Monday, August 10, 2009

The Dying Party

Seriously, what is the deal with the frenzy that the health care issue has caused? I see on the news where people are screaming and yelling at congressmen in "town hall meetings" or whatever you want to call them. Then there are people out there claiming that the new legislation promotes euthanasia (or as Sarah Palin put it, "Obama's Death Panel") and takes away Medicare, and...you name it, someone has made the claim. I even heard that the new legislation has Nazi influences. Euthanasia? Nazis? Really?

Obviously, by sheer merit of there being so many conflicting claims of what the legislation actually posesses within its pages, there must be some misinformation out there. But why? Who makes up those faulty claims? And who perpetuates them? Why?

Who: Republicans mostly.
Why: 1) because they're pissed that, if this passes, and works, they won't get credit for dealing with a f***ed up system when they should have (i.e. sometime between 2000 and 2008)...and 2) because if this passes, and works, their already floundering party will be rendered completely irrelevant and they'll have next to zero chance of regaining any significant political power for at least a generation.

That's just my opinion - formed largely on the basis that with every new effort, the Republican party looks more and more desparate. Rush Limbaugh sunk so low (as if "lower" was possible) as to claim the Dems have Nazi ties; Fox News had some guy in a "Crazy Tree" with a whiteboard basically claiming Obama was a Communist; and Rep. Virginia Fox (R-NC) was shown on C-SPAN claiming the legislation promotes euthanasia. And to think some people buy this crap...and still vote for the people who make it up.

All the while, these same people are doing everything in their power to prevent the single most beneficial piece of legislation this country (and maybe world) has ever had the opportunity to put in place to solve an awful lot of our problems: The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). Through this bill, we could create millions of jobs in the clean energy sector, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and actually make strides toward combating global climate change. That one bill has the potential to pull us out of the recession by creating jobs that cannot be outsourced, transition us to a clean energy economy, break our slavery to oil-producing nations (another benefit to the economy), and start addressing the single biggest threat to the human species we've ever faced. But the Republicans fight tooth and nail to prevent this bill from passing.

Even if the Republicans do get their way, and Obama fails...it will be too late for them to do anything about it and their party will collapse anyway...only it will bring the rest of the country with it.

1 comment:

strangeloop said...

Logic would tell you if a political party known for extemism and not using common sense started ranting about government conspiracies and hidden agendas, the people of a nation would say "oh we don't really listen to them because they breed extremism and don't really use common sense" but I guess I underestimate the American population. And the Iraqi population. And the Afghani population. And the North Korean population. Theres a few more, too.
The bottom line is that there's a market for this shit. People listen when bat-shit crazy people talk. If they didn't, all the radicals across the world would starve, and that's obviously not happening.