Scott figured Ned and Pam got what was coming to them. In his old life, before the fall, he might have been more sympathetic. But he had come to view sympathy as a kind of naïveté, a sentiment voiced from a certain distance by the callow middle classes. “They can be compassionate because it’s not their only option,” he said of liberals who didn’t live in trailer parks. As for Ned and Pam, Scott thought their eviction came down to their crack habit, plain and simple.
