H. L. Mencken described a Puritan as a person with a haunting fear that someone, somewhere is happy; today, many people would apply the same caricature to evangelicals or fundamentalists.
This speaks so poignantly to the political notion of ‘the other’ that often fictitious ‘they’ created to scare or assign blame. The notion that if ‘they’ receive (insert whatever here- rights, social entitlements, employment, grace) then “I” must lose. And coupled with that the notion that “I” am so much more deserving.
