Snobs

There are all sorts of snobs in the world. I may have mentioned this before. There are coffee snobs, tea snobs, wine snobs, literature snobs (oh yeah!), cycling snobs and recycling snobs, canoeing snobs and kayaking snobs, sailing snobs and motorboat snobs, car snobs and anti-car snobs.
Snobs all have a couple of things in common. The first is that they possess some special knowledge about whatever they are snobbing, something that sets them apart from the others in their particular arena. Sail snobs are aware of the subtle differences between "true" sailboats, which have fixed keels, and the sailboats of hoi polloi, which have swing keels. A good coffee snob is aware not only of the secret of fresh grinding beans in a stone grinder, but of using a French press so that the oils are not trapped in the filter and lost.
The second thing that snobs have is the assurance that their knowledge makes them better than the others. I see a person sailing in a ####### sailboat, and know that this person is not a real sailor, and I can sit back comfortably and bask in my superior status.
Because it's an election year, the political snobs are coming out into the sunlight, far from their smokey rooms. Conservative and liberal alike, they cherish their special knowledge. Liberals know that they, and only they, possess true charity. They are the party of forgiveness, of understanding, and it makes them righteous as all get out, and insufferable to boot.
Conservatives on the other hand, cherish the knowledge that they are the true realists, the savvy thinkers. They are the party of logic, of business, of hard decisions, and it makes them righteous as all get out, and insufferable to boot.
The problem for me is that, while I can see a case for compassion, and I can see a case for hard decisions, I don't really like the people advocating either. Sigh