The Shirley exception, or why people vote for laws against their own interests

[quote]
See, the people who are sure that Surely There Will Be Exceptions are very comfortable with the idea of justice being decided on a case-by-case basis. They’ve always had teachers, bosses, bureaucrats, even traffic cops giving them some slack for reasons of compassion and logic.

I mean, if Officer Smalltown von Cul-De-Sac could give them a warning when they were caught with recreational amounts of pot as kids because it was harmless and they Had Futures, then Surely there must be similar exceptions for everyone?

That post about “I never thought the leopards would eat my face, sobbed woman who voted for Face-Eating Leopards Party” is very true, and it goes farther than personal immunity to a very generalized and broad Just World Fallacy.

Surely, they think, surely the leopards will know to only eat the *right* faces, the faces that need eating, and leave alone all the faces that don’t deserve that.

But if we try to lay out rules to protect faces from being eaten by leopards, people will take advantage. Best to keep it simple and count on decency and reason to rule the day.

So moderate conservatives, what we might call “everyday conservatives”, the ones who don’t wear MAGA hats or tea party costumes and think that Mr. Trump fella should maybe stay off of Twitter, they will vote for candidates and policies that they don’t actually agree with…

…because in their mind the exact law being prescribed is just a tool in the chest, an option on the table, which they expect to be wielded fairly and judiciously. Surely no one would do anything so unreasonable as actually enforcing it as written! Not when that would be bad!

And then they are confused, shocked, and even insulted when people hold them accountable for their support of the monstrous policy.

“I didn’t vote for leopards to eat *your* face! I just thought we needed some face-eating leopards generally. Surely you can’t blame me for that!”
[/quote]