Thursday, September 19, 2013

Obamacare Junkies and Life Eternal

So, I've been thinking more on the whole "Obamacare defunding" debacle, and the miserable, cheat-y "throw the dice over and over until we get the result we want" approach the right has taken with this matter.  What, is this the 42nd time they've tried to kill affordable health care?  43rd?

Please, doesn't that tell you something about who they're representing?  Because if you make less than half a mil a year, it's not YOU!

I was thinking about that ridiculous, rotten creature from here in NOVA--what's her name?  Comstock?  The wingnut who actually said that folks who make $250,000 really have to struggle to make ends meet?

Sure, Barb, if they're shooting for the Hamptons or a 7,000 square foot McMansion in Mclean.  But out here in the REAL Virginia?  250 grand would have us out of debt and a house bought.  After that?  It's European vacations every summer and a new car every year.  Seriously.  Fifty grand a year would pay every bill we have, including groceries and rent.  The other two hundred grand?

WOWSER icing.  But it's telling, isn't it?  That this woman could stand up and say something that outrageous, that aloof and out-of-touch with America and not be castigated?  Not be tossed out the door as a spoiled, utterly alien creature who has no understanding of real life in America?  While you and I are blinking, goggling at her breathtaking classism, the Republican party embraced her and her words.

Because that is who they are, and if you believe different, it's because you're either operating under the mistaken idea that your Daddy's Republican party still exists, or you've fallen for the billions in slick advertising, corporate-funded and intended to do that very thing--fool you.

Here's THE thing, really--the right doesn't want us to have affordable health care because they know we'll like it.  If it's fully implemented, we'll be so happy with it they'll never be able to undo it.  Think I'm full of it?  Think I'm making that up?

Read THIS.  Yes, Cruz actually said that.  He made it clear that, if Americans actually get a taste of "Obamacare" in full swing, they'll be "hooked" like addicts.

Addicted to affordable, quality health care.  The mind stinking boggles.  That the right would even view being "hooked" on good health care as a PROBLEM is . . . well, is the PROBLEM.  How twisted do you have to be to have the amazing health care our politicians have while viewing programs to extend good health care to everyone as evil and wrong?

As twisted as the right in America these days, apparently.

_____________________________________


Anyway, I lost track of where I was going--I've been thinking a lot about the right's dastardly approach to healthcare, and I realized what it is they're trying to do.  You see, if they can make this process as miserable, as trying and frightening and noxious as possible, folks like me might just throw our hands in the air and say, "Oh, fine, defund it, just stop with the threatened shutdowns every few months, stop with the furloughs and the absolute torturing of military and federal families!"

Because I'm close.

You see, I don't actually benefit from "Obamacare."  I have better-than-average insurance through my husband's employer, and that's not going to change with or without "Obamacare."  We're not affected in any real way (other than our son will be covered until he's 26 under our policy).  So if those bastards manage to kill affordable health care, it doesn't affect me.

Except in my heart.  My brain.  Except when it comes to having empathy for other Americans, wanting to see OUR PEOPLE have a better life.  Then it affects me.

Hugely.

But the right is hoping to wear me down.  Me, and the millions like me who are troubled by the fact that poor areas with lower educational attainment and low rates of insurance have markedly reduced LIFE EXPECTANCY.  Yes, they can say it's about race (and ignore the poor white women so often affected), but dig deeper--it's about poverty, and one of the hallmarks of poverty is difficulty in accessing quality health care.

That horrifies me, and it should horrify everyone.  Two Americas--one for those who can afford education, medicine, and a "good" life, and another for those who can't.  And that second America?  Has people dying.  Dying of things the rest of us don't have to worry about.

Shame!

But the right doesn't care.  They do not care.  And so they do everything in their power to cut medical coverage, cut housing assistance, cut food assistance, slash educational budgets and access to student aid.  And at the end of the day, if they get everything they want?

We have a permanent lower class that cannot hope to reach beyond or rise above.  A class that doesn't live as long, doesn't live as well, and is denied what the rest of us consider a given.  A class that may, if some nutty gits in places like Utah have their way, not even have compulsory education to help haul them up.  A class that will be relegated to minimum wage work and forelock-tugging.

Or armed robbery, home invasions, and drug addiction.  Because poverty in the richest society in the world?  Lends itself to violence.

I don't want any of this.  I want my country back!  The country that cared about science and education and the welfare of its people!  I want everyone to have access to basic health care--you know, like they do in the civilized world where all those countries have folks who live longer than we do.  Who have fewer moms and babies dying.  Who have better educational systems and a higher standard of living across the board.

I want sanity back in our government, and dull-wits being whipped up by corporate cash, waving flags and calling our President a "Kenyan?"

That's not sanity.  That's well-planned, ingeniously executed, precisely aimed stupidity.  It's stupid people allowing themselves to be manipulated by those who benefit from their stupidity.  It's not American.

It sick.  It's sick, and the right knows that, to protect ourselves, we'll throw our brothers and sisters under the wingnut train.  To keep my husband working and our rent paid, they're counting on me to give up on my poorer fellows.

_________________________________________


On a mostly unrelated note (I guess the common theme is wishful thinking?), I was challenged the other day by a theist friend who couldn't grasp my lack of belief.  She asked how I could possibly find any joy in life if I think this is our only go-round.  She said that she found it sad that I didn't believe in an afterlife.  Asked how I couldn't WANT that.

And that last?  Well, there's where she's wrong.

I get wishing that there was an afterlife.  I get seeing the obituary for the developmentally delayed boy and thinking how cool it would be if now, in some alternate "heavenly" place, he was clear of thought and brilliant, even.  I get wishing that the girl rooted to her wheelchair in this life could be dancing in some next world.  I get that, I understand how amazing and appealing the idea is.  You think I don't want to spend forever with my boy?  That I don't GET how cool and wonderful and reassuring that would be?

Of course I GET that.  I also get that it's not true. It's make-believe, it's mythology, it's stuff made up to make people not panic over the total suckiness of not being anymore.

I think all Atheists get it.  Sure, it would be super-wonderful-cool to go on forever as ourselves.  It would be amazing to spend eternity happy with the people and things we love.  It's not realistic, it's not reasonable, and it's not REAL, but, as fantasies go, yes, it's a great one.

Some Atheists will give you the "stardust" speech--you know, everything returns to stardust, energy never disappears, when we die we go back to the cosmos that created us?

Yeah, that one doesn't work for me, either.  Because that's not ME, that's just parts of me.  That's like cutting off my pinkie fingernail and sending it to France, then claiming I'd traveled the world. No, I didn't.  And going back to the cosmos (or the ground) in parts and pieces is not the same as living forever.

Fact is, we don't live forever.  We live this short time, and then we die.  And the best we can hope for is to make enough of a difference that the world is better for our having been.  If we luck out and manage to find a positive way of being remembered?

All the better.  But this is it.  There's no practice run, and there's no rewind.  And there's no encore.

1 comment:

  1. One of your better posts. I wish some of my right wing, christian family would read it, but that will never happen either

    ReplyDelete