Thursday, January 7, 2010
Briefly Why the Health Care Bill Pisses Me Off
The bill has been shaped around keeping Republicans and marginal Democrats happy. The bill has been molded to health care lobby specs. President Obama has sat back and done little to nothing push for the public option. As the bill stands now it sucks for the consumer and is a boon for the insurance and medicine industries as well as Wall Street. Now that Republicans have done everything they can to make the bill terrible they will make sure to not vote for it. When the half-assed bill that they helped weaken has half-assed results they will shake they heads and say, "See those poor sad liberals and their ridiculous fantasies." Now, to the masses, the crony capitalist corporate Republicans are the populists. They are guerrilla warfare, government saboteurs. That is why you fight them and ignore them because they are not there to help us. You go around them or you go over them. The lack of fight in the Democratic party would be astounding if it hadn't become pathological. I hope I am wrong. I hope the bill helps a lot of people soon and is revisited in the coming years. I hope.
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15 comments:
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
1. It appears you have a fan club.
2. I am so with you. The game republicans are playing right not is driving me mad. They say they will not vote for such a bill unless..(fill in the blank). Okay we add that to the bill. Oh, what now you still won't vote for it? And you're going to tell people that the democrats won't compromise and that their bill is crazy radical medicine that will kill old people. There is a commercial run here in PA that urges the elderly in PA to essentially harass the democratic senators because of Medicare cuts. It is meant to strike fear into the hearts of the, to put it bluntly, ignorant south central PA elderly population. The kicker? Under the current bill PA would have ANY medicare cuts! None whatsoever. I know people who still believe that Obama is running secret "death panels". People that can vote, people that do vote. The misinformed ignorant public terrifies me.
A strategy the Dems could learn to use from the repub playbook: Propose a truly outrageous plan, pure socialism, and suggest that anyone not on board with it is unpatriotic and possibly a terrorist bay-eater, then allow your yourself to be compromised down to getting exactly what you always wanted, instead of saying "Lets make a plan together. Cool. Now I'll give up my half of the plan in order to keep you happy.
This whole political clusterfuck that is going on when were supposed to have won the election and have some control of the policies and direction of the country is a place where I think you and I see exactly eye to eye.
Woops, didn't mean to post that twice, do you mind deleting one of them and also this comment so my incompetence is not on display in a way that undermines my earnestness in the comment?
David- I tried to delete your comments, but I don't think I can. I should be able to. Hmmm. I mean all of your comments ever. Oh!
Anonymous- While I think what you said is only true in reverse-that is that I used to put more time into things and write more carefully, I appreciate the support.
You point out that the masses are easily persuaded to think that the Republicans are the truly populist ones. I think you are correct. Is this not a reason to support a revolution which instantiates a dictatorship of the proletariat? How else can we overcome this debilitating false consciousness and lack of correct science?
screw instantiation, also dictatorship. especially bloody revolution. Anyone who picks up a gun to change the world ends up turning into Castro or Franco. Also, why so anonymous?
This coming from the "Morholt" (not that I want to know your name; I don't happen to think one's name makes any difference to the validity or not of one's argument). In any event, in response to your "argument", even such a bourgeois interpreter of the Russian Revolution as Orlando Figes admits that to question the legitimacy of the revolution because it led to people's deaths is to question the legitimacy of all social change that results in deaths, which is to say the majority of meaningful social changes (this, again, is Figes, not me, and Figes is a bourgeois counterrevolutionary). To eschew this kind of struggle is to cede the ground to the counterrevolutionaries and let them get along with their murderous work, which they are accomplishing right now, of course. As Comrade Trotsky once said in "The Fight Against Fascism": "Those who think they must renounce the physical struggle must renounce all struggle, for the spirit does not live without flesh".
The oddest thing about this is that last year at camp we sat around in the office trying to remember the name of the plastic animal that Gus had just found. We finally realized that it was an okapi. This whole scenario doesn't involve time travel does it?
Okapi-san, To say that social change cause upheaval which can result in death justifies violent revolution that will cause unnecessary death doesn't seem like a strong argument to me. While I enjoy violence in my personal life I don't think it is a good option from which to advocate change. It is kind of like running around with a meat cleaver, slashing awkwardly and demanding that people do what you say. Things might go your way for a bit, but what have you really accomplished? No, I am afraid it is good old stubborn democratic process for me. Frustrating and slow.
Also, I believe people's names come up as whatever their blogger accounts are so it really isn't an issue. It reads anonymous when you aren't signed in, so also not that big a deal.
I wasn't trying to make an argument against the proposal, just express an opinion. The argument might run something like: "If the masses are so easily lead astray that they fall for imperialist, capitalist dogma, why would we think they would make good dictators? I know the proles, live among them, am sprung from their loins, and would rather have the second coming of Ronald Reagan than a proletariat dictatorship because while not exactly sensitive, Reagan stopped short of lining up college educated gay lefties like myself against the wall and shooting us, as I have heard many of the proletariat suggest should be done."
The advantage of a democratic system is that it requires dialog to make change, which requires thought. Is the current dialog (over the last say 25 years) one that i don't care for? Yes. But if my ideas cant get traction, lack appeal, are contrary to the wishes of the majority (within the context of legally protected civil rights), then what gives me the right to force my ideas on others with a gun?
Well that is why I am a proponent of democratic centralism among a group of correct revolutionary scientists. That way the masses themselves are not the dictators.
I don't enjoy violence, but violent struggle is the way both Marx and Lenin (and Hegel before them) saw truth as unfolding in world history. If those who have correct science do not join in struggle that will happen with or without them, they risk consigning humanity to languish in ignorance.
I happen to like the okapi.
Hmmm, I hadn't thought of correct revolutionary scientists. I bet that would work out great.
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