day no. 15,235: I'm as good as you

"The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say, 'I’m as good as you.' The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the center of his life a good, solid, resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says 'I’m as good as you' believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: 'Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, la-di-da affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here’s a man who hasn’t turned on the jukebox — he’s one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different.'" - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

"I'm as good as you" is envy with mascara. It is cosmetically concealed smallness. It boasts of integrity, but is fueled by disingenuinity. It is meretricious. "I'm as good as you" recognizes its own inferiority by asserting its equality. Equality in this sense of the word is the essence of the egalitarian leveling agent that seeks to devour any and every difference by reducing all peoples to the lowest common denominator imaginable in order to eliminate that nagging feeling of inferiority. It is like leaven working its way through the lump only with the end in mind of leaving no lump. The problem is not the superiority of the neighbor, but the way one's own inferiority makes the man feel. Being inferior is not inherently problematic. It's only problematic if one refuses to accept it or the feelings associated with it. If, instead, those feelings are fanned into the flame and weaponized with words like, "justice" and "equality," well then, that is now a problem and not one which will long we tolerated. In this spirit, one will soon be subject to the picket line chants of "What do we want? Equality! When do we want it? Now! How do we want it? By any means necessary!"