There are a lot of poor people on Facebook who are celebrating that some rich folks died horribly on a submersible.
I was only mildly paying attention to the situation with the Titan submersible carrying the affluent explorers (seems redundant as you have to be affluent to explore) to the bottom of the ocean in order to see the wreckage of the Titanic. However, I was really taken aback by the callous cruelty and mean-spiritedness of regular people who (politically) are on the left of me (read this as extreme left) and who are really challenged financially (truthfully I think a lot of it has been opportunity cost choices that they have made that has ruined their financial well-being). That being said...it is tough to make ends meet out there. I have sympathy for those who are putting up the good fight, including myself. But I can't help but draw from real-world experiences when I say that one needs to make good choices to have a chance at success. Here's an example of how it all went wrong for one person I know.
This person (who shall be nameless) is someone I've known since they were a tween. They were always high on pot, irresponsible...you couldn't count on them for anything. They'd make fun of you if you didn't get high with them. Slept around a ton with boys. Got knocked up and popped out two kids. I remember meeting them at a diner and they shamed me saying, "Mike, you should get yourself one of these (as if I could just go and get a kid)." I guess they were having fun. I didn't fault them for that. This was a straight couple building a family. I've seen that before, or so I thought.
Fast forward a few years and baby daddy is now a woman and the woman in that relationship is now a man. They basically hate each other, but the momma who became a man won't press for child support, because (I think) they are still hopelessly in love with baby daddy (who became a woman) and is now poly living in Pennsylvania with multiple other partners. No doubt any and all money the baby daddy (who is now a woman) make goes into their healthcare and into their "polycule" while kids are supported mostly by state monies fed into SSDI and SSI payments. This is how callous these parents are. At one point on one of the Facebooks, the baby momma (who is now a man) and raising the two kids was homeless. Like...literally homeless with no money and on the street with young kids. The baby daddy (who is now a woman) at the same time on their Facebook was posting about their new favorite shade of lipstick. I wanted so much to send a message..."Dude...your kids are homeless. Why don't you care?" But it's none of my business.
And I've suspected for years that some people who are like this become so embittered and enraged that they just can't work. Some of it is just resentment that if they did start working, it would be at the bottom, and in a servile position to people that they feel they shouldn't have to serve. So what else do you do about them? They are labeled with a mental disorder and then they get SSDI. And SSDI doesn't make you rich. It's something that barely pays the most basic of bills and keeps you just above a line where you would die of poverty. It's such a mental mess to even think about (and a level of selfishness that is actually undeniably American but I still hate it).
Anyway...I've digressed a lot...but these people above and many others who (I guess) are poor and embittered and angry and hateful are just having a gleeful old time that rich people died in a submersible trying to look at the wreckage of The Titanic. I have no words for how petty this is, but these are memes I took from their Facebook pages. Just take a moment and look at these and see how much schadenfreude is on display here:
Look...I'm no fan of billionaires. BUT...this is people sinking really really low. I'm kind of caught off guard here, because I realize that people I might have identified with and sympathized with who are on my political left are just as monstrous as the people that I oppose on my political right. It's grotesque, and honestly...it just reinforces (to me) that all people are just getting crazier and more awful every day. There is no morality anymore whether it is on the right or the left. There is only petty ugliness.
Do these memes that are all over Facebook strike you as particularly cruel? Do they surprise you? I don't think that the rich people on this submersible were even people that were on anyone's radar as a bad person. They weren't Rupert Murdoch or Elon Musk. Geez. Maybe one of you out there can explain this to me and help me understand why people are being so mean.
