him<\/em> problem, a lack of focus and discipline on his part. And he darkly hints that the presence of ASL interpreters is some budget-busting expense burdening taxpayers.<\/p>\nBut this still strikes me as a difficult sell \u2014 as something it is not easy to convince others they need to be upset about. This does not directly affect any felt need even for the ungrateful and resentful white folks who make up the core of Rufo\u2019s and Kirk\u2019s target audience.<\/p>\n
I suppose they can shoehorn this into the generic category of a\u00a0\u201cmy<\/em> tax dollars are being spent on other people who aren\u2019t me, personally<\/em>\u201d complaint. That\u2019s a huge part of the entire Rufo\/MAGA\/\u201danti-woke\u201d shtick and has been a central organizing principle for the right ever since at least the \u201cTea Party.\u201d That\u2019s always effective as a general appeal to personal, individual selfishness, but it seems like a stretch here. Sure, ASL interpreters aren\u2019t volunteers so, yeah, there\u2019s some non-zero taxpayer expenditure involved here, but even for an audience of MAGA voters who deliriously enjoy pretending that \u201cforeign aid\u201d is half of the federal budget, the expense of ASL interpreters is not going to seem like a budget-busting boondoggle.<\/p>\nAnd while the selfish, resentful white MAGA folks who supported Rufo\u2019s previous campaigns against teaching history and his ongoing resegregation efforts have shown they clearly share his anti-Black prejudice, I\u2019m not sure they\u2019re automatically on board with his reflexively anti-deaf sentiment, at least not as a starting point. They\u2019ll get there, I\u2019m sure \u2014 the resentment game is a one-way ratchet \u2014 but it\u2019s take a bit of work for them to participate in creating excuses to resent deaf people, who weren\u2019t previously a group they would have come up with as part of \u201cThose<\/em> People.\u201d<\/p>\nIn a sense, the anti-woke attack on ASL interpretation is a defensive<\/em> maneuver. It is a necessary step for Kirk and Rufo to protect their agenda and to keep their base in line.<\/p>\nEspecially in this<\/em> context \u2014 the context of tragedy and natural disaster. That\u2019s always a dangerous context for MAGA ideology. It\u2019s a place where they can start to lose people, where even some of their most lockstep-faithful devotees can stumble or start to waver.<\/p>\nThe entire MAGA movement \u2014 Trumpism, \u201canti-woke,\u201d resegregation \u2014 is based on a choice that must be chosen all the time<\/em>. And thus it is a choice that must be directed and steered and enforced on every occasion on which it presents itself. A press conference by officials discussing the horrific toll of a natural disaster is exactly such an occasion.<\/p>\nThe choice they must make, every time, is to choose resentment over gratitude. Gratitude is like kryptonite to their resentment-driven agenda. They cannot allow it, cannot abide it, cannot risk the possibility of it. And the press conferences about the fires in Los Angeles invite the possibility of gratitude.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re a Fox-addicted resentment junkie who has spent years training yourself in the habits of this ideology. Even if you\u2019ve got a full arsenal of defense mechanisms ready to deploy against any disaster, anywhere, so that you can dismissively explain it away, reassuring yourself that Those People deserve it or brought it on themselves with their depraved coastal elite ways, you\u2019re still witnessing families losing their homes, their possessions, their cherished memories. You\u2019re seeing people displaced, forced to flee by sudden calamities beyond their control. And you\u2019re watching this from the comfort of your own home. This makes even those defense mechanisms dangerous. The thoughts MAGA has trained them to think \u2014 \u201cWell, I\u2019m<\/em> not going to lose my<\/em> home because, unlike Those People, I don\u2019t deserve to\u201d \u2014 tiptoe dangerously close to the recognition that \u201cI<\/em> have not lost my home, unlike those I\u2019m seeing,\u201d and even despite all that training and practice this can still lead to something too much like gratitude.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s deadly toxic for MAGA. MAGA only works if those who have homes stay focused on resenting those who do not.<\/p>\n
And so MAGA cannot afford for its people \u2014 in this weak moment in which they may be tempted to choose gratitude over resentment \u2014 to be presented with a second temptation in the form of those ASL interpreters. Their presence serves as a reminder that \u201cI can hear the speaker, but others cannot,\u201d which again is just an arms-length away from the danger of gratitude.<\/p>\n
