School is now in session ;)
“I keep hoping that if they eventually come to see the truth in this example, they might have one of those “glass half full vs glass half empty” epiphany moments. But I’ve not had a lot of luck. “
The question you ask in anything this situation is “Why do you revel in the poverty of others? Do not tall me how you dispise the so called rich. Tell me and the people here why you are happy about ‘winning’ at the expense of the less fortunate.”
One of the lessons I learned in debating libs (at some fairly high levels of influence) is that everything is a performance to them. They ‘play to the crowd’ in an effort to sway the opinion of the emotions of the crowd...and no one wants to be the only person IN that crowd to go against groupthink.
Fact: High School never ends. the majority of people who go to their reunions revert to the people they were on the day they graduated. Only the Alphas break the mold. And it’s likely they were Alphas the day they graduated.
Likewise, in groups of adults, the crowd dynamic is and always has been that the crowd defers to the person who can play them like a fiddle and give them a false sense of belonging.
The key is to humiliate that person before the crowd using his own words to do it.
The crowd then turns on him and follows the strong horse/new Alpha.
You do not have to BE an Alpha. Just play one on TV. And as a conservative plugged in to the factual reality of the world around you, you are pre-equipped to do it.
You just need to ‘do it’.