Ever here the Bob Dylan song The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll? It's about a 1963 incident when a white Maryland farmer named William Zantzinger got drunk and started harassing a middle-aged black barmaid and hitting her with a cane. She collapsed and died and he got a six month prison term. In the early 90s Zantzinger went to jail again - this time for charging rent on shacks that were actually owned by the local government. These shacks didn't have running water and they were located 30 miles down the road from Washington, D.C.
Obviously the United States is not Russia and our leaders aren't kleptocrats. But they have been willing to ignore abject poverty for generations. I suspect that the dismissive, contemptuous attitude that many middle and upper class Americans have towards, say, the inner cities, would not be unfamiliar in Moscow or St. Petersburg.
'Willing to ignore abject poverty' was a part of conservative ideology which states that people must be directly responsible before God, not government, and government is not in place to support the people. This was the better part of conservative ideology as i see you, and times when it was dominant on U.S. political landscape were the best times in U.S. history.
Obviously the United States is not Russia and our leaders aren't kleptocrats. But they have been willing to ignore abject poverty for generations. I suspect that the dismissive, contemptuous attitude that many middle and upper class Americans have towards, say, the inner cities, would not be unfamiliar in Moscow or St. Petersburg.