James Howard Kunstler, who many of you may recognize from his book The Long Emergency and his views on Peak Oil, is one of my favorite writers. I've felt the guy has the ability to turn a phrase as good as anyone. His weekly blog column, released yesterday, aptly sums up precisely what the Republican Party has become: The Party of Cruelty.
It was amusing to see the Republican party inveigh against health insurance reform as if they were a synod of Presbyterian necromancers girding the nation for a takeover by the spawn of hell. This was the same gang, by the way, who championed the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, then regarded as the most reckless giveaway of public funds in human history. Along the way, they enlisted an army of nay-sayers representing everything dark, disgraceful, and ignorant in the American character. If the Republicans keep going this way, they'll end up with something worse than Naziism: a party that hates everything but believes in absolutely nothing.
(Emphasis mine)
Although I'm living in Canada now and mostly follow this HCR debate out of curiosity (and the hopes that my friends back in the states will ultimately benefit from a more humane system of payment delivery), I still cannot wrap my head around the rabid rightwing opposition to the bill.
The most striking elements of so-called health care in America these days is how cruel and unjust it is, and in taking a stand against reforming it the Republican party appeared to be firmly in support of cruelty and injustice. This would be well within the historical tradition of other religious crusades which turned political -- such as the Spanish Inquisition and the seventeenth century war against witchcraft. Whatever else the Democratic party has stood for in recent history, it has tended to oppose institutional cruelty and injustice
As other writers on DailyKos have noted, repealing the bill would entail denying coverage to young voters, allowing insurance companies to deny coverage based on an actual illness or need for coverage, removing tax benefits for small businesses, and allow children with pre-existing conditions to be denied coverage. I cannot fathom the utter immorality and cruelty behind those supporting "repeal".
Now a health care reform act has passed and there's some reason to hope that insurance companies will be prevented from doing things like canceling the coverage of policy-holders who have the impertinence to actually get sick, which has been their main device for revenue enhancement, and we'll see how they cope with the idea that being alive in a treacherous world is the fundamental pre-existing condition.
What really galls me is that the same people who said nothing when the Patriot Act was shoved through, when Iraq was invaded for NO GOOD REASON (and has since siphoned off billions of dollars every week for no discernable major benefit to either the United States or Iraq), when Katrina hit New Orleans and subsequently drowned over 1000 people, or when Bush illegally wiretapped countless people...are now acting as though the end of the United States is upon them. They didn't say a word when the Republicans in power were inflicting violence and death upon innocent people arond the world, but the second a government attempts reform to HELP people, it's a constitutional crisis requiring revolution?
It's unfathomable.
I hope that Mr. Obama's party can carry this message clearly into the electoral battles ahead, painting the Republican opposition for what it is: a gang of hypocritical, pietistic sadists, seeking pleasure in the suffering of others while pretending to be Christians, devoid of sympathy, empathy, or any inclination to simple human kindness, constant breakers of the Golden Rule, enemies of the common good. In fact, the current edition of the Republican party has achieved something really memorable in the annals of collective bad intentions: they have managed to create a sense of the public interest whose main goal is the destruction of the public interest.
I do not want to see Democrats cooperating with the Republicans any longer. These is a party bent on harming others for private profit and whose sociopathic tendencies have caused so much misery since the day Reagan assumed office nearly three decades ago.
Kunstler's column nails it right on the head. The Republicans are looking to twist the screw and inflict more misery on the powerless. Unfortunately, three decades of manipulation, carefully crafted propaganda (Reaganomics) and creating the belief that government cannot work have created a segment of the population who will work agains their own self interests while maintaining a system of exploitation and harm against their fellow citizens.