unironically an important step in my radicalization was receiving a meme to this effect like a decade ago and it clicking. “oh, rich people literally do not understand most people don’t eat at upscale places. this person actually thinks they’re culturally superior to me because i do not eat at ‘actually fancy’ restaurants. they think the reason I have never eaten at a three star restaurant is because I’m close minded, not that i can’t afford to blow that much of my money on a single meal or spend an hour just driving each way. the entire joke is that they’re not racist because they have an open mind and eat at a lot of sit down restaurants and poor people are racist because they’ve only ever eaten at olive garden a few times and just refuse to try anything different.”

i’ve learned enough since to understand that not all of the US is as utterly fucked as this and in some places there’s affordable restaurants that are much higher quality and that the restaurant industry as a whole is an abusive nightmare, but that really did get me thinking about the liberal contempt of the masses.