BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
Why is Healthcare Reform Too Expensive, While the Sky is the Limit For War?
I find it extremely curious that the very same people who are jumping up and down about leaving a debt on our children by providing affordable healthcare are willing to send the country into bankruptcy to dispatch that very same generation of young people to their death in Afghanistan. It's also curious that we only heard perfunctory grumbling from these people when we spent $700 billion to bailout Wall Street, but now that it comes to spending money on a stimulus plan to help the average American, all hell is breaking loose.
The GOP's behavior in this matter should make it clear to any reasonable observer that the Republican Party is ideologically oppose to doing anything to help the poor and middle class. The reason for that is when it comes to bigotry, they're a step ahead of the American people . Since they deal primarily in dollars and cents, they've come to recognize that mere racial division is no longer sufficient to accommodate the economics of the new world order. The greed of the beast must now be fed with the greater numbers found only in class.
In order to compete effectively in a global market, America can no longer afford the luxury of a thriving middle class - at least, one as large as the American people have come to expect. So the class system in the United States is rapidly being realigned. That accounts for why the educational system and unionism are under attack. It also explains why undocumented workers are being allowed to flood into the country in unprecedented numbers. These people are not sneaking in - they're being herded.
If the powers that be in the United States really wanted to stop illegal immigration, they wouldn't even have to touch the borders. All they'd have to do is arrest anyone who housed or hired illegal immigrants, but that's not conducive to their game plan. The leaders of the Republican Party and their corporate benefactors are working diligently to get as many undocumented workers into the country as possible in order to undermine the wages of the American middle class, while the xenophobic tendencies of the Republican base is just as strongly dedicated to keeping them out - legal or not. So it's going to be quite interesting to watch the GOP try to resolve that conflict once their base begins to recognize they've being manipulated.
And yes, it's going to be just as interesting to watch you Teabaggers and such have to face that reality, because the fact is, the leaders of your party have already come to the conclusion that in order for the United States to compete in a global economy where the competition's workers work for mere pennies a day, it is absolutely necessary for the United States to grow an undereducated and hungry workforce. They need a hungry underclass to both feed their war machine, and work for their corporations for whatever crumbs they decide to throw your way.
So the fact is, Teabaggers, if you don't wake up real soon, you're going to have to change your name to the Apple Peddlers to accommodate your new status - and I guarantee you, when that happens, taxes are going to be the very least of your concerns. If your party gets its way, before long you're about to get a crash course in what it means to be Black in America, and then some.
So before you attend your next tea party, you need to give this matter some serious thought, because you're already being used in the very same way that the Confederacy used Black soldiers during the Civil War - like worthless cannon fodder. The only difference is, you've been given a megaphone to brag about your stupidity.
Now, you may want to write me off as being ridiculous, but think about it. Did the Republican Party promote demonstrations or give illegal "news conferences" to whip you into a frenzy when they gave the world's largest windfall to those who harass you every month over your mortgage and credit card debt? Absolutely not - and that's in spite of the fact that Wall Street spent part of your money wining, dining, and passing out huge bonuses to themselves. So why are they doing it now, when it comes to helping you and your family? And worse yet, they now have you blindly fighting against healthcare for your own family in order to protect the assets of the very same people who just robbed you on Wall Street. How dumb can you get?
What makes it more "socialist" to help you and your family than it is to help the rich and theirs? Yet, when President Obama suggested that it was time to help the average American, many of your Republican "representatives" started frantically looking for ways to refuse the money. In fact, Gov. Rick Perry became so incensed over the prospect of helping the people of Texas that he even brought up the possibility of seceding from the union.
Now I ask you, when have you ever heard of a politician becoming fighting mad over having money thrust upon him? That alone should send up a huge red flag for anyone with eyeballs. It just doesn't make sense - that is, unless the politician's interest is diametrically opposed to the people he represents, and that's exactly the case with respect to the Republican Party.
The Republican base is in deep denial. You're like a wife who catches her husband in bed with another woman. Then as the wife stands there in shocked disbelief, the husband hustles his lover out of the room, then casually looks at his wife and asks, "What woman?" He then goes on to convince his wife that she can't believe her lying eyes; that he only rented the room because he intended to call her for a romantic night of passion. Then after hearing his explanation, his wife wants to believe him so badly that she allows herself to be convinced that she imagined it all. She then apologizes for being so silly and falls into his arms, and a soaking wet bed.
