Ayup. The Americans did it, & the homeschooling boards are erupting into hyperbole.
No, really. People report that they're grieving, terrified, sad, disgusted. Then there were the people who said they felt 'sick' which led to some witty comments that now at least they could see a doctor about that! Sadly, these folks have had their sense of humor surgically removed (at their own expense! Cause I'm not having no commie g'ment doctor cutting out MY sense of humour!) They put up quotes about oppression, tyranny, and yes, FASCISM (in caps!) has already been mentioned.
The other thing that happened was that a US expat who expressed a favourable opinion on the bill's passage was told that since she doesn't live in the US, it has nothing to do with her. Niiiiice!
So, as a Canuck & a supporter of public heath care, there's no point in my wading in to say 'Hey! Congrats! Maybe it's not quite how you wanted it but compromises are always like that. Hope you make it work for your people, and if not, get back to it & make it work better!' because I would be eviscerated in seconds. Don't want no frener tellin' us how to run our country! We're free! I want to be free to die when I have a heart attack! That's the 'Merican way! Praise the Lord!
Instead I come to my blog & give you this gem:
Why do people vote against their own interests?
Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.
Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:
"You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining.
"It's like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy."
Durn right. PTL.
8 comments:
Well, I left those homeschooling message boards somewhere around the time of the 2008 election. They were screaming tyranny, oppression, and fascism even then. Makes me wonder what's really behind it. At this point, I wondering if perhaps it rhymes with "face." As Sherlock Holmes said, "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
Yeah, I can imagine the goings on. I haven't been over there for awhile either. (Hi, Margaret!)
Today I posted a link on my Facebook page to Kunstler's blog post, "The Party of Cruelty," and had a 'friend' (really just a former coworker) jump down my throat that I was personally insulting her and was sick to post such hatred.
Tetchy, ain't they?
Hurrah for socialized medicine!
Mass hysteria...very scary. very very scary.
Yesterday on Q on CBC radio there was a review of a French experiment/documentary called "The Game of Death," a rather disturbing exploitation of our already known weakness to obey authority. In response a psychiatrist said that children need to be taught to disobey, to rebel. That we need to experience rebellion.
I felt a little vindicated .... It was and is a lot of work to be "eternally vigilant" I hope that this gives us all renewed determination to commit to the free mind.
A, a retired homeschooler (ha! ha!)
Also I hope you are all following the excellent series "Love Hate and Propaganda" on CBC.ca"
Some of us are celebrating, just quietly.
A great big (pagan) a-frickin-men! I 'accidentally' wandered onto your blog from a link at Embracing My chaos, I think, and I have thought that exact thing for years. I left those same homeschooling boards long ago as well.
I am an American expat, living in Australia, where I have enjoyed FREE health cover since the day I arrived... even though I was not approved for medicare yet!
My family is from the state of Georgia, and they ARE some of those financially poor souls that for some reason are stuck up the arses of rich republicans. It utterly boggles my mind.. I have no idea HOW I managed to be so level headed ;)
BRILLIANT post.
Have to agree with Ruth - I'm profoundly glad it passed, but trying to keep very quiet about it (I live in the south, too, Ruth - Richmond, VA). I feel like I dont want to log in to facebook (which i ususally have open 24/7) because I am SO TIRED of hearing people fighting about it. Ok, people are upset. Just let them grieve about their percieved loss, and in a few years, they will be just as angrily defending their right to guarenteed health care. In fact, my moms group has been NOTICEABLY silent on the issue, i believe because we respect each other enough to understand no good would come from bringing it up.
thanks for giving me a safer place to vent.
American anti-intellectualism at its finest. Richard Hofstadter would be shaking his head.
I haven't been to the forum in years -- I don't like forums in general anyway, and THAT one is a scary place (I don't like Facebook either because it has a different definiton of "friendship" than I do) -- but the yelling faces and loud voices, all full of vitriol, on the Canadian evening news frighten me.
I'm embarrassed to be an American when I watch that, and grateful that with my father's recent death my sister and I may have one less thing to worry about regarding our mother, who's not in the greatest health.
Lostontheprairie, "Love, Hate & Propaganda" has been excellent. We've missed a few episodes but I hope to get our librarian to buy the series when it's out on DVD. If she doesn't, I will...
Just read Frank Rich's spot-on op-ed in yesterday's NY Times, "The Rage Is Not About Health Care",
From which:
"If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan 'Take our country back!,' these are the people they want to take the country back from."
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