Politics & Power Quote by Vic Snyder

Snyder’s line packages a policy argument as common sense, and that’s the tell. By anchoring his claim in what he imagines “the great majority of Americans” already believe, he’s not just describing public opinion; he’s laundering a moral framework through it. Responsibility becomes a cultural password: say it, and you signal seriousness, thrift, adulthood. The sentence quietly shifts the conversation from systems to selves, from food environments and corporate incentives to individual character.

The phrase “get fat” does extra work. It’s blunt, almost punitive, as if weight is the obvious, measurable receipt of bad choices. That framing turns a complex public-health issue into a simple transaction: you ate; you pay. It also primes the listener to see intervention - regulations on marketing, subsidies, labeling rules, access to healthy food - as coddling, even if the market is engineered to sell cheap calories at scale.

Context matters: as a politician speaking in an era when “personal responsibility” became a bipartisan rhetorical staple, Snyder taps into the American suspicion that collective solutions hide individual irresponsibility. The subtext is less about nutrition than about deservingness. Who merits help? Who brought it on themselves? In that light, the quote reads like a preemptive strike against treating obesity as a societal problem with societal tools. It’s persuasive because it flatters the audience’s self-image - competent choosers in a free market - while leaving unspoken how constrained those choices often are.