Remember Luis Lang? I wrote about him a couple of days ago, Man Blames Obama for SC Republican Policy. As I noted at that time, it was “truly heartbreaking” that this man would potentially lose his sight. And it didn’t matter that he was a conservative Republican who chose not to get health insurance. And it didn’t matter that if things were reversed and he saw someone else going blind because of their utter irresponsibility, he would have shown no sympathy. So I’m pleased to pass along some good news regarding Mr Lang, SC Man Will Get Sight-Saving Surgery as Liberal Donors Chip In.

Luis Lang is not a very likable guy. I went pretty easy on him before, because I didn’t know much about him. But in this followup article, Lang does not show himself to be either very self-aware or very gracious. If you look on his Go Fund Me page, you will see that the vast majority of the money is coming from liberals. And some of them come with sarcasm. For example, Mary O donated $25, saying, “Dear Mr Lang, I started to give only $5 but realized I was being stingy because of your political leanings and that is wrong. See how that works? (Oops — sorry.)” But others are all kindness. Ryan Graff, who donated $20, wrote, “No one deserves to go blind, and you’ve had enough lectures and jokes by now. Best wishes for a full recovery.”

I’m not sure that Lang has had enough lecturing. He claims that he was ignorant about different aspects of the law like the Medicaid gap. But let’s be honest: he didn’t care. He was making a good income. He didn’t think that it would ever affect him. So he just voted for the party that told him what he wanted to hear: that he was one of the good people and that that they’d go after those moochers — also known as the working poor. In this regard, I think Lang is rather typical of Republican voters: very short-sighted but insulated from the economic realities that poor people face daily.

He now says he sees the problem being the whole government “state and federal.” But I don’t know what more the federal government could have done to help him out. What he seems to have done here is what conservatives do whenever I argue them into a corner: they throw up their hands and say, “Both sides are terrible!” But they haven’t made the argument that the other side is terrible. It is just their way of closing out the argument — saving face without having to question their biases, because all conservatives believe that government is terrible — that’s why they vote Republican. (See: Conservatives Are Not for Small Government.)

But the kicker to all this is that even when asked if he holds himself responsible, he says “partly.” And then he goes on to discuss paying attention to his sugar levels because he has diabetes. So he’s not taking any responsibility for not having insurance. He’s not taking any responsibility for the actual issue at hand. And if this isn’t the prototypical Republican, I don’t know what is. This is like people who don’t want to pay any taxes, but when there is a hurricane, complain that the government isn’t fixing their houses fast enough.

The reason I’m even writing about this, however, is because of how Lang responded to the politics of it. He was surprised at how people responded to the original article, “It turned into a political thing. That wasn’t my intention when I reached out. This is ridiculous.” How could it not be seen as a “political thing”? He spent half the original article complaining about Obama and the Democrats and the “Not Fair Health Care Act.” He made it all about politics: he was suffering because the Democrats did something to help him, he refused it, and voted for people who limited his options after he refused it. This is ridiculous, but not in the way that Lang means it.

In addition to this, he couldn’t even be gracious about all the support that he’s getting from liberals. In response to the fact that it is liberal donors who are giving to him, he said, “I look at a person as a person. People are acting from the heart, just like I have done in the past.” Well, I would like to see some documentation before I will believe that he’s helped people in the past. But let’s be clear, if there were a liberal whining about the government not helping her out, Lang wouldn’t have dropped five bucks in her Go Fund Me campaign. No, conservatives prefer to fund bigoted bakeries and bigoted pizza shops.

This is who Luis Lang is:

And he hasn’t learned a thing.