Done

[oselle]

I think I'm done. I've been putting up post after post about healthcare and the disgraceful, shameful and enraging behavior that's been going on in this country and I just really don't see the point in continuing anymore.



I think the battle is lost. Hell, the whole war is lost. I read the other day that fully one-third of people polled don't know that Medicare is a government program, while another 15% "aren't sure." That's more than half of the respondents. Among these people are the imbeciles who've been running around with posters of Obama sporting a Hitler moustache and other assholes who've been showing up at public meetings brandishing assault rifles and saying that people had better just get accustomed to seeing such brazen displays of public intimidation.

Just this minute I saw a clip on television of a woman in nearly hysterical tears, telling the Republican Senator from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, that her husband had suffered a truamatic brain injury and her insurance company won't pay for the nursing care he needs to eat and drink and she can't get him to eat. Coburn muttered something about how he'd see to it that she got some help and then went on to say that what we really need to think about is being good neighbors. In other words, this woman really ought to count on her neighbors -- not the government -- to assist with her husband's specialized, round-the-clock nursing care.

And people in the audience applauded.

I'm done. I'm done. I just want to say, congratulations to the conservatives out there. You've courageously saved us from falling into lockstep with every other developed, civilized nation in the world. You've ensured that only the deserving, properly employed members of society will be rewarded with the privilege of decent medical care (provided they have no pre-existing conditions or suffer any catastrophic accidents which would most likely be their own fault and for which they should be rightfully punished). You've guaranteed millions of Americans the freedom to live in constant pain or disability or to die, and the ennobling liberty of relying upon some sporadic milk of human kindness for their healthcare needs. You've made certain that our benevolent corporate overlords in the insurance and medical industries will continue to enjoy the lavish lifestyles they so richly deserve. And best of all, you've really shown the world what we're made of. Thank you.

As a parting gift, three links.

From The New York Times, The Guns of August:

Those on the right who defend the reckless radicals inevitably argue “The left does it too!” It’s certainly true that both the left and the right traffic in bogus, Holocaust-trivializing Hitler analogies, and, yes, the protesters of the antiwar group Code Pink have disrupted Congressional hearings. But this is a false equivalence. Code Pink doesn’t show up on Capitol Hill with firearms. And, as the 1960s historian Rick Perlstein pointed out on the Washington Post Web site last week, not a single Democratic politician endorsed the Weathermen in the Vietnam era.

From The Washington Post, Five Myths About Healthcare Around The World:

All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we've blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess. Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has "the finest health care" in the world. We don't. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.

From the UK's The Guardian, Dying for affordable healthcare — the uninsured speak:

She rattles off a litany of horror stories. There was the man who walked into the clinic with a brain tumour. It took Lee three months to get him an MRI scan and another two to get an appointment with a neurosurgeon. Or the patient whose nerves in his neck were pushed against his spinal cord so that he lost use of both arms; by the time Lee found a way of getting him an MRI he was so sick he had to be operated on immediately. Or the woman who had such heavy periods she would wind up in ER every three months requiring a blood transfusion. What she really needed was a hysterectomy. "It took us almost a year to beg hospitals until she finally did get a hysterectomy," Lee says. These are the stories, the broken lives, that have been obscured by the fury generated by the Republican rump.

"Here's what I'd like to ask Palin," Lee says. "People without health insurance are dying, here in America, right now. So I'd like to ask her: how does that fit into your vision of good and evil, Sarah Palin?"

Comments

Re: please keep posting

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Meh. Anyone who watches Fox News is too far gone to be reached.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

:(

It's sickening.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Yes. And it's making me sick and I can't even keep reading about it anymore, much less writing about it.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I can't believe that after we got those people out of power we're still under their thumbs because they dragged out a gang of hooligans and certain strategic people are all too happy to cave into them. I've no idea why.

What's especially galling is nothing will change these peoples' minds. Even if next year they're railing at their insurance company that's refusing to pay for their treatment they'll still blame that on anyone but their own fool selves. Their whole mindset is based on everything being the fault of those people who aren't like them.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Also it makes me so furious when they trot out this "good neighbors" bullshit--this from the people who refuse to pay anything for anyone else's healthcare and certainly won't be shelling out all their money for someone else's gall bladder surgery. They'll just assume the neighbor on the other side should do it because gee, medical care is actually too expensive for your neighbors to throw money in a pot for it! Meanwhile the guy who claims he's going to help her? Is in the government. Maybe all the 4 million other people who don't have insurance can go to him personally.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I read a quote from Arthur Schlesinger on some blog the other day and now I can't find it and I'm pissed off because the quote was something I've ben thinking of for a long time -- that there is something fundamentally wrong with this country. That we have some exceptional, original sin plaguing us and we're just never going to expiate it. It's dragging us down into a swamp of bigotry, violence and unchecked greed, all shadowed by the black superstition of religious fanaticism. I think this is the beginning of the end of America. There are too many people here who don't know anything and too many other people who think they know it all because they watch Glenn Beck. For God's sake, do you know that four out of the top ten non-fiction titles on the NYT bestseller list are extreme right-wing screeds? The number one non-fiction bestseller in America right now was written by Michelle Malkin. If that doesn't spell doom, I don't know what does.

[kjfri.livejournal.com]

If you give up, then they truly have won. please, take 5 mins but come back to fight the good fight. you aren't alone.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

The people we elected to fight for us won't do it, so why the hell should I?

