This is Markos’ tweet in response to this tweet by CNN about which states would be hit hardest by the GOP’s horrific attempt to repeal protections for pre-existing conditions:
Putting aside the millions of people in these states (including millions of PoC) who did not vote for Clinton — many of whom can’t even vote because they are children or felons — what kind of deranged mind mocks and ridicules people who may lose their health care and die prematurely in pain and agony simply because they voted for the wrong party. Oh, many of these people are sexist you report. Many of them are racist. Your point is granted. Many of them are. Just so I get it, you the enlightened liberal, who ostensibly thinks the death penalty is an inhumane abomination even when applied to persons who have literally murdered, maimed, tortured and raped people (and I agree — the death penalty should be abolished), are fine mocking de facto death sentences for tens or thousands thousands of people because they made a stupid and/or bigoted voting decision.
Here is the difference. Some of us realize or at least suspect that had we been born in a different place and context, under different circumstances, without a good education and good mentors who brought us up to consider the world from others’ point of view, and possibly with fewer natural gifts of intelligence or critical thinking, we too could easily have ended up as one of the people in these conservative states who voted for Trump. You don’t have to accept, condone or apologize for their votes for Trump or Congressional Republicans to realize that they too are to a large extent the product of their circumstances. If you are not religious, simply substitute “chance” for God, but as the old saying goes, “there but for the grace of God, go I.” If you can’t grasp that concept when applied to all people (not just the poor and criminals, but also uneducated bigots and even wealthy, privileged Republicans, who I myself have even wished horrible things upon in my weaker moments), then may I suggest that you may actually have more in common with the Republicans who you despise than you realize.
Nobody, I’ve found, has said it better than Nate Robinson, in this piece, so I’ll just quote it:
"And herein lies a core fallacy: that in empathizing with people, you necessarily excuse them, and that by acknowledging someone’s suffering, you thereby endorse their political agenda. You don’t have to sign on to “white identity politics” in order to think that nobody deserves to have their health insurance taken away, no matter how stupid they’ve been either personally or politically. Rich writes that Democrats should “hold the empathy and hold on to the anger” because “. . . who are Democrats to stand in the way of Trump voters who used their ballots to commit assisted suicide?" The answer is that Democrats are supposed to be the ones who aren’t callous assholes . . ., that they’re the ones who are supposed to believe people don’t bring their pain on themselves and that you don’t discard people merely because they’ve made foolish decisions."
Back to Kos’s comment, I emphasize that this is not simply a “mistake” or an “isolated incident.” If it were, I would not be so bothered by it. But many of us have known that these are Kos’s true colors for quite some time. He has made comments like these before: www.dailykos.com/…What a sick, twisted degenerate ideology liberalism has become if this is what it leads us to believe.
So all you smug happy “liberals” defending Kos and even making similar comments and repeating similar sentiments online, while you drool over the potential for political gains at the expense of the death and sickness of the poor, or in Kos’s case, while relishing in the death and sickness of the poor. We see you and your bankrupt ideology. We won’t forget.