Compassion By Proxy

I'm currently watching the latest season of Fargo, the television version of the Coen Brothers film. Like the movie, the series is quirky and over-the-top, with outlandish and caricature characters and awash in Minnesota accent. Without getting too deep into spoilers, the story revolves around Dot Lyon, a young wife with a young daughter, who fled from her violent first husband a decade or so earlier. Dot's husband is a clueless car salesman whose ruthless mother Lorraine Lyon (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) runs a multibillion dollar debt collection company. Dot's as-ruthless first husband Roy Tillman (played by Jon Hamm) is a corrupt (naturally) sheriff who sent a psychopathic goon, and later a bunch of thugs, to retrieve Dot.

The show is well worth watching, with just about every character chewing the scenery in homage to Coen Brothers sensibilities. But, it has its "moments," and one such prompted today's bit of blather.

Part way into Episode 5, the show's two top-level villains (Leigh and Hamm) finally meet. He wants his wife back, she’s meh about Dot but is fond of her granddaughter and son and wants the family to stay together. It's there that the show's writers apparently couldn't help themselves:

L: You know, I've heard of you. You're one of those "constitutional" sheriffs.

R: Yes I am. Defender of freedom and protector of the common man against the tyranny of the state and all its wicked demands.

L: Taxes?

R: Oh yeah.

L: The social safety net.

R: Well I'd spit, but uhh...

L:Respect for the otherly-abled.

R: The whole multicultural panoply. Billy has two mothers, et cetera.

L: So, so, you want freedom with no responsibility. Son, there's only one person on earth who gets that deal.

R:The President.

L: A baby. You're fighting for your right to be a baby.

Caricatures, indeed.

Intended as a take-down of the "sovereign citizen" folderol, it takes a giant leap into eye-roll when it equates rejection of the "safety net" with a rejection of responsibility. Want to roll your eyes even more? Read the comments at YouTube.

If you travel social media much, you've likely seen "appeal-to-Jesus" memes such as this one.

It makes the same mistake about responsibility and caring for others that Lorraine does. It conflates personal charity with spending Other People's Money (OPM). It tells us that "caring by proxy" is the same as devoting your own time and money. It messages us that voting politicians who will spend OPM is not only proper, but sufficient. Mr. Martin is conflating spending OPM with being charitable, and that's as false a conflation as you can get. And, he's presuming racism in those who don't agree with him. A common ploy, and one that we've gotten so used to that we've stopped bothering to offer the response such an accusation, so blithely proffered, deserves: "F*** you, @@@@@le!"

Primacy of the individual, respect for others' rights and liberties, and an understanding that the only legitimate purposes for which tax dollars can be taken are "fee-for-service,” is not rejecting responsibility.

A friend recently shared this bit of history, wherein then-Congressman Davy Crockett reminded his fellows in the House (after being reminded by a constituent) that charitable giving of tax dollars, no matter how noble the intent or deserving the recipient, is unjust, immoral, and outside the authority granted to Congress.

The real rejection of responsibility is, as David Mamet observed, found in collectivist forms of government.

Blather about "taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society" miss the point. There are public goods and services that should be paid for, because we use them (directly or generally). While we can discuss how to pay for them, they must be paid for, and people who'd use a highway without accepting that the highway has to be built and maintained somehow are grifters. But, this doesn't mean that the government can simply take as much as a majority votes for and spend it however it wishes.

This is where people of an abdicating mindset make their big mistake. They conflate 'society' with 'government.' Gandhi observed that "the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members." That, just as the appeal-to-Jesus memes, should be taken as a personal exhortation, as in "donate your own time and money, treat your fellow humans with dignity and respect, and find ways to help those who truly need it." Instead, it's used as an excuse to justify the "I voted to help the poor with OPM, therefore I'm a better person than those who didn't" cop-out.

And, for sure, it's a cop-out. With tangible harm. As I've blogged, the government is not only terribly inefficient at helping the poor, it perpetuates and institutionalizes poverty and destroys the family structures that are the biggest foundation for success in life. When your livelihood (see: countless politicians and bureaucrats) depends on a problem persisting, your motivation to actually solve that problem goes out the window, and you’re incentivized to build permanent dependence into society.

Hollywood's depressing state of political turpitude is on full display in Roy Tillman. [Spoilers] Tillman is not only a caricature of a stereotype, he's a caricature of several stereotypes rolled into one. Not just a "sovereign citizen" type, he's also a sociopathic wife-beating thug, he is stealing from the government to supply weapons to his militia, he's a murderer, he's an Old Testament extremist (as in, wives are property) and he's a sexual kink. The first telltale that leftist garbage was coming? Before their tete-a-tete, Lorraine and Roy meet outside:

L: Let me guess, the orphans need a new roof.

R: I'm more of a "let the orphans fight each other for sport" kind of guy. Libertarian, so...

Sigh.

I can roll with the garbage messaging in watching the series, because the rest of it is good, but the misrepresentation of libertarianism and pontification by Lorraine are gratuitous shoe-horning of Hollywood hackery that took me, for the moment, out of the show. The Lorraine-Roy “baby” exchange was conveniently interrupted before he could respond to her quip, of course.

"Social safety net" and its cousin "social contract" are nothing more than guilt-trip ploys to try and shame people into agreeing to give up more of their money and their liberties, so that other people can feel good about having "done something." I'll say it again, giving away someone else's money is not compassion or charity.