It always felt to me like the feeling skates close to being pre-emptive sour grapes. Sort of a “I had to suffer, so others in similar situations should too, or everything is unfair and they didn’t earn what they have.” kind of mindset.
Which is absurd, but I have no doubt many people think that way. Life isn’t fair, people aren’t equal except theoretically under the law, and outcomes are going to vary due to a million reasons that differ for each person.
They’re probably getting lots of pats on the back from like-minded sorts on social media - like antivaxers who’ve attained martyr status after refusing to get vaccinated, and then been refused access to their newborn grandchildren by the parents.
I mean that very argument has been advanced on this pretty liberal-leaning board. “I had to do it, why do they get a free pass”, is a pretty common bit of resentful selfishness on both sides of the aisle. Even if it rather more prominent on one than the other, like anti-vaxxer madness it is one of those positions where bi-partisanship can blossom 
.
Ultimately, all these various behaviors and opinions are simple manifestations of a deep-seated, perhaps even unconscious selfishness. It’s a worldview that says at base: “I matter; nobody else does.”
Well, they’re slowly noticing that when their ordinary garden variety RW selfishness comes up against the fulminant raging seflishness of narcissists and Fascist leaders, well, they’re gonna end up empty handed as everything is taken from them.
Serves then right. Shame the rest of us are not immune from the depredations they deliberately pulled down upon themselves.
I don’t know if that’s quite it; I think there’s a certain expectation, realistic or not, that government policies should be “Fair”. Meaning that they apply to everyone equally. Something like loan forgiveness trips two different wires for that sort of unfairness; it’s only for people who went to college, and only for those with currently outstanding loans.
So a lot of people feel like this is unfair. There’s also the sort of unfairness that’s sort of the flip side- “why should I pay for that guy’s healthcare? He does extreme sports and a lot of drugs.” with the thinking being that he probably does deserve healthcare, but I should not be the one to pay for it, in light of his poor decision making. Sub in “smokes”, “is fat”, etc… for “extreme sports and a lot of drugs”. Same goes for stuff like various welfare programs-
It’s the individualist view clashing with things that by necessity have to be at least somewhat collective. Only the very rich could pay for any reasonable amount of non-routine, non-preventative healthcare without insurance. Which is a collective effort, whether people want to acknowledge it or not. Just because it’s for-profit doesn’t change that fact.
Meh, everybody gets that. But “fair” is ridiculously subjective and not worth considering much of the time.
It’s clear there are a non-negligible number of people who think any Brown or Black person being treated the same as a White person is unfair. Donald Trump clearly has his own ideas on what is “fair” to him or not, based on how many times a day he whines about how unfairly he’s treated.
To many people, “fair” means staying within the “natural” order and the ‘undeserving’ not getting anything. They don’t care equal treatment at all, except in the “some people are more equal than others” sense. And somehow, for most of those assholes, the notion of ‘deserving’ happens to align with being the same race, religion, political party, sexual orientation, etc as they are. Treating outsiders differently is natural and fair to them. Funny how that works.
Farmers who receive tons of government relief think it’s unfair that an inner city single mom gets aid. These dipshits don’t know what “fair” even means.
Thank you. Exactly! Well said.
Which is odd considering food aid benefits the people making food.
I try to emphasize the unfair nature of student loans. We set up a system where young people are told college in their best (sometimes only) route to economic success, make these loans available with no consideration for the earning power of their majors, and on top of everything else make those loans impossible to discharge under circumstances many other loans could be discharged. i.e. We’re setting up these kids to start their lives in massive debt.
Which is coincidentally very convenient for fostering worker docility and risk aversion.
In most Americans informal knee-jerk definition “fair” means “advantageous for me”. They’d perhaps argue back against that idea if they carefully thought about it. But their unconscious reactive emotional response amounts to “Fair is when it’s to my advantage. Unfair is when it’s to somebody else’s advantage.”
The real trouble comes in when they don’t recognize that since all the other somebody elses think the same way, it amounts to a neutral stance. Nope, in their view, they’re entitled to think “Fair is when it’s to my advantage. Unfair is when it’s to somebody else’s advantage.” But nobody else is entitled to think the same thing. Or at least nobody else different from me.