[mara-snh.livejournal.com]

It is never -- NEVER -- the people in charge who make change. It is us.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

There's not enough of us. And "us" doesn't get any press and when we do we're painted as the "leftist loonies" and dirty fucking hippies while guys with fucking assault rifles on their hips at public rallies are passionate, concerned citizens who have struck a chord with the American people. Face it. They've got the whole Ministry of Truth on their side and all we've got is...the truth. And it's not enough.

[mirabile-dictu.livejournal.com]

Just this minute I saw a clip on television of a woman in nearly hysterical tears, telling the Republican Senator from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, that her husband had suffered a truamatic brain injury and her insurance company won't pay for the nursing care he needs to eat and drink and she can't get him to eat.

I had to walk away when I saw that despicable reaction from the audience -- they applauded? What, were they going to help that woman, go over to her house after the meeting and feed her husband? What bullshit.

I can't bear it. I'm very impressed with the work you've done but I just have given up. I think most Americans are utter morons and deserve exactly nothing.

I'm tired of crying and writing and voting, and all for nothing.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I had to walk away when I saw that despicable reaction from the audience -- they applauded?

I'm sure tomorrow on Fox News there'll be a fabricated story about how that weeping woman was a Democratic "plant." That, or Coburn's office will make a big show of all the help they've given her...never mind that there are probably millions of stories like hers. What civilized nation allows such savagery to continue? And applauds it? And protests the amelioration of it?

I think most Americans are utter morons and deserve exactly nothing.

Couldn't have said it better.

[tskterata.livejournal.com]

I can totally understand why you feel this way, and I wish with all my heart that you and all the others like you had not been driven to despair.

Since I no longer live down there, I have not been following this debate very closely - I confess I get most of my US news through Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, blogs, and LJ posts like yours. I think if I were still living in the states and was assaulted with the evil stupidity of this on a daily basis, I would be depressed as well.

Have the lunatics really won? Why the hell can't the Democrats just bulldoze over the Republicans and push this through. I know, they're worried that their small-minded constituents won't re-elect them. Can't any of them put the public good before their own? Isn't that what they're supposed to be doing?

IJDFK.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Have the lunatics really won?

As far as I'm concerned, yes. And if not officially "won," they've sure as hell been emboldened to continue and they've sure as hell got the firepower to back themselves up. They're not running around in public with assault weapons for laughs -- it's a show of intimidation. Media superstars like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and elected Republican senators like Tom Coburn and Chuck Grassley are calling these people patriots and they're lapping it up. Someone will eventually take a shot at the president and they'll act briefly horrified and then call that guy a patriot too because he "had to do it." We're fucked.

[ladymirth.livejournal.com]

The commenter on the posts below perfectly encpsulates everything I can't stand about right-wingers:

http://googlebrat.livejournal.com/596221.html
http://googlebrat.livejournal.com/596880.html

Horrfiying thing is that she appears to think she's making well-reasoned arguments here.

Also, a comprehensive post on how the NHS actually works:
http://googlebrat.livejournal.com/596395.html

[oselle.livejournal.com]

LOL, I posted a comment to her. She's hilarious. "I give to the church," she says and then goes on to write massive comments filled with pure hatred and bitterness to her fellow man. Oh, the Christianity! It's just dripping off the page! OMG..."I give to the church." LOL! TYPICAL!!!

[sixth-queen.livejournal.com]

In other words, this woman really ought to count on her neighbors -- not the government

This is precisely what Whole Foods CEO John Mackey extolled in his op-ed, the op-ed which launched the current boycott. "You want health care? Come and grovel before us rich people who actually work hard, we'll lecture you on what lazy bums you are, and MAYBE we'll give you a little money."

What kind of sick wet dream IS this?

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Oh, no....the best part about that Mackey op-ed was the part where he turned it into an infomercial for Whole Foods. Cuz if people just ate more organic food, they wouldn't get so sick, right? LOLOLOLOL! SHAMELESS!!!

Man, if you really want a laugh go read the threads linked to in ladymirth's posts above. COMEDY GOLD!! At one point, the angry conservative chick actually uses the phrase "crack whore from the Bronx." Why, oh why is it always the Bronx? Are there no other crack whores taking all the money of hard-working Americans with four jobs?

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

Of course, the basic problem is that they aren't the least concerned about an individual's problems. Or the problems shared by millians of Americans. They just want the Obama administration to fail. Long and short of it.

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

The problem is, of course, that you're preaching to the choir. But that's all anyone can do.

You're helping to provide arguments to the people who *do* read, so that they can talk with their friends and relatives who are blinded by the Rep hype.

It is from MSNBC and posts like yours that I continue to maintain hope that we may come out all right in the end.

But if you're tired of it, if you no longer feel that it's worth your time, then you certainly have the right to move on.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

You must read the blogs, too. Start with crooksandliars.com and balloon-juice.com and go from there. They say things a million times better than I do and most of the stuff I wrote about was found in those places.

To post or not to post?

[kelhome.livejournal.com]

I share your frustration, as I have mostly conservative relatives who cry 'socialism' etc., over health care reform. But to bow out? Try to find the strength to continue in the face of the nonsense - cause, one more smart, sane voice gone? Not good. By the way, love your thoughts on all things...

Re: To post or not to post?

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

Not that it's likely to help, but you might point out to them that medicare, public education, and car insurance are also socialsim.

Re: To post or not to post?

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Maybe I just need a break. I don't know. I know that people have appreciated these posts but lately I'm afraid it just doesn't seem worth it.