So folks like Rufo and Kirk really don\u2019t have any choice here but to push back hard, to go on the attack, throwing everything they have at the situation to ensure that their followers will rise to the challenge and find a way to choose resentment over gratitude, even here, where it seems nearly impossible.<\/p>\n
This is part of why conservatives and tyrants have always been \u201cintersectional,\u201d even before some \u201cwoke\u201d liberal academic type came up with a word for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou must now practice resenting deaf people\u201d is an odd assignment for the MAGA faithful, but they\u2019ll learn to play along, cultivating and developing the habit until it becomes second-nature, something as reflexive and unthinking as the idea of \u201cwelfare queens\u201d or the paradox of \u201clazy immigrants stealing jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Think again of the way the white right in America has trained itself to resent \u201cthe handicapped\u201d in general. This is as absurd and seemingly impossible as every other form of upside-down resentment \u2014 the wealthy resenting the poor, white Americans resenting Black Americans, etc. \u2014 but that absurdity was obscured, in part, by daily practice and training involving \u201chandicapped parking spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2025\/01\/Liturgy.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Those parking spaces offer us a daily crossroads, a recurring choice between the opposite paths of gratitude and resentment.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s raining, the parking lot is crowded, and the only open space anywhere near the door is reserved for the handicapped. So you park hundreds of feet farther away and have to splash your way across the entire parking lot to get to the store. As you do so, you see that parking space, and now you get to choose.<\/p>\n
You can choose to remember that yes, it\u2019s raining and I\u2019m soaked, and yes, this place is crowded, but hey \u2014 I am healthy and can walk all the way across this whole parking lot without pain or injury. And you can choose to be grateful because of that. You will remind yourself that others do not enjoy this luxury and privilege of just being able to walk, but you do<\/em>. The thankfulness and gratitude that accompanies that reminder will make you happier,<\/em> and that will, in turn, make others around you happier, because to be thankful is to be \u201cmuch obliged\u201d \u2014 and when you\u2019re overflowing with gratitude and obligation it spills all over the place. You will become grateful not only for your own health, but grateful also for the practice of reserving parking spaces for those who need them because you are much obliged<\/em> and it seems, almost literally, like the least we can do for them.<\/p>\nOr you can splash across that rainy parking lot and see that parking space and choose not<\/em> to be be grateful, not<\/em> to be obliged, and not<\/em> to be happy.<\/p>\nThis is where everything about MAGA world and people like Chris Rufo gets really weird and dark. They\u2019re choosing<\/em> not to be happy. Deliberately. Why would anyone want<\/em> to do that?<\/p>\nWe\u2019ll get to the why<\/em> later. Here I\u2019m just focused on the how<\/em>. This is how to choose misery, and to spread misery \u2014 by choosing resentment instead of gratitude.<\/p>\nYou look at that handicapped parking space and you work as hard as you can to make it something you can resent. Train yourself to ask whiny, laughably foolish questions like \u201cWhy should they<\/em> get to park there when I<\/em> can\u2019t?\u201d while pretending that you don\u2019t notice how whiny and laughably foolish such questions are. Even if you were in a good mood previously, train yourself to turn that into a bad mood at any moment, because of a reserved parking space, or a braille elevator button, or a curb cut-out, or an ASL interpreter.<\/p>\nIt takes work, but you can learn to do it if you really, really want to. Put in that work and, eventually, you can be an ungrateful jerk who resents deaf people just for existing and who almost believes the lies you\u2019re telling yourself about how their presence in this world makes you more entitled and aggrieved.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Put in that work, do the training, and practice hard every day and, eventually, you too can be an ungrateful jerk who resents deaf people just for existing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":69563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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