When you become very wealthy it’s hard to remain attached to the struggles of those who make far less, but it’s not impossible. Sometimes a healthy dose of what it’s like on the ground floor can keep you humble and allow you to appreciate the life you have. Not doing so can cause the feeling of elitism to build up in your mind, and as a result, you become ignorant of the world and its struggles.
You become a bit like “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert who rattled off one of the more elitist things you’ve heard this year…so far.
Speaking on the rising gas prices, Colbert took the Biden administration’s route to make people okay with their mishandling of the economy and the energy crisis and appealed to people’s sense of patriotism, something they mock whenever it’s convenient to them.
“Today, the average gas price in America hit an all-time record high of over $4 per gallon. Okay, that stings, but a clear conscience is worth a buck or two,” said Colbert.
“I’m willing to pay. I’m willing to pay $4 a gallon. Hell, I’ll pay $15 a gallon because I drive a Tesla,” he quipped.
“Take that, Putin! We’re not gonna buy our gas from a war criminal,” he continued. “We’re gonna buy it from the good guys, Saudi Arabia!”
.@StephenAtHome: "Today, the average gas price in America hit an all-time record high of over $4/gallon. OK, that stings, but a clean conscience is worth a buck or two. It’s important. I’m willing to pay $4/gallon. Hell, I’ll pay $15 a gallon b/c I drive a Tesla" pic.twitter.com/my8Ukya5rQ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 8, 2022
Many people are focusing on the $15 joke, but in my eyes, it’s not the issue. It is, after all, a joke. Colbert’s just a bad comedian so it wasn’t that funny.
The issue is primarily with what he said before it: “A clear conscience is worth a buck or two.”
Colbert’s referring to the Biden administration stopping the purchasing of oil from Russia, which was a whopping 500,000 barrels a day. The only issue with this is that Biden’s plan to make up for the missing oil is to purchase from other entities who aren’t exactly our friends and may give us trouble at another point in time with the money they make from us.
Firstly, Colbert is clearly running defense for the Biden administration. What he’s not saying is that lifting much of the red tape that plagues drillers and oil companies would speed along domestic oil production and help us kill this crisis. It’s something Biden refuses to do while simultaneously pretending he’s not doing it.
But more importantly, Colbert is attempting to play to your sentiment that this is all the right thing to do.
Colbert is so detached from you that he doesn’t get the struggle you’re going to have to put fuel into your car and pay your energy bills. The man is worth an estimated $75 million dollars and makes $15 million a year doing the “Late Show.” It’s probably likely that he hasn’t touched a gas pump in years and even if he did it would be pocket change to him.
It allows him to sit and virtue signal from his high place to you, the person who will pay outrageously for the incompetence that Colbert is trying to soften the blow toward by appealing to your sense of patriotism and morality. You’re making the “great sacrifice” according to a man who is going to sacrifice nothing.
His elitism has blinded him to the realities of everyone else.
The reality is that this hike in gas prices and the energy crisis is a result of mismanagement on the federal level, not some war one country started with another. This is the result of Biden deciding America doesn’t need to be a leader on the world stage when it is whether he, his fellow Democrats, and media cheerleaders like it or not.
Colbert just expertly demonstrated how the wrong people are in charge.
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