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Comment by floor2 | Hacker News Reader

There is no such "contempt". You're misunderstanding the world view of middle-America.

Their motivations, however misplaced and due to misunderstandings, are about fairness, justice and functioning government. The simple truth is that, to many Americans, the idea of "working from home" means "not really working".

They believe that people in the office will do real work, whereas those same people at home won't. It's a wrong and harmful worldview, but it's not malicious or coming from a place of contempt. A solid "never attribute to malice ..." moment.

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At a certain point, someone being willfully ignorant crosses into malice. We live in a world with the internet and a flight to whatever US city you want for $500. If you aren't willing to learn about the world, that's on you. If you aren't able to conceive of the idea that people in different situations might do things different to you, you aren't "ignorant" or "stupid", you are a child who hasn't developed one of the basic parts of your brain.

> We live in a world with the internet and a flight to whatever US city you want for $500. If you aren't willing to learn about the world, that's on you.

This is an ironically contemptuous view. One, five hundred dollars isn’t nothing. Two, that doesn’t include lodging, meals, et cetera, all of which make visiting a city prohibitively expensive for many American families.

Replace $500 and travel expenses with broadband internet and websites hosting text/audio/images/video content where one can learn about the world.

> broadband internet and websites hosting text/audio/images/video content where one can learn about the world

This rarely breeds empathy the way travel (or fiction) does.

They receive their overly-negative views of other Americans from media they choose to consume. They could just as easily consume media that presents urban life in a more positive sense, and swear off media that makes a specific point of painting it in a negative way.

It doesn't have to cost anything to learn. One just has to stop deliberately choosing to learn falsehoods.

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