While that's a well worn comedy skit, that's exactly what's happening with the Republican base. It should be clear to anyone with any kind of common sense that the Republican Party is aggressively working against your interest. But you want to believe your version of reality so badly, that you're willing to make love in a previously soaked bed.
That's why we call you wingnuts. Because it's nothing short of amazing how the GOP can get you to turn out in droves, and on the verge of insurrection, in order to prevent President Obama from shepherding in legislation that would prevent the insurance industry from cutting your throats. You've allowed yourselves to be convinced that blocking guaranteed healthcare for your families is in your families' best interest - and that's in spite of the fact that the families of the politicians you're listening to are comfortably enjoying that very same healthcare that they're claiming will lead to America's destruction.
Even though an audit by the Congressional Budget Office indicates that healthcare reform would actually lower the national deficit, you're allowing the GOP to convince you that the cost of protecting your families is too much of a burden for America to bear. But how does that square with the fact that in the very next speech these very same politicians are urging President Obama to send an additional forty thousand of your sons and daughters to possibly die in Afghanistan, at a cost of a million dollars per soldier?
So, pardon my terminology, but this is clearly a case of wingnuts seeing only what you want to see. You need to open your eyes to the fact that the GOP has but one agenda - regaining power. That entails two things - satisfying the coffers of their corporate masters, which entails picking your pocket; and sabotaging President Obama's effort to bring you relief, which entails making sure that you and your family are miserable for at least the next four years.
Your willingness to accept, in fact, promote this nonsense leaves many to believe that you either have less than an animal's sense of self-preservation, or that you hate the idea of Obama being in the White House so intensely that you're willing to throw both your families, and America, under the bus to ensure that he's not successful. That suggests that you're at best, merely stupid, but at worst, both stupid and racist - which, of course, is synonymous.
But don't feel alone, because you're not the only ones who need to wake up. If president Obama escalates the war in Afghanistan, we're going to hear clinking champaign glasses all over GOPland, because Republicans know better than anyone that the war in Afghanistan is a no-win quagmire just waiting to happen.
Dick Cheney is pressuring Obama into Afghanistan as a lobbyist for the war machine. If this man had any character at all, after his cowardly behavior during the Vietnam War, and his atrociously inept performance during his eight years in office, he should be ashame to face the American people. But he has no shame, and he's more than willing to give YOUR all to enrich the coffers of war machine.
While Cheney is a coward and was inept in office, he has a genius for destruction, and he's become fixated on trying to destroy President Obama. He knows that once Obama commits to escalating the war in Afghanistan the president is going to have a huge liability in the 2012 election. He also knows that an escalation of the war will waste badly needed resources that we could use to improve the economy. But most diabolical of all is that Cheney knows that escalating the war will leave the president having to account for the lives of your sons and daughters who are happily walking around today getting married, having children, and planing their future. He's depending on them not being around in 2012. After that, Bush's disaster in Iraq won't look quite so bad. So again, Cheney is pushing for your kids to be used as cannon fodder to better Republican chances in the 2012 election.
Thus, the president needs to realize that it's easy for Cheney to pull for the war. He and his cohorts aren't contributing one thing to the war effort, so it's a win-win situation for them. Their kids are safely at home, they reap windfall profits, they make the president look weak to his base for caving in, and they take the Iraqi disaster off the table for the 2012 election.
So while we share differing political views, I'm pulling for the lives of your children, and I hope the president does the same. I'm hoping the president realizes that only the insane tries the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. As an intelligent man and student of history, he simply has to recognize that we've tried the exact same thing, using the exact same rationale, in both Vietnam, and Iraq, and they've both turned out to be utter disasters. All we've gotten in return is a hemorrhaging treasury, and bulging cemeteries.
Candidate Obama promised us change, and the most profound change that he can provide us at this point in history is fewer mourning families. I hope he recognizes that as long as this nation continues to treat our troops like pawns instead of people who love their lives, and have hopes and dreams for a future, all other change is merely superficial.
So as the president deliberates his course of action in Afghanistan, I'd like him to ponder two questions on behalf of us all. The first: What decision would he make on Afghanistan if he knew with certainty that his own daughters would be the very first casualties in an escalation of the war? In such a case, I'm virtually certain that he'd decide that the effort wasn't worth the cost. And the second question is, what makes the lives of our children of any less value than his own?
If the president can answer those two questions honestly, his course of action should be clear.
Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. Sphere: Related Content
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