I've already touched on this once this week, but there is one more point worth making.
From Charlie Pierce:
Saddened, Angry, Sickened, DefeatedI can't explain why people voted to take away their own healthcare....I hate this. I hate that the United States is still fighting over healthcare when the rest of the industrialized world has left the issue behind. I hate the politicians who stoke dread and hate in order to get elected to make the problems of places like Clay County worse. I hate the impotence of the political opposition in making its case. I hate all these things, but the thing I hate worst of all is the overwhelming temptation to gloat over the miseries of people who, for whatever reason, vote against their own self-interest. Hell with self-interest, they're voting against their own survival...Perhaps, somewhere, there's a political mind sharper than my own who can figure out how to reach people so filled with desperation that they will cast votes that literally will immolate their own lives. (Remember, Matt Bevin made absolutely no secret of what he intended to do. There was no insulting "repeal and replace" jive from him. And the people whose lives depended on the program voted overwhelmingly for a guy pledged to destroy it.) All the glib talk about how the Democratic Party has to "reach out" to this folks is coming from people who don't have the first fucking clue how to do it.Ease up on the social issues, they say, as if tossing the privacy rights of 51 percent of the population, or jacking around trying to find a "middle ground" on gay marriage somewhere between civil unions and Leviticus, ever slowed the slide before. I suppose the Democrats could go back to being the party of Jim Crow, but I think they might have a little trouble with their base there...
It saddens me too.
And then I remember that these people also voted to take away my family's health insurance, and my sadness alloys into something else.
If you're holding my family hostage, I'm suddenly a whole lot less interested in your sad back-story that I otherwise might have been. Suddenly my entire attention is focused on eliminating the threat in front of me. And while I truly am all-in for "nice" and "live and let live", I cannot help noticing that every time we manage to crawl one inch forward as a culture, people like the citizens of Clay Country always seem to need to be dragged along, kicking and screaming and sometimes at the point of a Union Army bayonet or at the prompting of armed National Guardsmen.
And every time they are released on their own recognizance, they sure as hell seem to go immediately back to trying to blow the place up.
This is not a job for political analysts or cultural critics or whatever-the-hell I am. In all seriousness, we've reached the point where this is a job for mental health professionals, whose services I'm pretty sure will no longer be available to the citizens of Clay County once the men they voted for so overwhelmingly finally get their way.
13 comments:
I was born and raised in a version of Clay County.
I work in several of this country's versions of Clay County every day. I can tell you the citizens believed what they believed, taught their kids what they believed, and voted their beliefs whether their personal economic situation was wonderful, like back when America was supposedly "Great," or not.
So I can at least say for certain this past election had nothing to do with citizens frustrated about being "economically abandoned" by Democrats/establishment/DC/etc. This had a lot more to do with finding someone who will enforce an archaic, strict social order that has nothing to with material wealth or personal security, outside they ALWAYS being on top and others ALWAYS being under neither and they can correct and take from the other whenever they see fit.
The Japanese have a great expression for moments like this:
しょうがない。
”shooganai.”
"Nothing can be done."
Union busting, government bashing rules the day. The New Deal is dead.
The For-Profit health care industries, as they now exist, know they will be extinct, so spending a billion or three to squeeze a $Trillion more into their accounts before their demise is logical, if ghoulish.
What's less comprehensible is the continued outrage over Single-payer national healthcare. Everyone covered. Nobody excluded. Everybody wins except the industry ghouls.
You have been aware that they've been methodically after overturning the New Deal since Ronald Reagan campaigned how government health care was so communist and socialist that will bound your freedom to be able to die when you may not have to because to accept the treatment to live will enslave your soil in tierney.
They never seem to notice those born into wealth never seem to find it difficult to get the best health care.
But it doesn't stop at health care. Social Security has to go to provide the freedom to live out your last days in squalor you must deserve for not being financially well off.
I have watched certain voices in the nation get exterminated to leave no opposing views and allow no room for thoughts and considerations of differences and what has been proven works and does not.
America is being disassembled and I do think it is by the 1%. They spend so much on "winning hearts and minds" to have us deplore our own existence.
Thanks for the 30gms dose of Charlie.
