Wherein I Account For My Alleged Regurgitation of Right-Wing Rhetoric
“President Obama struggled to explain today whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people — like the president himself — wouldn’t face.”—
I’m telling you—we are just rental cars and library books to him. We will never be on his shelf or in his garage.
(via jeffmiller)I just find this to be really disingenuous. For a guy whose basic response on access to health insurance and basic health care is more or less, “If you can’t afford it, it’s your fault, so who cares if you have it? You can die of totally curable/preventable ailments for all I care”, why should it matter if the president says, basically, “If you can’t afford it, we’re going to help you a little by giving you access to care that perhaps isn’t the best, and certainly not up to the quality I can afford, but would be better than what you’d be getting otherwise”? Are you actually trying to make the argument that Obama’s approach is more callous than your own? Because, um, I hate to tell you, his approach is no more selfish than your own misguided beliefs about health care (“it’s a luxury reserved only for those who can afford it, and I don’t care about anyone else, because obviously I can afford it”) and it’s certainly not as callous. At least he’s interested in doing something.
I don’t know whether you’re just regurgitating right-wing rhetoric at this point because you think it will make your views on the matter look more appealing, or if you honestly believe that your approach is more humane—and if that’s the case, then I previously gave you far more credit for being at the very least self-aware than you deserve. Either way, I think there is so much bullshit in this very new right-wing argument that Obama is the one with the heartless problem that I can barely type for the degree of rage I feel. Hypocritical, cold, and delusional. That pretty much sums up this entire conservative bullet point.
I like Robot-Heart, and I thought we had a pretty respectful relationship, so I guess I’m a little taken aback by this. Let me try to respond …
Yes, I honestly believe that my views[1] are more humane. That is, I honestly believe that the healthcare proposals being discussed will make peoples lives worse. I believe this for a ton of reasons, but the primary one is that people are terrible at making decisions for other people. I quoted the ABC news article above because it suggests that our President cares more about his kids than your kids. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad human being; it just means he’s human. And humans are bad at caring for and about strangers.
Maybe the quote above is a bad example. Here’s a better one: Obama is sending his kids to private school; he is also canceling the voucher program that lets poor families in D.C. send their kids to private schools. Killing the D.C. voucher program was not humane. Obama killed it because the politics of the issue was more important to him than the education of these kids. Of course, he would never put politics ahead of his own kids’ education, and that’s laudable. But Obama’s hierarchy of values seems to go something like this:
1. Himself and his family.
2. Politics.
3. Other people.
Again, this doesn’t make him a bad person—it just makes him human. But if you are part of the group called “Other People,” it might be a mistake to cede control of important things like your healthcare or your livelihood to his control, because he might just sell out your interests for the sake of politics. (Look what politics has done to the cap-and-trade bill.[2] And I won’t regurgitate right-wing rhetoric here; I’ll refer you to the Daily Kos).
Contrary to the implication above, I do not want to see people go without healthcare. I just believe that the Government cannot create a system that will do a better job than the market at delivering healthcare to people. You might think I’m wrong, or I’m stupid, or I’m ignorant for believing this … but it’s not fair to suggest that I’m heartless. And your characterization of my views … with the fake quotes and cruel adjectives … well, I really think it’s a shame that you’re so committed with certainty of your own point of view that you can’t believe anyone might honestly and compassionately hold another.
____
1. I’ve written a little about the healthcare issue here and here and here and here for example.
2. The corruption of the issue is the reason I advocated a significant carbon tax instead of cap-and-trade.
