In the twisted world of American Socialism, leftists can simply re-tool reality in favor of their desired outcomes. I just had a “conversation” with a co-worker who is upset because she claims that a person displaced by recent flooding is being charged by the landlord for the cost of cleaning up from the flood. See, the renter has been living at a hotel on the Red Cross, but the time is up. They had already paid their rent for the month and can’t get back in to the place they rent for at least another week. So they’re kind of stuck. And they’re broke. And the Landlord won’t refund the rent.
I attempted to ask a simple question to get clarification on that last sentence. Because it’s important to note the apparent confusion regarding the difference between charging tenants “rent” and charging tenants for the cost of “cleaning up from the flood”. They are not the same; one is legal and a standard practice and one is illegal and would subject a landlord to a lawsuit. The point is that a landlord doesn’t have to refund rent because of a disaster. And rent not refunded does NOT constitute a “charge for the cost to clean up a flood”. But to a socialist, it does. Because fairness.
Before I even finished my question, my co-worker got up out of her seat, told me she didn’t want to even hear my question, stated that she wasn’t going to argue with me, and she walked out of the room. How’s that for civility? She is not a child. She’s a woman in her ’50’s. And she is so sure of her opinion, that she is hostile to even listening to a question.
When the same pervasive bad behavior that infects our politics and our media bleeds through to our interactions as fellows, it’s hard to see how this will end well. When you can dive bomb someone with your opinion and then shamelessly attack them for even opening their mouth with a reasonable (and factually accurate) response, cutting them off and marginalizing them, censoring them, and then walk away to add insult after dismissing them, what does that say about our direction as a culture? We’ve worked together for nearly 15 years and I know that I will never look at her the same way again. Yet tomorrow she’ll act like nothing ever happened.
It’s not that she hasn’t acted out before. The same “honest” open-minded progressive made the argument last week that 50 years ago people beat their children. When I asked her to clarify, she backed off and corrected herself, clarifying that to her, spanking is synonymous with beating your children. And she’s not alone, is she? At the time I asked her, “When you say things like that, how are we supposed to have honest, respectful discussion?” She didn’t answer. She giggled. She thought it was funny. So I chided her, “And we wonder why we can’t just get along…”