@Odesio Emphasized how it’s even worse than what you stated. Let me rephrase as:
Farmers who receive tons of government relief think it’s unfair that an inner city single mom gets aid to buy the food that same farmer grows.
I really wish Democrats would start responding to accusations of and questions about socialism by saying “ I think Medicare and Social Security are great programs and I will always defend them”.
I don’t think that’s quite it. At it’s core, it’s a lack of empathy. I don’t mean these people don’t care about others, my MAGA mother can be very genrous and understanding, but rather they have a difficult time seeing things from the point of view of those they share little in common with. So a rural American might understand why Farmer Bob needs a subsidy to not grow corn but balks at one of those l lazy, urban welfare queens getting food stamps. (Of course it’s more complicated than that. Racism and other bigoted beliefs certainly play a role.)
That doesn’t make a lot of sense, either.
Many, if not most (in some communities), of those rural Americans ARE on TANF or other assistance. They know it’s ok for them (because they’re good and righteous or whatever) but not for them so-and-so’s (who happen to be the wrong color or live in the wrong place or have the wrong religion). That pretty much describes the entirety of southern Arkansas.
And they’re struggling to figure out health care 'cause they didn’t figure they would also get screwed over by the people who told them exactly what they would do to Medicaid and rural hospitals.
Good for me but not for thee literally is their concept of “fair”
That’s quite a generalization, and a bullshit one at that. The attitude is no more common in Americans than anywhere else, and it certainly doesn’t represent “most” Americans.
Now there’s a song for that:
I think for some of them that really is it - Republicans/MAGA/Trump are “their team” and they want to win every time. They don’t make the connection between “their team” and the consequences of their votes.
Yes. Food stamps are actually a form of support for agriculture. Which is why SNAP is administered by the US Department of Agriculture. But Republican farmers don’t make the connection.
For the people making money off those loans that’s a feature, not a bug.
Meanwhile, other folks are whining that young people aren’t buying houses or starting families. Well, yeah - because the money that would allow them to do that is going towards their massive debt.
You misunderstand me. I said “Americans” not because I think that behavior is uniquely American. I said “Americans” because a) that’s the crowd this thread is talking about; and b) I don’t know enough non-Americans, nor enough about their all their various cultures to generalize beyond the sample I do know.
You’re surely right that human nature is universal. But culture gets a look-in too.
As to experiences.
I spent ~20 years as a labor union volunteer. Both in leadership roles and as part of the team that creates, negotiates, and administers compliance with the union’s contract w the company. Through several iterations of that contract with some fairly substantive changes at each turn.
IME, folks would carefully dig through all the info we put out to find something that they thought would disadvantage them and their particular circumstances or pet issues. And what terminology did they use to lodge a complaint? Almost universally it was “That’s not fair!”
e.g. If everyone was getting a 5% raise, the senior well paid folks would say “It’s not fair; we deserve the lion’s share. We’ve suffered longer. And besides, we’re senior, and everything should be on a seniority basis. That’s what’s fair.” And the junior starving folks would say “That’s not fair; the senior folks who already make 4x what we do get a $20/hour raise and we get $5? And we’re the ones on food stamps! Fair would get us out of poverty first, then give everyone a raise.”
Of course if we gave everybody a $30/hour raise the whining would be about how unfair the resulting percentage changes were.
Unsurprisingly, if we were stuck dealing with pay cuts in hard times, not raises in good times, the volume of complaints skyrocketed. But the substance remains the same: “I’m being harmed and by (my) definition that’s not fair!”
I view all this as a subset or special case of the well-known human psychological trait known as Loss aversion - Wikipedia. In short, an unexpected $5 loss feels far worse than an unexpected $5 windfall feels good. And most people do a lot of their thinking actually with their feelings.
Bottom line:
I may have experienced an unusually selfish and entitled set of Americans. But I’m pretty confident they’re little different from everyone else you might find at your local grocery or living up & down your street.