Talk politics.

From Monty Python’s Hell’s Grannies sketch:

We ‘ave a lot of trouble with these oldies. Pension days are worst. They go mad! As soon as they get their ‘ands on their money they blow it all on milk, bread, tea, a tin of meat for the cat…

Mitt Romney at a millionaire’s fundraiser in 2012:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.

From a letter by Montana Republican legislator Dave Hagstrom, to his tenants over Easter weekend:

Much of the problem stems from the public demanding that the government provide services, in the form of healthcare, food, housing, unemployment compensation, etc. and the government has merely printed the money needed to meet these demands. This has given all of us in this country an inflated life-style. In short, all of us enjoy services and luxuries that we have not earned by our own hard work.. Every one of us is living a bit of fairly-tale (sic) life-style.

…It creates a mindset that, if you have a premature baby, the government should spend whatever it takes to keep it alive It creates the mindset that if I have committed a crime while on drugs, the government should give me a treatment program rather than send me to prison. I creates a mindset that, if I have kids and their dads are dead-beats, the government should buy my groceries and help me get a job while they provide day-care for my kids and send me to school to educate me so I can get a better job. It creates a mindset that the government should get my mom out of the nursing home and pay someone to watch her in my home. It creates the mindset that even though I was the one who choose to smoke my whole life, the government should pay for cancer treatment at the local hospital. It creates the mindset that since I only know how to cook Hot n' Ready for supper, the government should give my kids a nutritious breakfast and lunch…

First, you accept that not everyone, including yourself, needs to live as long as they currently do, or as "comfortably" as they currently do

Second, you accept the fact that you and your neighbor are going to have to work harder than ever, maybe take a second or third job and live on less.

----Third, that you plan to take your own health seriously and assume that it’s you’re responsibility to be healthy – by getting more exrerrcise, watching less TV,, and eating cleaner, cheaper, healthier food than you have been.

Forth, that you manage the relationships in your Ufe by removing those friendships that are abusive and destructive.

Fifth, that you begin taking into your life those family members who need help even if you could pawn them off on the government.

Back when I was young, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, conservatives evincing horror over the welfare state told stories of the poor blowing public assistance on liquor and other luxuries. There were the inevitable stories about fit, bling-bedecked young black men flashing their gold teeth as they bought baskets of steak and gallons of colt 45 with their food stamps, of women -- also usually black – going through several hours of labor just so they could get a little more on their government check for the extra baby. (Which sounds like not just a hard dollar, but an excruciating one.)

Well, it seems that conservatism has evolved. No longer are they pretending that – honest! – it’s about the people who abuse the system. Now it’s about how actually providing healthcare, food, education, etc., to people who can’t afford it is a terrible thing and needs to be stopped. Not just poor people but the middle class need to “accept” dying early – and presumably watching their children and parents die – from malnutrition and medical neglect.

I suppose we should consider this honesty at least some form of progress. Hagstrom’s letter, begins with “How are you? I hope and pray you are well!” and the assurance that “I feel it would not be loving of me not to warn you” about how they need to resign themselves to doing without silly luxuries like medicine, food, or any time not spent scrabbling desperately for extra pennies to forestall hunger and sickness.

This, apparently, is the new Republican messaging. Instead of sneering at each other in private about all those people who expect help when they can’t afford the basics of life, they’re now “lovingly” explaining the situation to us.

I guess those tenants are supposed to say, “hey, when you put it THAT way, I can see why I now have to give up sleeping in order to work two or three jobs while at the same time caring for my Alzheimer-afflicted parents at home, cooking nutritious meals, putting on my leggings now and then and jogging down for a couple hours at the gym and accepting with dignity my inevitable premature death from stress-related heart failure and exhaustion. “

“That’s okay, because you’ve explained it so lovingly.”

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