Armed Teabaggers
And GOP SOP
So in between hikes I caught some CNN and saw that there's at least one armed teabagger now.
My favorite part is still all the righty screaming about the Constitution. Funny how after eight years of actual shredding of the Constitution--from quasi-stealing an election of 2000 to domestic spying--without a peep from these folks, suddenly they think that providing people with health insurance constitutes destruction of the Constitution.
I'm in no way committed to health-care reform. I don't understand it well enough to be strongly for it or against it. What I'm against is irrationalism and demogoguery. But it seems like that's the conservative SOP these days.
I think it's pretty clear that the GOP attitude is now something like: when we are in power, we do whatever we want, no matter how outlandish; when you are in power, you can do nothing, no matter how reasonable. Apparently they are going to stir up ignorant, furious, spittle-flecked opposition as a matter of course now. One is reminded of the synthetic crowds in 2000 with their GOP-printed "Sore-Loserman" signs...and the Brooks Brothers riot of GOP operatives (complete with G.I. Joe Mobile Electronic Command Post) pretending to be ordinary outraged citizens.
Even when I'm basically neutral anymore, the GOP almost inevitably pushes me to the other side .
And GOP SOP
So in between hikes I caught some CNN and saw that there's at least one armed teabagger now.
My favorite part is still all the righty screaming about the Constitution. Funny how after eight years of actual shredding of the Constitution--from quasi-stealing an election of 2000 to domestic spying--without a peep from these folks, suddenly they think that providing people with health insurance constitutes destruction of the Constitution.
I'm in no way committed to health-care reform. I don't understand it well enough to be strongly for it or against it. What I'm against is irrationalism and demogoguery. But it seems like that's the conservative SOP these days.
I think it's pretty clear that the GOP attitude is now something like: when we are in power, we do whatever we want, no matter how outlandish; when you are in power, you can do nothing, no matter how reasonable. Apparently they are going to stir up ignorant, furious, spittle-flecked opposition as a matter of course now. One is reminded of the synthetic crowds in 2000 with their GOP-printed "Sore-Loserman" signs...and the Brooks Brothers riot of GOP operatives (complete with G.I. Joe Mobile Electronic Command Post) pretending to be ordinary outraged citizens.
Even when I'm basically neutral anymore, the GOP almost inevitably pushes me to the other side .
posted by Winston Smith at
12:06 PM
2 Comments:
I am committed to health care reform. My brother is on disability, undergoing dialysis three days a week, waiting for a kidney. The only jobs he can do (part time) don't come with health care. If he takes a job he will make too much money to qualify for the program(s) that pay for his health care now. Catch-22 had nothing on this.
You might start with Obama's goals.
Or, you might consider the insurance practice known as rescission . The fact that our current system allows insurance companies to happily take your money month after month, and then cancel your insurance when you actually need it, invoking some pretext they knew about all along is (IMHO) sufficient cause to embrace reform.
Or, you might look at how well our system performs compared to other industrialized nations.
The fact that we pay roughly 2-3 times as much (per capita) for comparable health care, and can't even cover all of our citizens, is grounds to strive for health care reform.
Best,
Jim
Jeez, I'm really sorry to hear about your brother, Jim. I certainly hope they find a kidney for him soon.
My own brother--though his story is less dramatic--has been left high and dry by the system. He was a draftsman for a company that turned out to be largely a tax shelter. The owner had paid so little attention to it that it fell into disarray, and, rather than try to fix it, he just fired everybody and closed up shop. People on the manufacturing end had no idea any of this was happening until they got their pink slips. Now my brother--who is epileptic and still unemployed--can't find insurance worth having for under $900/mo.
At any rate, it's not that I don't understand the case for health care reform, nor that I'm not sympathetic. Rather, it's an issue about which I know at best an only average amount--which is not enough to know how likely the various possible pitfalls are. And I'm in general worried about the growth of government and our dependency thereon.
My heart is with Obama on this one, but I know enough to stay out of a debate when I don't know my way around it.
Ignorance actually makes me neutral in a way on this issue.
But then: the appalling irrational demagoguery of the GOP basically acts as a current pushing me toward meta-level sympathy with the Dems even given my first-order neutrality.
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