Little Morsel #8: The Party That Hates Its Own Fans
Have you ever noticed how the people screaming loudest about freedom are always the ones getting the worst deal? Itās like cheering for a team that keeps tackling you. Every. Single. Play. And after the game, you still buy the jersey. You defend the coach. You swear, with a bloody lip, that next season will be different.
Thatās the modern conservative movement. Not āconservativeā like careful, or thoughtful. Conservative like preserving a system thatās perfected the art of hurting the very people who swear loyalty to it.
The core belief goes something like this: Everyone is on their own. Suffering builds character. If youāre struggling, you didnāt try hard enough.
It sounds tough. It sounds virtuous. But itās a psychological trap. It trains people to resent anyone who gets helpāincluding, secretly, themselves. It makes compassion feel like a moral failing.
So when a policy comes along that would actually make life easierācheaper insulin, a cap on a medical bill, anything that stops an illness from becoming a financial death sentenceāthe reaction from that base isnāt relief.
Itās suspicion.
Because if hardship is the proof of your worth, then easing hardship feels like cheating. The system has them scared of the cure.
Letās look at the part that should stop everyone cold.
There was a rule, a simple one. It said medical debt couldnāt go on your credit report. Not erase the debt. Not forgive it. Justā¦ stop a hospital from destroying your financial future because you got sick.
That protection was killed.
Letās translate that:
You can survive a heart attackā¦ and still lose your apartment.
You can beat cancerā¦ and still get denied a car loan.
You can do everything ārightāāand the system still gets to look you in the eye and say, āToo bad.ā
And who gets hit hardest? The same working-class voters who were told, for decades, that this party was āon their side.ā
This isnāt strength. Itās not discipline. Itās not freedom.
Itās loyalty to a machine that profits from your pain. Youāre not a fan in the stands; youāre the tackling dummy.
Nowābefore anyone claps too hard for the other teamāletās be brutally honest. Democrats have their own symphony of failure. They fundraise off fear. They talk a big game about justice while protecting the donor-class backers. They mistake a well-meaning tweet for a result, a symbolic gesture for systemic change.
Thatās precisely why this isnāt about liberal versus conservative anymore. Thatās a stale food fight.
This is about progressivism versus stagnation.
Progressivism isnāt left. Itās forward.
Itās the radical, common-sense idea that if one of us drowns in medical debt, all of us are poorer for it. That a society should be judged not by how cruel it can be to the āundeserving,ā but by how many people it keeps standing. Itās the understanding that you canāt MAGA your way out of a $200,000 hospital bill. You canāt bootstrap your way through chemotherapy. And you sure as hell canāt call it āfreedomā if getting sick costs you your home, your credit, and your future.
At some point, the question stops being, āWho do you vote for?ā Thatās the easy part.
The real question is, āWhy is anyone still defending the team that keeps tackling them?ā
When does the loyalty you show to them ever come back to you? Whereās your jersey? All you get is the bill. And another concussion.
The play isnāt going to change. The coach isnāt coming to save you. Maybe itās time to stop cheering for your own bruises.
The play isnāt going to change. The coach isnāt coming to save you.
If a team keeps tackling its own fans, thatās not tradition ā thatās a business model. And every time you defend it, youāre not proving your toughness. Youāre underwriting the next hit.
Maybe freedom isnāt cheering harder. Maybe itās finally leaving the stadium.
ā The Baker
