believed by a particular group of people.)

When they say, "take personal responsibility," it's kind of a code word for, "accept your rightful place in the hierarchy. Accept that you are simply the weaker, stupider chimp and you are inevitably going to get less bananas and society can't be expected to coddle you and give you more than you deserve."

According to a worldview that asserts humans are naturally divided into the strong, the weak, and the in-between, a person complaining about their own outcomes is just in denial of this fundamental, universal "truth." A whiner unwilling to admit they receive less because they provide less. A deceiver attempting to usurp a more deserving person's place in the hierarchy because they are unwilling to accept the consequences of their "actions."

There's no better frontier for this idea than the open road, where a single mistake can kill you and everyone in your vicinity. Transit activists, who want to take people off the roads, put them on buses and in trains where they will be safe even if they aren't "vigilant" and "responsible" and "alert" (read: unlucky), are trying to spend society's limited resources coddling people who will never really provide a return on that investment -- because they are weak. Which wastes money, since the money could have been spent on responsible people who will lead society to better places.

To these people,

• society's responsibility is to make sure everyone stays in their place.
• there will always be starving monkeys.
• the folks who would crash a car probably can't manage their bank account. Or learn valuable skills.

Hence, roads are a convenient way to cull the weak.