Transplantedamerican
Political discourse – of course!Archive for Stimulus
So It’s Come To This.
February 21, 2010
You really do have to wonder sometimes…
Lets talk health care. Why not? It seems like we’ve come full circle in the last little while. We started out a year ago with the Democrats putting together a bill which would fix the wretched state of affairs in our country and finally provide basic protection for every citizen.
And then the fun began.
The Republicans implemented their plan. Their plan was a simple one predicated upon the accurate perception that their base was apoplectic over the election of a black man to the Presidency and the loss of power in Congress. The Sky Was Falling! Worse than that, their corporate masters were hauling them on the carpet for losing the election. So what was their plan? Come on everybody say it with me …”NO”! ‘No’ to everything. No to bail outs, ( even though they started it when their puppet Bush was in the White House), no to Stimulus, ( even though the tax cuts contained in the bill was a page torn out their very own conservative playbook), – No to health care reform, No to civil trials for suspected terrorists, No to government oversight of shoddy (if not criminal) banking practices, NO. No. No. NO. NO!
Now I know that politics in America has always been a blood sport. And, God help me, I love it. But this last year of Republican obstructionism is unprecedented. No, that’s not hyperbole. It has literally never happened before that an entire sitting party in Congress has voted lockstep against every single thing that the Democrats have put forward without any attempt at compromise or offering alternate proposals. And this would be bad enough – but it gets worse. Now, because these treasonous politicians (well, how would you describe a bunch of people who want their government to fail?) – because these treasonous politicians have riled up the worst passions of their base there is a very real danger of violence breaking out. Don’t think it could happen? Let us remind ourselves of the uncomfortable fact that fully 40% of all the Presidents we’ve had over the last 234 years have had attempts made on their very lives. And some, tragically, have been successful. And it wasn’t all that long ago that peaceful protests in the streets for basic equality were met with tear gas and water cannons – if not worse. And now we have enraged citizens actually carrying weapons to their Tea Party Rallies. And their Representatives in Congress, far from decrying such inherently reckless behavior, are actually encouraging it!
What do we do? What do we do when we know what’s coming? We know that the Democrats are waking up to the fact that they had better stop letting the Republicans run over them and actually govern. They are going to start with the Health Care Bill. We know that the Republicans will throw screaming fits and use it as an excuse to turn the volume of vitriol up even further. We know that there is a Health summit coming this Thursday that they have no intention of attending or at the very least making a mockery of it by attending for a minute and then leaving in dramatic protest. We know lots of stuff.
Except how to get people to see reason. Because it’s not just politics anymore. It has gone too far now. Now its one step away from people getting actually hurt and violence escalating out of control. So a message to all the Tea Partyers out there from a lilly livered die-hard liberal lefty. You are being lied to. And you won’t see your conservative heroes taking any blame for inciting you to riot. On the contrary, the only logical way to look at their behavior is that violence is precisely what they want. They see your outrage as a logical stepping stone to power. They don’t care about you. They don’t care if you die in the streets either through a misguided ideology-
or lack of basic Health Care.
Transplantedamerican 