A Buddha statue sits in a burned house from the Palisades Fire on Jan. 21, 2025, in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images)
“Now you see that? That right there – that’s why I hate poor people,” comedian Dave Chappelle said during his “Saturday Night Live” monologue on Jan. 18.
He waited a beat to let the in-studio crowd laugh, and in those floating seconds you could almost feel each seated body leaning forward in their anticipation. Skilled performer that he is, Chappelle gave them the perfect amount of time to process the irreverence, and then he finished the thought.
“… because they can’t see past their own pain.”
And they laughed again.
Chappelle set up the joke with a story about the L.A. fires, specifically how several of his celebrity friends had lost their homes. If you look at the comments on the internet videos of the fire damage, he said, what you’ll find is people celebrating the misfortunes of the fortunate.
“Yeah! It serves these celebrities right,” he recited. “I hope their houses burn down.”
That’s why, Chappelle says, he hates poor people. Their bitterness and their resentment. And the joke works only if you qualify what group you’re talking about as Chappelle did – and it has to involve punching down. That’s the irreverence. But outside of the sphere of comedy, there’s a broader definition of poverty at work. There are poor people – as determined by income metrics and quality-of-life standards – and then there are impoverished people.
The most recent census finds that about 37 million Americans are “poor” – a horrific number that shames a nation as wealthy as ours. But modernity – and especially social media – has created an even greater population of impoverished people who in their own bitter estimation have been “reduced to poverty” in all its comparative forms. They are convinced that their situations, experiences, and sacrifices are undervalued and, worse, that less-deserving people are getting the respect, attention, and support that they themselves desire.
The way I see it, when Chappelle says “poor people” he’s referring to the vast majority – a growing impoverished class in a culturally impoverished moment. We can’t seem to see past our own pain, to our great detriment, and that is largely what shapes our politics and America’s rising statutory cruelty.
For the public to accept the current tone of immigration policy, for example, they must first be convinced that we are not talking about human beings when we refer to migrants. Those who cross our borders are first disparaged in name – illegals or aliens – and then ejected by policy. All the while, our leaders demand that we picture criminals rather than families, and that their mere presence, real or imagined, should form the basis of every grievance. The “others from elsewhere,” they say, are the reason we do not have the house we want, or the job we want, or the future we want.
That is neither a call for open borders nor an attempt at reductionism. It’s just to point out that there’s a reason the new administrations – in Washington and Concord – prefer the rhetoric of war rather than humanitarianism when talking about immigration policy. People – voters – can’t see past their own pain, and they are being met where they are and manipulated there.
That is also how politicians sell the retreat from progress on rights and knowledge – which in most cases has been hard won not in defiance of America’s founding principles but in accordance with them. But while we will talk romantically of creating a more perfect union, too many are unwilling to strive past the point of discomfort. So in the trash go diversity initiatives, LGBTQ protections, support for women’s reproductive health care, and decades of scientific work documenting an unfolding planetary disaster and its causes.
People are stuck in their own story, and that colors how they see the world. As a result, anything gained by others is a reminder of what has been denied to oneself. That is what it means, in our modern age, to feel impoverished.
Whatever your overall opinion of America’s newly returned leader, it’s hard to deny he is fully a man of his time. Nobody is better at mining pain for votes and applause, and his coattails have never been longer or broader. Even newly elected governors who once expressed disdain for the man seem happy to take the ride and parrot the rhetoric.
That is, in part, why the progress mentioned above is under siege in New Hampshire just as in Washington. Not because the foot soldiers here know anything beyond their own thoughts about DEI programs, or transgender people, or low- or no-cost reproductive health care services, or natural disasters fueled by climate change. Progress on these fronts is under siege because the alternative crusades – the kind that fundamentally reshape societies for the better – are wholly unacceptable to the truly powerful. Wealth and income inequality, dark money in politics, and a corrupt health care system are the biggest of the broken pieces – the real drivers of pain – but they are not meant to be fixed, not really.
And that dark money – that may be the worst of it all. Just ask the people of Los Angeles about what it’s buying. How does a nation realistically address something as big as climate change – the greatest threat there ever was – when fossil fuel producers are given free rein to purchase public policy?
The craziest thing is that the people who dismiss climate change as a hoax – duped by moguls who stand to lose everything in a cleaner world – are also the ones who seem most prone to buying into conspiracy theories about stolen elections and vaccine shenanigans. They’re certain the honest are lying, and they’re equally certain that the oil giants, and billionaires like our president, are giving it to them straight.
No matter how you look at it, climate deniers’ claim that it’s all a hoax is one crazy gamble: Win and you get relatively acceptable (but still volatile) fossil fuel prices; lose and it’s endless suffering for every living thing on the way to mass extinction. It’s like betting your life savings for the chance to win a nickel.
But when you think about it, I suppose none of it’s really that crazy. Like Chappelle said, people can’t see past their own pain. That, above all, is what shapes these modern days.