The sadness, the anger, the makes me sick will only keep coming. I already know some that voted Trump and have expressed "why our government is not getting the message of Trump", they sent by voting for him. Oh, and GOP down ticket.
As I was astounded but not surprised at Speaker Ryan floating his tax cuts for the wealthy by privatizing and voucherize Medicare into obscurity of non existence. They call it redistribution of our money to the undeserving lazy.
He wants to check his tax cuts in budgetary principles to enshrine his AYn Rand for everyone rammed down our throats big Government. Medicare, which NO one spoke of during the election. Which becomes a GOP mandate to do it?
Remember the blood curdling, everlasting screaming of "ramming it down our throats".
We find out, their owners are simply upset that they did not get to do the ramming.
And they are Neegan nuts about driving it home with a bat.
The one takeaway for me is how embarrassing it is that our nation is still struggling with bsic right while the rest of the world, including the thirld world has resolved this a long time ago. This is the ultimate in "the Ugly American". We are a nation of stupidity and greed.
Of the "kicking and screaming"... Did you see the Jay Smooth video where he notes all of the progress made while dragging them kicking and screaming? Then goes on to say now let's give them something to kick and scream about. That's sort of the way I'm feeling now. Hasn't helped much, so far, but still feels like an improvement of sorts.
-Doug in Oakland
From Walter Benjamin:
Humankind, which once, in Homer, was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, has now become one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached the point where it can experience its own annihilation as a su- preme aesthetic pleasure. Such is the aestheticizing of politics, as practiced by fascism. Communism replies by politicizing art.
I have 'Obamacare' via the NY State exchange and I have to honestly say it is not very good. I get no premium subsidy, it costs me $300 increasing 16% to $350 per month for a policy that is all deductible, all the time, meaning my sole annual benefit is one physical exam per year, the rest just goes to deductible.
Sure, it covers me if I get cancer, and I know I will have it next year (pre-existing condition clause), but no, otherwise it is more expensive and covers the same as my previous to obamacare high deductible plan.
So count me as a progressive who hates obamacare.
The difference between me and the GOP is that I know the fix is not to go back to pre-obamacare days. The reason Obamacare sucks is because is does not have a public option, so I am stuck with a for-profit insurance company taking $3500 a year from me in order to receive 'security' and one $250 well care visit per year.
BTW my doctor wanted me to do a preventative cardiac stress test. I laughed at her, because no way I pay $500 out of pocket for this, we need medicare for all ages, and we needed it when Obamacare was rolled out.
Without that, Obamacare is still broken.
Obamacare helped me pay for my cataract surgeries last year. Without it, I would be blind right now. If I were still working, it wouldn't be as good of a deal, but I keep trying to remind folks that anyone can have a stroke like I did, and no matter what kind of private insurance you have, it'll be gone when you can't pay the premium for a couple of years. That's the fucked up tradeoff we got by adopting the Heritage Foundation Romneycare model, but it was the best thing we could get at the time. And comparing my cataract surgeries (last year) to my stroke recovery (2008) all I can say is that I'm really glad I live in Alameda County where we have Highland Hospital for people without good insurance, because without it I would have been ass-out instead of getting decent care when I needed it most. I saw folks who were ass-out when I was in acute rehab, who had burned through all of their assets just living without income because they could no longer work, and after fighting for an extra week of therapy that they really needed, got discharged with no place to go. In short, we need to fix it, not destroy it. Premiums may have gone up, but overall they have gone up less than they would have without the ACA.
-Doug in Oakland
The Republikkkans have no frickin' clue what they are getting us into. Most of them are so mesmerized by the bright shiny objects in front of them (power, and stickin' it to Obama), that they don't notice they are standing on the railroad tracks, and dragging us along with them. A 35-year dose of Koch bros. hasn't helped.
In the early 1970s, one of my favorite authors stated that, "If we don't solve some of our current problems, GOD Is going to have to intervene to save any of us!"
Let's hope God hasn't grown tired of us.
In the early 1970s, one of my favorite authors stated that, "If we don't solve some of our current problems, GOD Is going to have to intervene to save any of us!"
Let's hope God hasn't grown tired of us.
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