August 8, 2009
Individuals can do it; organizations can do it; corporations can do it; even religious leaders can do it. And nothing disastrous on a mass scale will come of it. But when a major force in a government makes it their rallying cry, the end of society as one knows it is certain to follow. And when those same people make it clear they are willing to stop at nothing to have their way and maintain power, that can only be described as a dictatorship. Deceit, dishonesty, lies, verbal intimidation, physical force — then imprisonment; one by one, that’s how it all starts and ends. We have just entered the physical-force stage.
Naturally I’m referring to the GOP’s methods of attacking the Democrats health care reform bill. As a man nearing my seventh decade, who has watched politics closely for most of the past five decades, I have never witnessed anything like this. The current so-called Republican leadership would make Joseph McCarthy very proud. But “McCarthyism”, as it’s called, won’t even be a foot note in history [someone’s, not ours] when the Republican Partys’ current run is over. How anyone can look at what’s going on and not compare it to a third-world country has to be completely blind and deaf. Even if you approve ideologically of what’s happening, you must consider what your feelings would be if the situation was reversed. A society flourishes by following rules and morals. Once those are abandoned, the society dies.
Steven Pearlstein of The Washington Post wrote on this matter which he called “Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform”. He had some very blunt things to say, and you should read the entire article. The following is some excerpts:
“The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They’ve become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything [bold added] to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.”
“…..there is no credible way to look at what has been proposed by the president or any congressional committee and conclude that these will result in a government takeover of the health-care system. That is a flat-out lie whose only purpose is to scare the public and stop political conversation [bold added].”
“…..laced with hypocrisy. While holding themselves out as paragons of fiscal rectitude, Republicans grandstand against just about every idea to reduce the amount of health care people consume or the prices paid to health-care providers.”
“By the same wacko-logic, a proposal that Medicare pay for counseling on end-of-life care is transformed into a secret plan for mass euthanasia of the elderly.”
“Can there be anyone more two-faced than the Republican leaders…..?”
Pearlstein is not normally this direct. However, I suppose he feels he has been a little to kind of late.
Kathleen Parker, also for The Washington Post, wrote this article where she distinctly implies in a strong manner that the only place the GOP is still well liked, in force, is in the south — mainly the southeast United States. And I have to whole hardly agree. With deep roots in that part of the country, I often return. It’s like entering a GOP convention. I am often (still) in shock at the lies many repeat, and when challenged, they offer some sort of “evidence” of the “truth”, which is usually obtained from some far right wing media organization.
Parker quotes Ohio Senator George Voinovich, a Republican, as saying “We got too many Jim Demints and Tom Coburns………it’s the Southerners. They get on TV and go ‘errrr, errrrr’ [sic] People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re Southerners. The party’s being taken over by Southerners” [links added]. Here, Parker is saying that Voinovich’s implication is “those ignorant, right-wing, Bible-thumping rednecks are ruining the party”. She points out that in a survey in the south where the question was asked “Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?” only 47 percent believe he was born in the US and 30 percent aren’t sure.
“Southern Republicans, it seems, have seceded from sanity”, Parker says. She also reminds us that “Lyndon B. Johnson predicted in 1965 that the Voting Rights Act meant the South would go Republican for the next 50 years”. Man, was Johnson ever right. I recall the day when the name “Republican” was a very dirty word in that part of the country.
The “debate”, if you want to call it that, will be looked back on as the beginning of the final Armageddon that brought down the United States. Much will be said and written about it, and if there’s anyone still “alive” in the (ex)United States, lets just hope they will admit to the real truth. Otherwise, in a couple of hundred years (if ever), it will start all over again.
™