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.

Re: so are you considering relocating?

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I'm kind of stuck here for various reasons.

[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.

[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]

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.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

How delighted I'd be if Tom Coburn got 47 million emails tomorrow from people who need help. It won't happen though. Read the Guardian article. The people who need help the most don't even know this debate is happening. And people were applauding Coburn over that "good neighbor" BULLSHIT. LOTS of people. That's like spitting in that woman's face as far as I'm concerned. Oh yes, let's all be good neighbors, just don't take any of my taxes to actually help my neighbor and maybe I'll bring over a casserole that you can liquefy in a blender and attempt to feed to your paralyzed husband through a straw. LOL.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

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

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I can't explain it. My parents, I had always thought, were intelligent people, but they are quietly on board with all this. We had this dinner for my father's birthday and every time he started to say anything about Obama I had to change the subject or I knew I'd wind up standing on the table shouting. He wasn't ranting like a town hall person but I could tell that he was totally seeing the Fox version of the world, where Obama just thought everybody who didn't agree with him was stupid. And I don't get it--I even asked my mother before the second Bush presidency--how could you vote for this guy twice? And she was like "Well, better the devil you know." And I was like WHY WOULD YOU VOTE FOR THE DEVIL?

But I know that's just a way of denying the issue. When their guy is obviously bad they make this false equivalency as if it's the same for any politician.

[mara-snh.livejournal.com]

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

[vshendria.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree with you on this. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

But I know that's just a way of denying the issue.

Right before the 2004 election, someone on my flist posted that everyone just ought to calm down because even if "your guy" didn't win, the beauty of democracy was that in four years you could vote "the other guy" out. As if the amount of damage that could be done in four years was negligible. Whenever I see stuff like that, that seems really level-headed and middle-of-the-road I've come to believe that's just closet conservatism. All of this, the false equivalency stuff, the faux "libertarianism" it's all the same shit.

[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.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I wish, I wish I could find that quote. It was so good.

[mara-snh.livejournal.com]

I appreciate your disillusionment and despair. I do. But I'm going to ask you to remember by what margins we won the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and many governorships last November. The polls just before the election predicted, at best, a near-tie at all levels, and in many cases, defeat. Don't let the right-owned, controversy-dependent media mislead you now.

Your post is heart-wrenching and again, I understand where you're coming from. I often feel the same way. I certainly did after that hideous scene in Oklahoma that you mentioned. And by the way, did Senator Coburn not realize that he was advocating the ultimate form of socialism: an official government policy requiring citizens to provide for each others' welfare? It's funny if you think about it. Not funny enough, perhaps, to make up for Coburn's stone-cold reaction to that poor woman's distress, but funny enough for every day.

We can't give up. That's what our brainwashed fellow citizens are counting on. Please consider sending some of your wonderful thoughts on this subject to your local newspaper. Or better.

[tskterata.livejournal.com]

My father was a die-hard Republican as well, but I believe Bush's wars finally turned him. He voted for W the first time, but refused to a second time. Now he just won't vote because he hates the Democrats and has decided that the Republican party has been taken over by religious fanatics.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

The margins don't matter. The Dems are backing off from all the things they promised to do. The media has made it seem as if the American people don't really want the things they voted for and the Dems are buying it and running off with their tails between their legs.

What I would really like to happen is for the country to split in two. Only no civil war this time. Let them go. Let them have their totalitarian third-world theocracy, and let us have a country that deserves to stand with the world's other civilized, progressive nations.

[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.

[mara-snh.livejournal.com]

The problem with the two-nation idea is, just as was the case in much of the U.S. during the Civil War, communities are a blend of beliefs. There's no place to draw new boundaries that won't go right through states, cities, towns, neighborhoods, living rooms, and probably even a few hearts. But it's a good sim to play with on sleepless nights.

There's stuff going on that CNN, MCNBC, FauxNews et al. are ignoring. Stuff like this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/25/first-gang-of-six-member_n_268518.html . They're listening, so we need to keep talking.

A lot of the business about Democrats "backing off" is a matter of politicians' handlers sending up weather balloons. We need to keep shooting them down.

But you know, it's perfectly okay to quit rallying, howling and canvassing for a little while and just go get a pedicure at the mall. I do it every now and then. You'd go nuts otherwise.

[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.

[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!!!