CSotD: Government by Whopper
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A bit of a gentle start, since things may get a little rough before we’d done. Granted, Horsey makes Russ Vought look like a mad scientist, offering America a trip in his time machine.
But it could be worse, because, beyond that, what Vought offers is a trip back to a time that colors the notion of the Good Old Days but when the days were truly only good for a small segment of the population, despite being presented as the default experience.
The specifics he mentions only came up briefly in social studies senior year, by which time a lot of students had tuned out, and these factors were mentioned, not dwelt upon.
It’s one of the main faults of the Great Man School of History: We don’t learn what life was like for the average person, and certainly not for anyone below the median.
The false, glossy picture was painted then, too. Nellie Bly went out to Pullman in 1894 to cover the strike, which she believed was a case of ungrateful workers in a model city betraying their benevolent employer. Once she met strikers and heard their complaints, however, she adopted a very different viewpoint.
I visited the town, intending in my articles to denounce the riotous and bloodthirsty strikers. Before I had been half a day in Pullman I was the most bitter striker in the town.
Not many got to see for themselves, which is why, at about that time, Jacob Riis wrote How The Other Half Lives.
Even today, with the marvels of television and the Internet, we remain deliberately cocooned, such that the announcement of an off-shore American planning to perform in Spanish draws outrage from people who have devoted a great deal of energy to remaining apart from people who are not like them.
Obviously, propaganda plays a role. But when my son finished tops in his apprenticeship school in the Navy and had a wide choice of assignments, others in his class said, “You’re lucky! You won’t have to go overseas!”
His response was puzzlement that they hadn’t joined the Coast Guard, if they wanted to stay home.
Then, as his ship plied the western seas from Korea to the Persian Gulf, he and a few friends would land at each port and head into town to sample the local food, telling the waiters “Bring me what you would have.”
But many of his shipmates got off the ship and went straight to the Burger King without ever leaving the base.
There is a substantial portion of the population that has deliberately avoided encountering anyone who wasn’t exactly like them. It only takes a nudge from the isolationists and white supremacists to convert these timid people into a political movement.
They resent being forced to mingle, even if only to the extent of seeing dark-skinned people and homosexuals in sitcoms and TV advertising. When a Spanish-speaking person of uncertain sexuality invades halftime of the Super Bowl, he’s intruding on one of their safe spaces.
I’m not forgiving them. I’m just explaining them. For the record, I think the Super Bowl halftime show is an excellent opportunity to go to the bathroom, walk the dog and replenish the snacks.
A Good Old Days perspective may be less accidental in the future. We have freedom of the press, but we also have governmental pressure that not only includes networks paying bribes to the president, but making conciliatory gestures like naming Bari Weiss head of CBS News.
Kelley’s intent is not clear, but given his history, I’m assuming that he feels CBS is lying about being neutral, while those familiar with Weiss fear a hard lurch to the right. My own assumption is that CBS will not become Fox or Newsmax, but will softly drift towards starboard.
Maybe not. From the time I moved to northern New York in 1987 until her death in 1992, I watched Barbara Frum anchor the CBC’s nighttime news program regularly and had no idea how deeply conservative she was, because she didn’t let it affect her reporting.
Such ethical neutrality is possible, but, then again, she was a giant. Bari Weiss is not. We shall see.
Elsewhere in the Marketplace of Mistaken Ideas:
No, here’s the problem: This is a lie.
Not “spin.” Not “point of view.” A lie.
Nobody is proposing making undocumented immigrants eligible for healthcare. It’s true that, as has been the law since Reagan and was the case so long as human decency existed, people who can’t afford health care will get it anyway.
But there is no demand for giving them regular health benefits. If you say there is, you are either a liar or a fool.
And, BTW, they pay about $59.4 billion in federal taxes, which would pay for their Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid if they were eligible for it. That’s more than double what is given to hospitals for indigent care.
Unknot your panties and read your Bible.
If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. — 1 John 3:17-18
Juxtaposition of Dishonesty
Those who favor doubling health care premiums are pointing out that the Affordable Care Act was never entirely covered by user premiums, which is why, as Bok points out, there was originally a provision requiring everyone to carry some kind of health insurance: the Individual Mandate.
The problem was that if the overall pool didn’t include younger, healthy people, it would be carried on the backs of people who used the care at a disproportional rate, but Republicans insisted on eliminating the penalty and the result was what anyone could have predicted: Healthy people dropped coverage.
It’s like kicking the jack out from under a car and observing that changing tires is inherently dangerous. Under those circumstances, you’d have to be a fool to deny it, but you’d have to be an even bigger fool to kick out the jack and then complain.
Never mind. I’ll let these guys finish up the discussion:
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