The back and forth on this site recently has been absolutely fascinating in a car wreck sort of way...especially to us "idealistic leftists" who watch the other 80% with a sort of detached revulsion combined with a sad acceptance of a status quo that can only be turned around very slowly, like the accepted metaphor of a gigantic ship at sea.
I have been inspired by people like Hunter S. Thompson and George Carlin...rebels with more than a clue and I offer three paragraphs from Matt Taibbi's latest blog entry regarding health care in order to provoke a discussion where I can hopefully gain insight.
If you care to follow me below the fold I will provide those three paragraphs and comment section afterwards. Is this a diary? You be the judge...I already know the answer.
First of all, the obligatory link:
http://trueslant.com/...
As a 43 year-old man living through the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression with a beautiful wife and precious, five year-old daughter I have started to loathe retired people that tell me to put my nose to the grindstone like they did. What they don't seem to understand is that the grindstone has been taken away and replaced with a consumer economy that doesn't make anything anymore and fucks everyone who is not rich or firmly entrenched in a lifestyle of entitlements, pensions and benefits that the damned socialists better not take away or we will pull our guns out.
On that note I offer three paragraphs and a conclusion:
The race to revamp the American health care system and turn it into an even bigger and more incomprehensible mess than it is today continues. Watching the congressional back-and-forth on this is a fascinating comic exercise, sort of like putting a chess board between a pair of beached Beluga whales and waiting for a game to break out.
This latest plan to reduce the Medicare age is a great example. Rather than put forward a real public option that actually lowers costs and gives people everywhere the ability to buy into a plan, the Democrats are now pushing a plan to offer Medicare to people age 55 and over. The idea here is to include something that sounds enough like a "public option" that the liberals will be placated and ultimately vote for the bill. It shouldn’t escape anyone’s notice that under this arrangement, all the younger, healthier people who are just starting their careers and most need cheap insurance will be forced to buy private plans while older citizens will be offered the public teat just as they start to become very expensive to their insurers.
I get that some people think this is a good idea, and it’s hard to argue that any kind of expansion of Medicare is a bad thing, given that the program has been popular and successful throughout its history. But this move just smacks of the bass-ackwards Solomonesque bargaining that has marked this whole health care effort from the start. If expanding Medicare is good for people aged 55 and up, why isn’t it good for everybody? Why isn’t it a good idea to provide cheaper insurance for people in their preventive care years, so that they cost Medicare less as they do get older?
So, in conclusion...it's not my dad's economy anymore and it's definitely not my grandparent's. It's a new world that actually sucks more than it used to in a lot of ways that folks over the age of around 55 seem unable to comprehend. This is through no fault of their own...just a "generational thing". "If jobs were always available when I was your age they must be now...are you just lazy?"
Us young whippersnappers need help. More than you old farts do, or at least as much. Maybe not as much as the "Greatest Generation"/ones-who-lived-through-the-Great-Depression that we always keep hearing about ad nauseum. Then again, maybe more. Who knows?...all I know is that a lot of us are hurting and we are not retired, rich, entitled or lazy...just hurting.
Anyways...flame away. I don't give a fuck anymore, really.
;-/>
Update: 2:10 am PST...if you read the comments you will notice that Cherry the Tart and VA gentlewomen prove my point quite clearly. Everybody used to walk through the snow 10 miles in their barefeet uphill, both ways and the comments from these particular Kossacks just go to show the entire reason for my vent/diary. Anyways...just thought it was interesting.
Update 2: 3:00 am PST...I am going to bed now after listening to some good ol' hippie music. Cherry the Tart and VA gentlewomen and a few others enlightened, informed and encouraged me. That is why I come here, if only for a little while, once in a while.
If you are feeling cognitive dissonance reading updates 1 and 2 then I can only say a mind is like a parachute...it only works when it's open. I went back and forth with these two and I learned from them and I am better for the experience.
That is why I blog and that is why I will continue to come here and fight for what is correct...but never for what is "right".
As Always...Peace. And I mean that. ;-)>
Peace ;-/>